Enigma, the new Thai series starring superstar Metawin Opas-iamkajorn (of 2gether fame) is just out, and we have mixed feelings about it. The supernatural series is set in an all-girls school that is suddenly plagued with strange incidents. One particular girl has her interest piqued by these incidents, and she slowly realizes she’s much more involved in them than she had expected. Enigma is quite fast-paced, and in the short 45 minutes, a lot goes down, although some parts are funny rather than frightening. Let’s dive right into episode 1 of Enigma.
Spoilers Ahead
What Happens In The Episode?
A young girl is being interviewed in what looks like a black-and-white documentary for a school project. She holds a piece of art in her hand that has what looks like a person that is living with many versions of themselves in a cage of cracked glass, and a lot of eyes surround the cage. According to the girl, she feels trapped inside this glass cage that the world has trapped her in, but it’s so transparent that nobody can see it. She believes that as she gets older, the glass is cracking, and she’s more sure of it than ever before, but nobody has ever told her about such a thing. The girl knows that everyone is trapped in the same way, but nobody really sees it. The scene switches to a mask made of mirrors tilting its head. We see this more often in the show as bad incidents take place. We see a different girl in the school sharpening her pencil but cutting herself while doing it. When the teacher sees her, the girl uses the same pencil to stab her viciously in the neck. At the same time, we see a tattooed man wash his face elsewhere.
Fa, the girl whose video we were watching at first, is eager to know what mysterious world lies beyond the pane of glass. The girl who tried to kill her teacher was the top student in the school. While she is getting treatment, the school hides behind a veil of stress. “There’s nothing to worry about; everything is fine, and everyone should focus on their exams,” is all they have to say. In the meantime, the students think it’s a drug-induced psychosis that caused her to do such a violent thing. Fa places a camera on a desk in the classroom but ends up scratching her hand on a reflective glass. She’s bleeding profusely from what looks like a small cut, and the replacement teacher finds her in the class. He uses a handkerchief to cover up the wound while she interrogates him about who he is. He tells her not to bother going to the infirmary, and when she looks down at her hand, it’s miraculously healed. This is the guy we saw with the tattoos, but he’s obviously in disguise, gone from gangster to dud.
Mr. Ajin, the teacher, takes the class and finds out that the students exceed his expectations. He tells them that because they’re so focused on examinations and the school just wants high scores, their social skills will be zero in the future. This intrigues Fa, who is already interested in the guy because of the earlier incident. Fa’s mother is only worried about her studies and isn’t bothered by anything else that may be wrong with her school.
At night, another girl in the class dies mysteriously by drowning herself in a pool. We see her behave strangely, almost as if she’s being used as a puppet before she does the deed. The girl was tormented after she saw herself being stabbed in the face in a mirror. Fa wants to know more and asks her classmate to help her investigate the new teacher, Ajin. The girl declines because Fa gets better scores than her, and she’s jealous. So instead, at night, Fa returns to the school premises and looks through Ajin’s desk. She finds what looks like a bracelet with serpent heads and a jacket on his desk before Ajin shows up himself. She hides quickly, and as she looks through a reflection, she watches the man change out of his shirt, noticing the strange tattoos on his body.
Fa is distracted by the sound of a child’s voice, and before she knows it, Ajin has left the room. Fa leaves, and a security guard startles her. She asks him if he heard a child’s voice as he escorts her to the gate of the building, but it turns out he is the one making the sounds. Fa is suddenly terrified as she watches the security guard hit himself as he chants that children who misbehave must be punished. She runs away, but he follows her and hits her in the head, throwing her glasses off. When Fa looks up in fear that this is going to be the end of her days, a man comes to save her. Because she can’t see clearly, Fa is confused about who this is, but we know he’s Ajin in his natural form.
Fa wakes up in her room, sleeping at her desk. She knows this couldn’t have been a dream, but she has no physical evidence that it wasn’t. Even the wound on her head has disappeared. At school, Ajin drops a bucket of water on Fa from the top of a ladder. She tells Ajin that she met a friend the previous night who looked identical to him, but he was not nearly as clumsy as Ajin. He takes her to the staff room, claiming he has a change of uniform for her.
What Is Ajin Supposed To Be?
While Ajin is oblivious to Fa, she confronts him about everything that went down the previous night. Fa captured everything on camera and knows that it was Ajin who saved her earlier. She says that she thinks all the incidents that are taking place are because of Ajin. Fa has investigated all the incidents and realized that she’s about to be the next victim because the two other victims were the top students at the school. She comes in third, so it’s not a hard guess that she may be next in line. She had also found some files with their pictures scratched out. Ajin looks nervous that Fa has done such an intricate background check. When she brings out a piece of broken glass from her bag, he really freaks out. He touches her forehead and makes her unconscious.
We go back to the documentary-like video, and Fa talks about being swept off her feet to a fairytale land. She doesn’t like the fact that everyone is just focused on studying. Now, living her dream, she finds herself tied up in a room with red lights. Ajin walks up to her and looks like he’s trying to exorcise a demon or perform some magical ritual on her. Fa tells him she’s going to kill him and begins to yell and thrash around. She feels like she’s being drowned by him every time he touches her forehead, and ultimately the ropes snap, and she goes for his neck immediately. To her surprise, they’re both in what looks like a hotel room, and she’s in a bathtub surrounded by candles. He asks if she feels better, and she vomits out some black liquid (ugh, we need to stop with the bodily fluids).
It turns out that Fa was cursed, and Ajin lifted all the curses off her (so it was a kind of exorcism). Ajin tells Fa that the first thing she needs to know is that magic is real. According to him, there are magicians amongst the people of the world, and while students go about their daily lives, there is a hidden world under their own that contains these magicians, and he happens to be one of them. Of course, he’s a good guy and is in search of someone, which is why he came disguised. Someone is cursing the students of this school, and he is about to find out who, with the help of Fa. At the end of Enigma Episode 1, he tells Fa that she must stay with him to help with the investigation.
