Set across two timelines and multiple viewpoints, Netflix’s Fincher-like serial killer thriller The Frog isn’t exactly easy to follow. Fear not, as I’ve put together a complete recap of the season, compiling the key moments from Episodes 1-8 and examining the connections and overlaps between each story strand.
You’re welcome.
Episode 1 – “Do You Know What They Call People Like Us?”
Episode 1 of The Frog is a better premiere than the show overall really deserves. It’s deft opener that introduces the key characters in two separate but related timelines, builds plenty of mystery and intrigue, and suggests sinister things to come – all while looking very nice, which is a bonus.
Both storylines are united by two hoteliers. In 2001, Sang-jun and his partner Eun-gyeong working hard and do good business in the Lake View Motel. In 2021, Jeon Yeong-ha runs the scenic vacation retreat with pride. Connecting the two is detective Bo-min.
In both timelines, mysterious guests set things moving. Yeong-ha opens the doors to Sung-a and her child, Si-hyeon, and is eventually compelled to venture into the basement to retrieve a record from his late wife’s extensive vinyl collection. In 2001, Sang-jun welcomes a man who is quicky revealed to be Ji Hyang-cheol, a notorious serial killer. While Sang-jun was sleeping, Hyang-cheol snuck a women upstairs and chopped her to bits in the room. A young and inexperienced Bo-min is on the case.
At the end of The Frog Episode 1, Yeong-ha discovers that Sung-a has left without warning, leaving behind the room key and an envelope full of cash. Bloodstains on the vinyl suggest the worst.
Episode 2, “Who Will Come Knocking At The Door Of My Destiny?
The Frog Episode 2
Episode 2 of The Frog continues to twist and turn, suggesting new connections between the two timelines.
The implication is that Sung-a killed Si-hyeon, but there’s no proof of this yet. Yeong-ha certainly suspects it, though, but nonetheless decides to keep his theories from Yong-chae and Bo-min, now the town’s police captain.
After investigating the room the mother and child were occupying, Yeong-ha realizes it has been thoroughly cleaned. When he watches the dashcam footage from Yong-chae’s car, something shocks him, but we don’t see what. Curiously, Yeong-ha erases any evidence and tries to carry on as normal, once again electing not to say anything to Bo-min.
In 2001, the tragic event in the first episode gives the Lake View Motel a bad name, and business struggles. Sang-jun becomes increasingly stressed, especially after Eun-gyeong walks away, and the place eventually shuts down. Neither Sang-jun nor Eun-gyeong and her kid, Gi-ho, can quite escape the place and what happened there, and Bo-min similarly keeps a picture of it on her desk which we know she still has 20 years later.
Episode 2 of The Frog ends a year later in both timelines, with Yeong-ha getting ready to welcome his daughter up at the motel. However, Sung-a is heading back there for another stay.
Episode 3 – “As Though You Couldn’t Get Me Off Your Mind”
The Frog Episode 3
Episode 3 of The Frog slows down a little, and the power dynamic shifts, with Sung-a emerging as a villain who seemingly has quite the vendetta against Yeong-ha. And he’s at her mercy.
Yeong-ha almost gets away with not having enough room for Sung-a to stay, but his daughter, Ui-seon, is only staying for dinner, and since he’s trying to keep up appearances he has no choice but to acquiesce. Sung-a, on her part, knows that Yeong-ha must have cleaned up the evidence of her previous visit, which she subtly torments him about while deliberately refusing to provide any clear answers about what she’s really up to.
In the past, Eun-gyeong has developed a drinking problem, is suffering from PTSD, and has no idea the extent to which Gi-ho is being harassed by his peers. Sang-jun continues to drift through life as he has since he lost his parents at 17, and they both consider selling the motel for a radically reduced price just so they can both move on from it. However, the sale falls through due to an incident at school with Gi-ho, the motel’s murderous legacy seemingly continuing to haunt them.
An investigative reporter named Dong-chan wants to interview Sang-jun to garner sympathy for his plight, especially since Hyang-cheol continues to brag about his murders, only further damaging the motel’s reputation. Sang-jun refuses, though, and towards the end of the episode, Bo-min finds Sang-jun and Eun-gyeong in Room 403, the latter dead, seemingly from a concoction of soju and pills.
At the end of The Frog Episode 3, after dining with Sung-a, Yeong-ha awakens to find himself on the floor and Sung-a gone again. In his pocket is a picture of his daughter with her face circled.
Episode 4 – “I Think She Killed A Child”
The Frog Episode 4
In Episode 4 of The Frog, Sang-jun is going through hell following Eun-gyeong’s suicide, and he blames his misfortunes on Hyang-cheol, whom he’s able to speak to in prison with some string-pulling from Bo-min. The latter has a peculiar enthusiasm for violent murder cases, seeing them almost as almost exciting, childlike games.
In the present Yeong-ha believes Ui-seon is in jeopardy after the note he found in his pocket, but Sung-a seems to be tormenting him for fun. He’s unable to trace her back through the original booking, and he can’t get into whatever secrets are on her laptop without reformatting the whole thing, which would delete anything incriminating.
Yeong-ha and Sung-a are at an impasse here. He believes she murdered Si-hyeon and that he has subsequently covered that murder up – the bloodstains and the bleached shower, not to mention the dashcam footage of her leaving alone, seem to confirm this. But Sung-a also knows that Yeong-ha can’t report his suspicions because to do so would be implicating himself.
Yeong-ha records a conversation between the two in which Sung-a tells him that the fact he has kept everything secret for a year means he will continue to do so lest he risk being tried as an accomplice. And she’s right, since Yeong-ha deliberates over handing this recording in to the authorities before eventually turning his car around.
When he does so, however, he’s violently T-boned, bringing Episode 4 of The Frog to a close.
Episode 5 – “I’m Just “It” In This Game Of Tag”
The Frog Episode 5
The pace begins to sag a little in Episode 5 of The Frog, spending too much time on Yeong-ha and Sung-a’s psychological cat-and-mouse game and only sparing a little for other aspects of the plot, though we do get to spend some time in the past with Bo-min to learn some more about her psychology and why she excels so much as an investigator.
Much of the present-day sequences are devoted to Yeong-ha and Sung-a battling each other following the crash that capped off the previous episode, which hospitalized Yeong-ha. He agrees to say nothing about what may or may not have happened at the motel as long as Sung-a agrees to leave, but, of course, she refuses.
Yeong-ha tries to force her out by booking the place up, which makes Sung-a furious, especially after Yeong-ha sets her up with a bunch of responsibility without the cleaner around. Sung-a has no proof of her booking or any kind of paper trail explaining why she’s actually there, so Yeong-ha does have some leverage.
He does attract some negative attention from Kim Seon-tae, though, a police officer who has developed an infatuation with Sung-a. After Yeong-ha loses it and chokes Sung-a out of frustration, Seon-tae is nearby to make his move, and Sung-a welcomes his advances, clearly to get him on-side. This leads to Seon-tae developing a grudge against Yeong-ha that he refuses to drop, leading him to dig a little too deep.
Episode 5 of The Frog ends with the implication that Sung-a has killed Seon-tae, and Yeong-ha agreeing to sell the motel to her after he gets everything in order. Bo-min, meanwhile, knows that something is seriously amiss.
Episode 6 – “Dad Will Come Get You”
The Frog Episode 6
Episode 6 of The Frog has the longest runtime yet, but it also includes some key revelations, including explicitly linking both timelines together (finally).
Some important sequences in the past reveal that Gi-ho was at the motel on the night that Hyang-cheol arrived with the dead woman. Hyang-cheol told him to be a ghost and gave him his hat, which the kid held onto, nursing an obsession with making Hyang-cheol pay. He never got over what happened as a kid and grew into a vengeful outcast.
Gi-ho gets his opportunity to enact revenge on Hyang-cheol, whose quasi-celebrity status Gi-ho has always resented, by shooting him when he is allowed to visit his elderly mother in hospital. While he misses the first attempt he’s eventually able to finish the job before Hyang-cheol can do too much damage and get free.
Also in this episode Yeong-ha meets with Sang-jun, who clearly never recovered mentally from the loss of his wife. He’s in a mental health facility and still believes he’s at Lake View Motel. He and Gi-ho are estranged, but later, after he kills Hyang-cheol and intends to kill himself, Yeong-ha reconnects Gi-ho with Sang-jun. Yeong-ha tries to help Gi-ho move on, tacitly supporting what he has done by giving him an alibi.
At the end of The Frog Episode 6, a bloodstained Sung-a calls Yeong-ha and summons him back immediately.
Episode 7 – “We’ll See The End Together”
The Frog Episode 7
With its foot firmly on the gas at this point, The Frog reveals some crucial information in Episode 7, especially illuminating some of Sung-a’s past and her relationship with Si-hyeon.
As we learn, Si-hyeon wasn’t Sung-a’s biological child, but the son of her violent ex, Jae-sik, who’s fresh out of prison and convinced that Sung-a killed his son. Following their confrontation Sung-a goes on a nutcase rampage for a good chunk of this penultimate episode, attracting all kinds of attention and violently beating Yong-chae with his crutches after stabbing him with a screwdriver.
Sung-a lures Ui-seon to the rental under false pretences and tries to claim that she and Yeong-ha are murderous accomplices, but Ui-seon manages to see through the ruse. A fight breaks out between the two women which Sung-a gets the better of, choking her out. This is the point when Sung-a called Yeong-ha at the end of the previous episode.
Yeong-ha heads back to confront Sung-a, but she manages to strongarm him again. She promises that he’ll only get Ui-seon back safe and sound if he keeps his mouth shut. She plans to leave the country after her successful art exhibit, and promises to leave Yeong-ha alone if he lets her escape.
However the big reveal of this episode is that Yeong-ha had learned his lesson about the perils of keeping things to oneself through Gi-ho. Yeong-ha had confessed everything to Bo-min, who had become suspicious when she saw Sung-a manically buying bleach in the supermarket, and between them they set Sung-a up to arrested. Ui-seon is alive but in a bad way, faced with the possibility of losing her unborn child after what she has been through.
But there’s still an episode to go, so even though it feels like it, Episode 7 is not the end of The Frog. There’s more violence to come.
Episode 8 – “We’ll Have A Lot To Talk About”
The finale has lots going on and manages to wrap up (almost) everything, and luckily we have an in-depth article breaking down the ending of The Frog which will give you all the details you need.
And with that… our recap of The Frog comes to an end. Let us know your thoughts about the K-Drama in the comments below!
