Summary
The Killing Vote delivers an arresting premiere that includes all the obvious elements of a hit crime series.
This recap of the Prime Video K-Drama The Killing Vote Season 1 Episode 1 contains spoilers.
In its premiere episode, The Killing Vote, the opening salvo for Prime Video in the Streaming Wars aimed directly at the much better-stocked K-Drama libraries of Netflix and Disney+, has all the makings of a dynamite crime series. There’s a creepy, meme-able mask! There’s a handsome cop moonlighting as a kind of Daredevil-style bare-knuckle vigilante! There’s a beautiful woman being held down by her male pig peers!
These individual elements are enough to coax some real investment in this series, and while it remains to be seen whether it’ll be able to hold everything together story-wise, the first outing is a confident opener that delivers action, character drama, a key central mystery, a nasty murder, and a coherent thematic throughline.
The Killing Vote Season 1 Episode 1 Recap
We’re introduced to Kim Mu-chan and his brand of law enforcement twice in the episode’s early-going. In a flashback cold-open, we see him discovering a man – who will be identified later – stabbing someone to death on a rainy night. Mu-chan holds him at gunpoint, but the scene cuts away before it’s revealed how the encounter ends.
In the present day, Mu-chan busts an illegal webcam operation by storming in, battering everyone, and planting evidence in the office of the boss, Jin-soo. In the subsequent interrogations, Mu-chan turns the cameras off to brutalize himself, so that he can claim Jin-soo attacked him.
We get the idea – this guy doesn’t play by the rules, and probably has a good reason for that which will be revealed down the line.
The webcam sting also introduces Joo Hyun, who is working undercover as one of the girls, documents Mu-chan planting evidence, and later disagrees with him about his methods (and the fact he gives her zero credit whatsoever for her participation.)
Who is Bae Gi-chul?
Bae Gi-chul is a criminal who served a mere one-and-a-half years in prison for heinous crimes that he was quite clearly guilty of. Thanks to marrying a foreigner while incarcerated, he has managed to expedite his sentence, and the public is vehemently protesting against his release.
Gi-chul is important to the episode because he becomes the first victim of the masked killer who initiates the Killing Vote live stream. A hint in this regard is first dropped through Joo-hyun, who, in the process of trying to figure out how the system got infected with a virus, uncovers a video file of the masked man(?) throwing some shade towards the Korean Judicial System.
When Joo-hyun takes this evidence to her superior, though, it’s ignored, so it comes as something of a shock to the authorities when a poll goes live allowing everyone over the age of 18 to vote on whether or not Gi-chul should be executed.
How does Bae Gi-chul die?
Once the votes are counted, the majority decides that Gi-chul should die, and he’s subsequently discovered by the police in a pit of money, having been suffocated to death by bills forced down his throat. It’s a gruesome image, and one worthy of Mu-chan’s attention (even though, earlier, he beat Gi-chul up outside of his house, causing a stir in the police department, which seems to receive frequent backlash for his extracurricular activities.)
In the aftermath, the masked killer once again live streams to the public, explaining why Gi-chul deserved to die, and proving that he’s responsible for the killing. This creates a fair amount of uproar among the public, the media, and the police, who establish a special task force with Mu-chan at the helm in order to track this killer down.
The Killing Vote Season 1 Episode 1 Ending Explained
At the end of the episode, after arguing with her superior about how much of a coward he is, Joo-hyun goes to Mu-chan with the evidence she found on her sister’s laptop. She explains that the differences in audio and the turn of phrase used point to the culprit being Kwon Seok-joo, the man Mu-chan was apprehending in the flashback cold open.
After returning to that scene briefly, we’re shown a snippet of Seok-joo seemingly serving his time in jail. Of course, this hardly exonerates him – we’ve seen plenty of criminals pulling strings from behind bars – but why waste time on the flashbacks if it’s not going to be important moving forward?
You can stream the K-Drama The Killing Vote Season 1 Episode 1 exclusively on Prime Video.
