What lengths are you willing to go to in order to protect a loved one? Da-il and Yeo-wool test their love for each other in multiple ways in this episode. However, the biggest test they’re about to face is to come yet when Woo-hye’s target switches to Yeo-wool herself.
The Ghost Detective: Episode 12 Recap
Episode 12 begins with our team entering the same house where Woo-hye and Da-il are. As they wander inside, they encounter a group of different individuals controlled by Woo-hye who stop the team from moving any further. While our team figures out what to do next, Da-il and Woo-hye give each other a taste of their anger. Da-il wants to know why Woo-hye killed so many people, but Woo-hye doesn’t say much. She claims that she killed all her targets in the past because she heard their desperate cries and merely killed them to end their sufferings.
If Da-il had also witnessed the same things that Woo-hye did, he would have killed those individuals too. Plus, Woo-hye receives her energy by absorbing the anger from the individuals she kills. Da-il refuses to believe in Woo-hye and grows angry at the thought of his mother who died because of Woo-hye. He throws Woo-hye onto the ground and strangles her by the neck. She manages to merely escape by slitting Da-il’s body with a knife, but he doesn’t feel any pain. The knife never touched his body.
Our team manages to fight through the group of people and they break their way into the room where Woo-hye and Da-il are. They surround themselves next to Da-il, but he’s still occupied with Woo-hye. He pushes all the controlled individuals away from him to make his way to Woo-hye. As a last resort to stop Da-il, Woo-hye has one of the individuals hold a knife to their neck to threaten Da-il. However, Da-il can care less if Woo-hye kills another person; all he wants is to kill her.
Yeo-wool manages to merely stop Da-il from killing Woo-hye as well as the death of another man by playing Da-il’s Mom’s favorite song through her phone. Da-il freezes upon hearing the song and is reminded of his mother. The red in his eyes disappears and he returns as himself again. While Jung-dae chases after an escaped Woo-hye, the rest of the team stay behind with Da-il.
Reporter Kang takes pictures of the scene to capture evidence and so he can question each individual later on when they wake up. Chae-won attempts to use her psychic powers on the bodies of the fallen individuals in the room, but she’s unable to read anything. She and Sang-seob then discover a notepad with written notes about Yeo-wool and Da-il. They react in shock to the notes.
Jung-dae manages to catch up to Woo-hye, but she uses her evil powers to control him. He unconsciously gives away descriptions to the whereabouts of Da-il’s body to Woo-hye. When he finally returns to his old self, Jung-dae finds his gun pointed to his head – something that Woo-hye had caused him to do. He looks around in confusion and worry. Woo-hye won’t kill Jung-dae just yet.
Back at the house, Da-il wakes back up and asks for an update on what happened. Yeo-wool explains to him about how she had played his mom’s favorite song to stop him from attacking or hurting anyone. Da-il is worried that he might really hurt someone the next time he’s consumed by evil again, but Yeo-wool reassures him that he’ll be fine. She and the rest of the team will be there to help him and he won’t be alone. Plus, it’s not like he changes completely when he turns evil. Inside of him, the real and good Da-il still exists. The two decide to leave the house together.
Woo-hye finds that her body is slowly rotting and grows confused and worried at the sight of her ailing body. Meanwhile, Kim Gyeol sneaks into the team’s office while the team is away. He writes a note to Sang-seob and hides it in his office. He then moves out to the lobby to write the rest of the team a message: “there’s a murderer among you all. You know who you are if you’re reading this.” Kim Gyeol ends the message by stating that he’ll meet with the person at the specific location indicated in the note he hid in Sang-seob’s office. The message worries both Reporter Kang and Sang-seob.
Sang-seob hides in his office after seeing the message. He’s reminded of the moment when his wife committed suicide as a result of their suffocating and troubling marriage. Reporter Kang too is reminded of the moment he discovered his fellow soldier commit suicide while serving in the military. Chae-won too is triggered with memories of her now deceased spirit mother. Yeo-wool, Da-il, and Yeo-wool ponder over why Woo-hye would use Kim Gyeol to relay the message. They come to the conclusion that Woo-hye wants something else other than Da-il’s body; she wants Yeo-wool’s body.
Yeo-wool is the perfect vessel for Woo-hye to possess. If Woo-hye dies first, that’ll give her the perfect opportunity for her spirit to escape her body and transfer into Yeo-wool’s. At that point, Yeo-wool will slowly get eaten away – just like Chae-won’s spirit mother did by the evil male spirit.
Da-il takes Chae-won away to speak to her in private about the possession. Is there any way to get rid of or kill Woo-hye if she possesses Yeo-wool’s body? Chae-won explains that there is a way to eliminate Woo-hye: kill Woo-hye while she’s in Yeo-wool’s body. Of course, Da-il doesn’t want to kill Yeo-wool in order to kill Woo-hye so he questions Chae-won about her spirit mother’s possession. He discovers that you can call in ghosts if you have some kind of special relationship with that ghost. He orders Chae-won to quickly find his body along with Jung-dae. In the mean time, he wants to have a talk with Yeo-wool.
Yeo-wool is brought into the room to help Da-il change into new clothes. After some help, she leaves to wait outside while he changes. Da-il notices that the new suit he’s wearing is the same exact suit he wore in the nightmare he had where he was strangling Yeo-wool by the neck. Da-il is determined to change his fate though so that the nightmare doesn’t turn into reality. He reunites with an eager Yeo-wool outside in the lobby with his brand new suit (HE’S LOOKING GOOOOD). For their next move, Da-il wants to stop by Yeo-wool’s place to do something really quick.
At her apartment, Da-il helps tie the shoe laces on Yeo-wool’s boots that her sister had gotten for her as a gift before she passed away. As if tying her shoe laces wasn’t enough, Da-il wants to spend more time with Yeo-wool by setting up her tent near the Han river. Though Da-il doesn’t offer Yeo-wool any help in setting up the tent (LOL), he does sit next to her inside the tent and offers her words of encouragement. He eventually gets up to stand closer to the river and notices the cloudy skies. As he takes a glance at Yeo-wool, Da-il expresses his gratitude towards her. He’s thankful to have a nice memory to look back upon. Yeo-wool too feels the same way. Why do I have a bad feeling about this?
Jung-dae continues the search for Da-il’s body. He makes his way to different grape farms since that’s what Da-il claimed it smelled like when he awoke in his physical body. Jung-dae communicates the address to the next grape farm he plans to visit to Chae-won so that they can meet up. He has something he wants to tell her. Plus, he reminds himself that he needs to find Da-il’s body before Yeo-wool does just like Da-il told him to the last time they communicated.
Yeo-wool ends up separating from Da-il and worries that she might never see him again. She relays the frightening news to Sang-seob and together the two search for him. Meanwhile, Da-il visits Woo-hye’s old house where he and Woo-hye confronted each other and finds a receipt from a tollgate laying on the ground. He does his proper research and finds that the tollgate leads you to multiple grape farms. He shares the information with Chae-won and Jung-dae and together the trio work together to find the grape farm with Da-il’s body. The receipt belonged to Woo-hye’s mom so the tollgate has to somewhat lead them to the exact grape farm where Da-il’s body is stationed.
Yeo-wool and Sang-seob also return to Woo-hye’s old house where the confrontation between Da-il and Woo-hye occurred earlier. She puts on the hearing aid and realizes that Woo-hye’s possession of Yeo-wool would be terrible for Da-il. Therefore, through a phone call with Chae-won, Yeo-wool concludes that Da-il plans on trapping Woo-hye inside of his physical body and then kill himself afterwards in order to kill Woo-hye. Yeo-wool breaks into tears upon making the realization and plans on stopping Da-il before it can happen.
Woo-hye meets with Kim Gyeol to give him some updates: she’s found the address where Da-il’s body is located. Together, the two head out to the location of the house to pay the owners of the storage room where Woo-hye’s mother had lived in a visit. Meanwhile, Jung-dae and Chae-won also arrive at the house a little later. They find the front door already opened so Jung-dae heads inside first while Chae-won keeps a look-out.
Da-il eventually arrives at the storage room where his physical body is hidden. He takes a good look around the room, aware that he might not be the only one in that room nor safe from anyone or anything.
My Thoughts:
Okay, okay. The episode was another hour of mild intensity and suspense along with the usual confusing and random facts regarding the supernatural world. However, I have to say that one scene in particular in this episode outweighed all the deltas in this episode and made this entire episode worthy of watching.
This scene was none other than the scene where Da-il and Yeo-wool spent time with each other at the Han River. Never mind that they (and we) received a well-deserved break from all the hard work and effort of chasing after Woo-hye and Da-il’s body or that it was a super cute moment between Da-il and Yeo-wool. It was nice to just be able to sit back and relax for a bit. I never knew how much we needed this break until we actually got it in this episode and then I realized just how necessary and wonderful this break was. For the past 6 weeks, we’ve just been chasing after Woo-hye and searching for Da-il’s body endlessly that we never got the time to just breathe. Our team was so caught up in their own plans and agendas and you were always just sort of sitting on the edge of your seat. However, it was so so nice and refreshing to just watch Yeo-wool and Da-il smile, have some fun, and relax at the Han River. Granted, this break was foreshadowing what was to come (Da-il’s sacrifice to protect Yeo-wool), but it was also just so nice.
I also have to admit that the random river scene was also a bit scary and definitely raised my suspicions. After endless chases, why were Da-il and Yeo-wool just relaxing? Of course, this couldn’t have happened without some kind of meaning or intention behind it and as we saw, it was sort of a final farewell from Da-il to Yeo-wool. Spending time with her outside near beautiful scenery, giving her words of encouragement, and expressing gratitude to her were all acts of kindness from Da-il because he wasn’t so sure he would ever get to see Yeo-wool or do these things with her ever again. He wanted to make sure that she understood his feelings and thoughts about her so he took some time to remind her just in case he never got to see her again. Gahh, you could just sense that something bad was going to happen with the way that Da-il was saying such encouraging and kind words to Yeo-wool. I wished we could have just gotten that scene all on its own because it was what our characters deserve. Instead, we got that scene because Da-il was preparing to say goodbye to Yeo-wool so that he could sacrifice himself for her.
While I understand why Da-il wants to sacrifice his body for Yeo-wool, it also just screams noble idiocy to me. However, it also makes me conflicted because there’s no way to kill Woo-hye without killing the person whose body she’s in. Even if Da-il had killed Woo-hye at the beginning of this episode, she would have just gone over to Yeo-wool and possess her body. It’s so frustrating because you just want Woo-hye to die once and for all, but there’s literally no way to get rid of her. She’s literally like the strongest evil spirit there is. Lol. Will she ever die?
I do think this episode was refreshing in the way that Woo-hye reminded our team of their biggest guilts. Each of them consider themselves a murderer because someone close to them passed away. They blame themselves for the death of their loved ones so reading Kim Gyeol’s message only caused them to confront their deepest fears, guilt, and shame that they each had been avoiding for so long. Sang-seob and Reporter Kang’s reactions were especially impactful. They were hit right away with the reality upon reading the message and were reminded of the deaths they believed was caused because of them. That must have hurt for them (and it also hurt me as a viewer).
I’m not really surprised that Da-il is willing to sacrifice himself to protect Yeo-wool. I even expected it somehow knowing just how much he loves and cares for Yeo-wool. However, Yeo-wool also loves him just as much so she’s also willing to go to extreme lengths to protect him as well. As optimistic as I want to be about this entire situation, a part of me feels like someone’s not going to come out of this alive in the very end. The problems have escalated way too much for everyone to come out of this unscathed. What will happen to our characters? Will they all be safe?
Bonus: Extra screenshots from this episode 🙂
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