Summary
An action-packed premiere picks up like Sweet Home never left, but it’s arguably a bit too chaotic to really allow viewers to settle back in.
“Humankind is a virus, and the monsters are the vaccine.” This is a theory posited in the cold open of Sweet Home Season 2, Episode 1, the much-anticipated premiere of the monstrous Netflix K-Drama that is essentially Resident Evil if the screen versions of it had ever been any good. The quote comes from the C5 Research Facility of the Bamseom Emergency Management Bureau, proper nouns that’ll no doubt be important later, but it’s mostly just a tone-setter for a show that immediately reminds viewers how bleak, nasty, and violent it can be.
Sweet Home Season 2 Episode 1 Recap
The real beginning of the premiere is, technically, where we left off in the Season 1 finale, with Hyun-su waking up in the back of a military vehicle driven by Ui-myeong, wearing Sang-wook’s body. The military needs to apprehend Hyun-su since he’s the last remaining “special infected”, half-human-half-monster, and thus integral to the development of a cure, but Ui-myeong has other ideas. Cue a great-looking chase and an in-vehicle fistfight that lets fans know what time it is. Sweet Home may have taken its sweet time to return to our screens, but it seems like a great deal of money was spent on it in the meantime.
Who are the real monsters?
This also has the consequence of separating Hyun-su from the rest of the Green Home apartment survivors, who find themselves in the care of a grossly incompetent military. In a following action sequence set in the tunnels jam-packed with survivors and paranoiac military personnel, that Licker-looking monster jumps around and leads to the deaths — by gunshot, fire, crushing, explosion, and suicide — of a great many people in there, none of them caused by the monster itself. Point taken.
That poor Licker monster serves as a rather obvious example of how the military is becoming divided in its approach to the monster situation and how — all together now — human beings are infinitely more callous and savage than the actual monsters. The thing gets shot, hit with a rocket, and is chased all the way back through the tunnel to save its offspring, which has been skewered as a lure. Already dying, the monster is barbecued in front of its screaming baby, and the kid only escapes because of the mercy of Sergeant Tak, who has interpreted the monster-killing directive as a self-defense measure rather than an outright purge.
Where is Ui-myeong taking Hyun-su?
This is a sentiment reflected — albeit a bit less convincingly — by Ui-myeong, who promises to stop wantonly killing if it’ll make Hyun-su happy (the four-armed monster that looks like Goro’s emaciated sister whom he throws off a balcony isn’t buying it.) Ui-myeong is taking Hyun-su to Bamseom district to free the other neo-humans like them.
Yi-kyung seems to be heading that way too. We’re treated — although that probably isn’t the right word — to one of the research experiments going on in the facility she ends up in, with a mother being reunited with her daughter, who killed herself due to online bullying but has been revived as a blue-eyed monster with razor-sharp Freddy Krueger-style knife hands. It’s a success for the researchers, who determine that prior relationship doesn’t make any difference post-monsterization, but it isn’t a success for the mother who has to watch her daughter be barbecued by flamethrowers.
How does Sweet Home Season 2 Episode 1 end?
Ui-myeong begins to experience visions of Sang-wook’s past, which causes him immense distress and confusion, causing him to crash the car he and Hyun-su are driving to Bamseom in. The collision leaves a soldier on death’s door, and Hyun-su is forced to mercy-kill him, much to his obvious displeasure.
However, it also leaves Ui-myeong pretty messed up. And with his human host in such bad condition, he can’t use his slithery shapeshifting powers to find a new one. Hyun-su is pretty amused by this, since it puts a nail in Ui-myeong’s theory that they’re superior beings — he’s just a parasite.
The premiere ends with Hyun-su dragging a begging Ui-myeong towards some soldiers, who shoot both of them down.
RELATED:
