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Kokdu: Season of Deity: Episode 16 (Final)
by DaebakGrits
The finale we’ve all been anticipating (for all the wrong reasons) has arrived! And while the road to get here required an all terrain vehicle, the ending has a surprisingly smooth landing. Most story arcs are resolved cleanly and wrapped up in a nice little bow, and everyone gets their happy ending.
EPISODE 16
You know how a recent trend for K-dramas has been for the leading couple to break up mid-way through the final episode and then reunite fifteen minutes before the ending, thus giving us a rushed reunion and happy ending? Well, because Kokdu: Season of Deity has had so much time on its hands, the separation arc started at the end of Episode 15 and carried over into the finale. While I can’t enthusiastically applaud this decision, I will begrudgingly admit it was better than the aforementioned alternative because it gave our characters time to properly mourn and adjust to Kokdu’s absence. And, let’s be real, Gye-jeol could use the — albeit last-minute — character development.
Before we enter Gye-jeol’s rather extensive mourning period, though, we flash back a little bit and witness Kokdu’s farewell to Ok Shin and Gak Shin. It’s appropriately tearful, and we see the extent of Kokdu’s suffering that he’d been trying to hide from Gye-jeol. The poor god is as sick as a cancer patient going through chemotherapy, but he smiles through the pain as he says goodbye to his demi-god family and tells Gak Shin to continue being mean to Ok Shin. Dawww… (He also says farewell to Yi-deun, but he’s still in a coma so it’s not nearly as moving.)
After an abbreviated version of Kokdu’s final goodbye with Gye-jeol, we get to watch her go through all five stages of grief. At first we see her placing labels with his name all over his desk, hoping she can summon him back (denial), and then there is an extended period of depression until a flower delivery boy shows up unexpectedly on her doorstep with a solitary potted tulip in hand.
The flower (and the many others to follow) was arranged by Kokdu prior to his departure, and Gye-jeol gets angry upon seeing it. How dare he give her a flower when he knows she can’t keep a cactus alive and destroys every electronic device to fall into her hands. In perhaps her angstiest moment to date, Gye-jeol mopes that she’s “so good at killing things” that she “killed a god” — which is definitely not something I’d want to hear my doctor say. Perhaps a career change is in order?
Nope, Gye-jeol realizes that the “flower” Kokdu wanted her to raise was the delivery boy (and others in need), and so she moves onto the bargaining stage of her grief. She uses the money Kokdu left her to fund and open her own mobile practice and charity for the elderly and poor. In exchange for her kind deeds, she asks her patients to pray to Kokdu. I know, it totally sounds like she’s starting her own cult, but really she’s just hoping that her positive deeds done in Kokdu’s name will put the both of them on the Creator’s good side. Maybe, just maybe, he will pardon Kokdu?
Meanwhile, the saga involving Chairman Kim wraps up anticlimactically with a brief courtroom scene. Joong-shik admits he followed Chairman Kim’s orders and killed all the participants of the drug trial, and the prosecution calls for the death penalty. Cue: Chairman Kim’s shock and outrage. I guess I should be thankful that there wasn’t a lot of time dedicated to this particular story arc in our final episode, but it just reminded me of how ridiculously unnecessary this particular god-versus-mortal conflict was in the first place. Chairman Kim never stood a chance, and when the audience knows that from the very beginning, it doesn’t make for good television.
After Chairman Kim’s arrest and the trial, Cheol came out looking like the hero, but he hasn’t been so lucky in love. Jung-won has been avoiding him ever since she learned that her father was the one that kidnapped Cheol and tried to kill Gye-jeol. Once the trial is over, though, she contacts him and comes clean about her father’s identity. Of course, none of that matters to Cheol, but Jung-won explains to him that she can’t ever marry him and tie their families together when her father harmed him and his sister.
And so, five years pass with both Cheol and Gye-jeol being woefully single — not for Gye-jeol’s lack of trying, though. Apparently, her singleness is not due to lingering feelings for Kokdu. Now that she’s a rich, successful, and beautiful doctor, she’s had plenty of men ask her out, but when the time arrives for their scheduled dates, none of them have shown up for various different reasons. Gye-jeol suspects that their lack of follow-through lies with the cohabitation clause she signed with Kokdu — specifically the second clause, which stipulates that she’s not allowed to meet with another man without him present.
Gak Shin, who tried to set Gye-jeol up on a double blind date, scoffs at Gye-jeol’s theory until Gye-jeol whips out the contract and tries to mark through the clause. The red ink magically disappears, and when the dates Gak Shin booked for them never show up, she becomes a believer, too. Outside the coffee shop, though, we see that Ok Shin was the divine intervention keeping Gye-jeol single (this time around). He bribed the men to go away because he didn’t want Gak Shin falling for one of them.
Cheol’s singleness, however, is entirely self-imposed. He has not gotten over Jung-won, and when they reunite unexpectedly as consultants on a drama production, he asks her out. Sadly he’s rejected — again — but Cheol’s puppy-like loyalty wins Jung-won over once she realizes he’s been supplying her favorite rolled omelets to the store where she always shops for the last five years. Either the omelets are amazing or his dedication proved his love was strong enough for him to overlook her father’s identity, because one way or another she showed up on his doorstep and agreed to — skipping ahead — marry him.
In the bridal room, Gye-jeol and Jung-won exchange some playful bickering that demonstrates they have set aside their previous grievances and now consider each other family, and it’s rather sweet to see that, while they are on better terms, their dynamic hasn’t completely changed. The wedding ceremony is simple and sweet. Gye-jeol sits in the front pew as Cheol’s only family member, and on Jung-won’s side of the aisle is her nurse friend.
One person is noticeably absent from the wedding: Kokdu. Not that Gye-jeol needed anyone to point it out, but Yi-deun — who is (presumably) cancer free and resuming his successful golfing career — asks Gye-jeo why Kokdu isn’t present. (Apparently, the story for his absence is that he’s studying abroad in the US.) And if that wasn’t enough of a pang to Gye-jeol’s heart, surely the fact that Cheol and Jung-wo got married in the same exact church where Gye-jeol said goodbye to Kokdu didn’t help matters? Talk about rude.
But this is a K-drama, and in order for things to come full circle, Gye-jeol must return to the site of their painful goodbye in order to reunite Kokdu. So after the ceremony, while Gye-jeol privately prays for Kokdu’s return, the candles dramatically blow out and the doors to the church open. There, standing in the sunlit archway is the one and only Kokdu. (The crowd — meaning me — cheers!)
So how did Kokdu make his miraculous return? Well, it all goes back to that cohabitation contract again — specifically, the third clause, which stipulates that Gye-jeol must introduce Kokdu to all her family members. Since Gye-jeol just gained a new sister-in-law, the power of the contract magically made Kokdu’s return happen. Although it seems unlikely Kokdu could have predicted this turn of events, a later conversation between Cheol and Kokdu seems to indicate that Kokdu had been waiting on Cheol to get married all this time, and Jung-won’s reluctance was terribly inconvenient.
And where was Kokdu for the last five years? Supposedly, he was the wind, drifting peacefully everywhere and hearing Gye-jeol’s, er, non-cult followers call out his name held him back and prevented him from going to the afterlife completely. Honestly, it sounds like the last five years were cleansing and helped Kokdu rid himself of the trauma of hearing people call out for the god of death. And now that he’s returned, he can live a peaceful life and grow old with Gye-jeol.
Wait! Scratch that. Although he initially tells Gye-jeol that he’s human, Kokdu was actually lying. He’s still totally a god, and he’s been using his powers to secretly help Cheol locate persons of interest in crimes. And when Gye-jeol finds out, she is soooooo… unexpectedly cool about it.
Yeah, in the last five years Gye-jeol has had a lot of time to think, and her opinion of Kokdu’s godly status has done a 180. She finally realized that having a god for a boyfriend is pretty dang cool. Why get hung up on the fact that he doesn’t age and that he kills bad guys when he can magically transport her anywhere in the world — thus saving her money and avoiding a pat-down by a TSA agent?
It still doesn’t seem very sustainable for a relationship in the long-run, but Kokdu claims the Creator had trouble finding a replacement for him. So, they worked out a deal of sorts. Kokdu no longer hears the angry voices, but he will keep being the god of death. In exchange for his service, Kokdu will take a mini vacation to earth whenever Gye-jeol is reborn, and he will live out her life with her. Rinse and repeat for the rest of eternity. Definitely one of those happy endings that gets more depressing the more you think about it, but things rarely work out well for K-drama heroines who fall for magical beings.
As the credits roll, I breathe a massive sigh of relief because Kokdu: Season of Deity is finally over. (*pops confetti cannon*) Now, with the full scope of the story behind me, I’m trying to make sense of where it all went wrong. Obviously, I have no idea what happened behind the scenes, but the end result feels like someone in power decided that this drama should be longer than originally intended. As a result, the writing team started throwing anything and everything at the plot to fill in the gaps.
Interestingly, if I had to cherry pick the parts to keep, my version of this drama would be a completely different story than the one they originally thought up (e.g. a cursed romance between a god and doctor). Instead, I’d eliminate the whole romance between Gye-jeol and Kokdu entirely because, in hindsight, it was the weakest thread of the drama.
Their past lives backstory was undeveloped, and the fact that the curse actually stemmed from Kokdu’s previous life — before he met Seol-hee — makes Gye-jeol’s involvement in the plot superfluous. Sure, there is plenty of room to rework the romance and flesh it out, but honestly, the more the drama went on, the more I disliked the Gye-jeol character and the less I liked Im Soo-hyang as a romantic interest for Kim Jung-hyun.
I know I’ve said it multiple times, but Kim Jung-hyun really carried this show, which makes me wish the focus had been on him all along. Without the romance plot, the Kokdu character could have struggled with the (im)morality of his godly role, and as Kokdu tries to navigate the ethical gray area of his murders, Cheol could be the cop trying to track him down — all the while questioning whether or not he wants to arrest the serial killer behind the murders of various scummy people. If there was to be a romance plot in this drama, I would keep the romance between Cheol and Jung-won, who could still be introduced to the plot as Jin-woon’s ex-girlfriend, who is super confused by his personality change once Kokdu takes over.
Overall, this drama was a flop for various different reasons that we can all agree on, but I would be remiss to not point out the positive. For me, one of the few things that kept this experience from being completely unbearable was the comedic scenes between Kim Jung-hyun, Cha Chung-hwa, and Kim In-kwon. All three of them are amazing at physical comedy, and the little fanservice romance between Ok Shin and Gak Shin was still a better romance than Kokdu and Gye-jeol. Can the three of them reunite again for a third time and in a superior drama? Pretty please?
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