Summary
“Signal” has the tightest pacing thus far, managing to raise the stakes while building to a satisfying action-heavy payoff.
As I predicted, “Signal” is really about Gyeongseong Creature cutting loose a little bit after a lot of slower-paced build-up and introductions in Episode 1 and the gradual establishment of a deadlier, more claustrophobic setup in Episode 2. With that in mind Episode 3 delivers more suspense and action than those two prior outings, getting Part 1 off to more of an engaging pace and providing some solid action by the end too.
The episode’s still overlong, but the pacing feels a little tighter here, and there’s more payoff for your investment. With plenty more story left to tell, these are the kinds of episodes that keep viewers engaged.
Gyeongseong Creature Season 1 Episode 3 Recap
Things are not going well in Ongseong Hospital. There are dead soldiers and prisoners everywhere, the creature is loose, and the only information about what exactly happened is coming from traumatized survivors.
We see how the creature, being transported to a new cell in the basement but awoken by the failure of the nitrogen tanks, extended its long tentacles from its cell and skewered the masked soldiers escorting it. We see Lt. Kato and his men looking down at the bloodbath from the floor above. We see a lot of death and destruction – but isn’t that the point of a monster? Doesn’t its killing and subsequent growth mean it performs exactly as advertised?
Mixed Signals
Elsewhere, the narrative is divided into two distinct strands that eventually intertwine. In one, Tae-sang tries to devise a plan to save Chae-ok and Myeong-ja without alerting Ishikawa’s men, who continue to keep a close eye on him. His nifty plan of using fireworks and secret messages shows that he hasn’t gotten where he is by accident. There’s a brain in there.
In the other thread, Chae-ok navigates the interior of Ongseong Hospital, learning from a Joseon soldier working with the resistance that Myeong-ja remains alive and is one of the few survivors of the creature’s deadly spores. This guy is not having a good time of things in the hospital, and that’s putting it mildly.
Tae-sang is having a little more success but does stumble into some roadblocks of his own. A dispute he had with a guy trying to flog a porcelain pot in his pawn shop earlier comes back to bite him when the guy and his goons jump Tae-sang on his way to a meeting between Sachimoto and Maeda. As a consequence, Tae-sang arrives too late and misses the rendezvous.
But he remains emboldened in his efforts. While he patches up his wounds, he reiterates to a concerned Mrs. Nawol that he’s done being pushed around – which is just as well, since Sachimoto arrives at the pawn shop, ready to talk.
Suffer the Children
Inside the hospital, Chae-ok tells her father to head to the roof while she wriggles through the ventilation system in search of the lab, making many other macabre discoveries along the way, including human heads in jars and prisoners in jail cells, several of them children. She decides she can’t be having that, so frees them and sends them back up the vent she came down.
This altruistic plan is temporarily thwarted by the return of the doctor, who spots the missing vent cover, but Chae-ok deals with him in short order and it’s hard to imagine anyone feeling sympathetic towards him.
How does Gyeongseong Creature Season 1 Episode 3 end?
“Signal” ends with a cool action sequence on the rooftop, where Chae-ok and her father are able to kill a bunch of soldiers backdropped by Tae-sang’s fireworks. Tae-sang himself arrives in the nick of time to shoot the final soldier dead, saving Chae-ok’s life in the process, which is sure to help his romantic standing.
The kids are freed, but Myeong-ja remains deeper in the hospital, and the titular creature remains on the loose, only getting stronger.
What did you think of Gyeongseong Creature Season 1 Episode 3? Let us know in the comments.
