Summary
Queen of Tears is a solid introduction to the characters and premise, but it isn’t until the end of the premiere that the potential of the story really opens up.
Even in K-Drama land, love isn’t always perfect. Relationships are hard. Marriage is harder. It isn’t all domestic bliss and happy endings, and the Netflix romantic drama Queen of Tears, directed by Kim Hee-won and Young-woo Jang, is about the difficulties of sharing a life with someone else, especially amid a crisis. Episode 1 is a great introduction to the protagonists and their high-profile world and leaves plenty of meat on the bone for subsequent episodes in Season 1 to chew away at.
The couple at the center of this drama is Hong Hae-in and Baek Hyun-woo. The former is a chaebol heiress, and met the latter, an employee at the department store franchise she will one day inherit, while she was interning there. It’s a classic undercover boss story. Hyun-woo had no idea how adorable his claims he could support the pair of them were.
But the love was authentic enough. Hyun-woo wasn’t just interested in Hae-in’s money, and Hae-in wasn’t with a middle-class dude as some kind of social experiment. They had their whole futures ahead of them, and the future looked rosy. It always does, doesn’t it?
What happened between Hae-in and Hyun-woo?
Down the line, the happy couple are decidedly unhappy. They exist in the same house but live independent lives, barely speaking at all. Hyun-woo wants a divorce but is too worried to broach the subject for the same reasons that he wants one in the first place – Hae-in’s family micromanages every aspect of his life and he feels completely isolated.
There’s still respect there – Hae-in always defends Hyun-woo when he’s disrespected, or at least tries to – but the happiness is long gone, frustration taking its place and flooding out in torrents to therapists and whoever else will listen. You get the sense it might be repairable with a bit of communication and understanding, but you also get the sense that the oppressive in-law atmosphere would never allow those kinds of notions to exist – not for Hyun-woo, anyway.
Of course, even if one’s social and financial status doesn’t matter to their significant other, that isn’t to say it doesn’t matter to those around them. Hyun-woo and Hae-in were a high-profile power couple, so their marriage was in some ways for the consumption of others. But Hae-in’s status and the opportunities afforded by it were alien to someone from Hyun-woo’s background, so his family had attached themselves to the idea of his status elevating their own.
This is obviously a selfish impulse but it’s also an understandable one. Marrying into a family worth billions of won is like winning the lottery. Thus, when Hyun-woo floated the idea of a divorce, it was quickly nixed. Surely he could keep going for the benefit of everyone?
Compelling though this impulse may be, it also crucially overlooks the happiness of both Hyun-woo and Hae-in, neither of whom wanted to be with the other. Hae-in’s family’s suggestion that they have a baby to justify the relationship continuing is especially egregious since it’s not just the two of them who’d suffer but the child brought into the world for the wrong reasons.
At the end of the premiere, Hyun-woo finally decides to break the news to Hae-in that he wants a divorce. It’s for the greater good, and both of them will likely be happier in the long run.
What he never anticipated was that perhaps there won’t actually be a long run. Just as Hyun-woo is about to break the news, Hae-in tells him some news of her own – she has been diagnosed with a terminal illness and only has three months left to live.
Needless to say, Hyun-woo doesn’t ask for a divorce. On the contrary, he tells Hae-in that he loves her, and he means it. But how will this sudden revelation affect them going forward? What will they realize about each other? And by the time they realize it, will it be too late? It’s certainly a compelling hook, and it’ll be very interesting to see how things proceed from here.
What did you think of Queen of Tears Season 1 Episode 1? Let us know in the comments.
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