Summary
Sceptical views are challenged and more information is uncovered in another solid episode.
This recap of the Disney+ K-Drama Revenant Season 1 Episode 8 contains spoilers.
Revenant is a supernatural horror, and one of the mandates of the genre is a skeptical character who thinks the leads are nuts.
Similarly, one of the mandated plot beats in this kind of thing is the skeptic being proved wrong, usually in a way that is hazardous to their health (or the health of someone close to them).
Throughout the season, that character here has been Hong-sae, the classically rigorous and analytical detective who has little time for highfalutin ideas about the supernatural. Among other things, this episode is about those beliefs being challenged.
Revenant Season 1 Episode 8 Recap
While Mun-chun and Hong-sae go about separately finding the connection between the spate of similar suicide cases between 1958 and 2023, San-yeong goes to see an ophthalmologist.
What is wrong with San-yeong’s eyes?
The reason we should care about San-yeong’s eyesight is that she’s about to imminently lose it. She has the same rare eye disease her father Gang-mu had, and she’ll be blind in about a year.
Crucially, though, Gang-mu didn’t lose his vision. Why? San-yeong theorizes it was because of his possession. He was compelled to hold onto the evil spirit because in so doing he was also holding onto his sight, his ability to see the world and his loved ones.
Going blind isn’t a death sentence, but it’s certainly an end to life as you know it. San-yeong, realizing this, resolves to spend time with her loved ones, her mother and Semi, before she loses the ability to see them.
How does San-yeong save Hae-sang?
Hae-sang, still reeling from the revelations in Episode 7, invites the darkness by smearing his blood on the Jangseung at Baekchagol.
San-yeong is summoned by the village head to save an entranced Hae-sang, whose death is apparently imminent from a shadowy ticking-clock device that threatens to fatally engulf him.
The counter to this darkness, somewhat unimaginatively, but fittingly on a thematic level, is light, so San-yeong drives him to the east and the rising sun. He’s saved, though it isn’t as easy as that for San-yeong to view him as she once did given all that has been exposed.
How can the spirit be defeated?
Revenant is becoming something of a treasure hunt since it becomes clear that being in possession of the cursed objects, all present where death occurred, is the key to defeating the evil spirit.
At the temple with the hungry ghost spirit painting, one of the monks lets on to San-yeong and Hae-sang that Gang-mu buried a plant there in someone’s memory, and lo and behold, when they dig up the spot, another of the cursed objects is there.
Finding them all is key, but there is evidently something that both Hae-sang’s mother and San-yeong’s father overlooked, resulting in Gang-mu’s death and providing a hurdle in the quest of seeing off the spirit once and for all.
Revenant Season 1 Episode 8 Ending Explained
A trance-like San-yeong warns of another impending victim, and it seems very likely to be Mun-chun.
Throughout the episode Hong-sae and Mun-chun turned up information linking the cases together and, thematically, leading the skeptics closer and closer to a supernatural reality.
Hae-sang warns Mun-chun that, no matter what, he should keep his door closed to whoever knocks, since opening the door to the spirit is, in all cases, fatal. But Mun-chun and Hong-sae fall for the deception and open the door to find San-yeong with a menacing smile greeting them.
You can stream the K-Drama Revenant Season 1 Episode 8 exclusively on Disney+.
