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Vigilante: Episodes 7-8 (Final)
by mistyisles
Intense as ever, Vigilante comes to a bleak and bitter end, but also a thought-provoking one. Our protagonist knows he’s fighting a losing battle, but if he’s going to go down, he’s determined to take as many corrupt people down with him as possible.
EPISODES 7-8
While Heon recuperates in the hospital, word spreads that the Vigilante saved a police officer’s life. This is bad news for Chairman Kim, who yells at Heon’s attempted killer — known only as MR. BANG (Shin Jung-geun) — for botching the job. Mr. Bang insists he’ll handle it.
Before he can, Ji-yong strikes again. He sets fire to Chairman Kim’s crypto servers, leaving behind his trademark message in blood on the wall. This time, Ji-yong calls out both Chairman Kim and Police University President EOM JAE-HYEOP (Lee Hae-young) for their corruption. He also sells off the crypto coins and donates the cash to a local orphanage. In response, Mr. Bang goes and murders the orphanage director and leaves his own copycat blood message.
Ji-yong, livid, advises Kang-ok to keep an eye on Mi-ryeo, since she’s likely the next target. He’s right, but instead of running at first sight of Chairman Kim’s men, Mi-ryeo hides cameras around her office and livestreams them breaking in. Just as they find her and cut off the livestream, Kang-ok arrives and beats them off with a bat. He’s abandoned his mask, but Mi-ryeo knows he’s not the real Vigilante because Ji-yong never uses traditional weapons. Kang-ok leaves her with a warning of his own: his “friend” is busy, so they’d both appreciate it if she ran away to save her own skin next time.
“Next time” turns out to be as soon as she relaxes in the bath that night. Mr. Bang kidnaps her and tortures her in his hideout, demanding to know the Vigilante’s identity — which, of course, she doesn’t know.
It takes a while for people to notice Mi-ryeo’s disappearance, partly because Heon’s investigation team replacement, NAM YEON-GIL (Won Hyun-joon), interrupts a Police University lecture to interrogate Ji-yong. He’s traced the crypto transaction to university grounds. He doesn’t have a warrant — yet — and all Ji-yong will say is, “I’ve done nothing wrong.”
The next time Yeon-gil shows up, he has that warrant and Ji-yong is off campus. But that doesn’t matter, because Yeon-gil finds the phone that the Vigilante used… in President Eom’s office. Ahh, so Ji-yong turning the phone on here wasn’t a mistake — it was calculated to prove President Eom’s connection with Chairman Kim. Yeon-gil isn’t one to be intimidated by a corrupt superior’s threats, so President Eom has him murdered by a Truck of Doom.
Ji-yong is, to say the least, distraught. He desperately tells Heon that he didn’t mean for this to happen — all he wanted was to lead Yeon-gil to valid evidence. In response, Heon punches Ji-yong and then tries to talk him out of his “I’ll just kill everyone, then” mindset. No one will ever know or care if Ji-yong dies fighting this impossible battle, Heon says, but Ji-yong counters that it’s enough if just one person (Heon) knows he went down banging his head against the wall.
So, when Kang-ok realized Mi-ryeo is missing, Ji-yong decides it’s time to go out in a blaze of glory. To that end, he arranges a hostage exchange involving himself, Chairman Kim, and Mr. Bang. The hostage in question being Mi-ryeo. Ji-yong sets the time and location to coincide with an EDM festival that requires a black hoodie for entry, making it easy for him to sneak up close to Mi-ryeo and separate her from the guard Mr. Bang sent in with her.
Thankfully, Ji-yong doesn’t involve the festival goers in his orchestrated bloodbath. Instead, he and Kang-ok lure Chairman Kim, Mr. Bang, and their respective minions to the parking lot for a brutal last stand. Mi-ryeo’s job is to livestream the whole thing, which draws Heon — in full riot gear and with a couple minions of his own — into the fray.
Even after Heon arrives, Team Vigilante is vastly outnumbered. Chairman Kim nearly overpowers Ji-yong himself, but then someone leaps to the rescue and takes Chairman Kim’s knife to the gut in Ji-yong’s stead… and that someone is Seon-wook. Over the past few episodes, he’s been picking up on Ji-yong’s meetings with Kang-ok and trying to subtly turn Ji-yong back from the Vigilante path before it’s too late. Well, now it is too late, because Seon-wook is dying and the police are closing in. The bad guys scatter. Just before Ji-yong flees, Seon-wook tells him that he’s choosing to believe Ji-yong is doing what’s right.
Ji-yong chases Mr. Bang and Chairman Kim into a water retention chamber and declares it their collective tomb. But they’re interrupted by first Heon, who counters that they’re all under arrest, and then President Eom, who floods the chamber and shoots at them from above. Together, Heon and Ji-yong dodge the bullets (Chairman Kim is not so lucky), climb out, and tackle President Eom. Heon stops Ji-yong from killing President Eom right then and there — it’s time to let the law take over.
Of course, it’s not that simple. Mr. Bang attacks, and President Eom gets his gun back. As soon as a bullet hits Ji-yong, Heon throws the law out the window and kills President Eom himself while Ji-yong takes out Mr. Bang.
The aftermath is disheartening, to put it lightly. Both Heon and Ji-yong survive, and Mi-ryeo names the now-deceased Seon-wook as the real Vigilante. But despite their best efforts, President Eom is posthumously honored for “fighting against corruption,” other corrupt officials carry on with their usual corrupt practices, and it all just kind of blows over. At graduation, the Police University students take their oath to serve and protect — all except Ji-yong. His last shred of hope in the justice system has been destroyed for good.
Oof, that’s a depressing conclusion. In some ways, it’s not a conclusion at all. But I can’t imagine that a more hopeful ending would have felt “right” for this story. So while I don’t see myself ever watching Vigilante again, I’m glad I watched it once. The cast knocked it out of the park, the cinematography was phenomenal, and the story will certainly stick with me for a very long time.
My one complaint remains that the show kept us at arm’s length from most of the characters and their motivations. Mi-ryeo and Kang-ok, for example, each got a couple of lines at the very end to explain themselves, and while I liked the delivery of those reveals, I still would have preferred the chance to understand them both better while the action was unfolding.
That said, I’d be lying if I claimed I couldn’t connect emotionally with Vigilante at all. Seon-wook’s death hit pretty hard, as it was meant to, and the tension during that final episode was crazy high, only to leave me with a profound sense of melancholy that I just can’t seem to stop thinking about.
And maybe not being able to stop thinking about it is the point. Because if the law fails and vigilantism gets good people killed and bad people exonerated, then what can succeed in serving justice? I think Vigilante leaves it up to us to figure that out.
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