Summary
History threatens to repeat itself in the penultimate episode of Queenmaker as Jae-min resorts to old tactics in an effort to protect his image.
As it turns out, you can’t just run around sleeping with every woman you meet and expect your indiscretions not to see the light of day, especially when there are babies involved, and this is precisely what Jae-min discovers in the penultimate episode of Queenmaker.
So, yes, his affair with Ji-yeon and his illegitimate son have made the news, and his conservative family-oriented voter base doesn’t like it.
Queenmaker Season 1 Episode 10 Recap
What’s a guy like Yoon to do? It’s his job to ensure Jae-min stays squeaky clean, but covering up a scandal of this magnitude is near impossible. Jae-min wants to take his usual approach, which is simply to “get rid” of Ji-yeon, but he’s too scrutinized for that.
How does Jae-min respond to the scandal?
Jae-min decides to try and play up his relationship with Ji-yeon, implying that the two of them found solace and protection in one another. He wants to be seen doting on her, but he also wants to keep her out of the way, “rested” and “relaxed”, which is to say out of the way of the press.
As far as the press themselves are concerned, the idea is just to deny it. Fake news. There’s nothing to it. But Do-hee obviously senses the weakness and disseminates photos of the pair together which obviously undercut their claims that their relationship is entirely platonic.
The stress all gets too much for Ji-yeon, who passes out from stress, leading some on Kyung-sook’s side to question if they’re perhaps going too far.
What is Jae-min’s next move?
The only thing on Jae-min’s mind is votes. He comes up with a couple of ways to achieve this.
The first is to have Ji-yeon killed, making her a martyr. The angle will be that the stress of the allegations from Kyung-sook’s team drove her to suicide, and Jae-min will hoover up the sympathy votes.
His other move is to promise the people shares in the duty-free development through the government, which Chairperson Son is fuming about. However, in a smart mirror of that scene earlier in the season when Son slapped him, Jae-min takes the upper hand here, highlighting how important his success is to the entire Eunsung Group, and how calamitous his failure might be for everyone.
Jae-min’s power grab within the family doesn’t go unnoticed by Seo-jin, who reports to Do-hee that the dude is losing his mind. Ji-yeon needs to remain protected, and to that end, she is also working to protect herself by having a prenatal paternity test done that proves her child is Jae-min’s – she knows, inevitably, that he’ll deny it.
Queenmaker Season 1 Episode 10 Ending Explained
A lot of this episode is devoted to drawing very explicit parallels between Ji-yeon and I-seul, the implication being that any woman who gets entangled with Jae-min inevitably ends up dead or at the very least reputationally destroyed.
This actually all dovetails quite nicely toward the end of the episode. When Ji-yeon is taken away by Jae-min’s men, she figures out what is happening too late and is drugged and knocked out in the back of the car.
At around the same time, Do-hee finds security footage from the building across the street from Eunsung HQ that reveals Jae-min arriving and leaving with no sort of visible distress whatsoever. Of course, we know why, and so does Ji-yeon, who was privy to his actions in this regard in the first place.
Is history going to repeat itself? How will Ji-yeon’s fate determine the outcome of the election? There’s still everything to play for as we head into the finale.
You can stream Queenmaker Season 1 Episode 10 exclusively on Netflix.
