From a simple story about a girl who found her calling in livestreaming to an incel who is obsessed with her and would do anything to protect her, episode 2 of Mask Girl completely switches gears. The show is crass and has a noir-like quality to its presentation, making us sit on the edge of our seats at all times. While episode 1 was about the namesake of the show title, the second episode is about her fans, particularly one specific fan who is observant enough to figure out who she is by just looking at her manicure. The show is frighteningly accurate in regards to how terrible the lifestyle of a cam girl can get and how difficult it is to protect yourself in dangerous situations. The show also goes full Basic Instinct by the end of Mask Girl Episode 2.
Spoilers Ahead
What happens In The Episode?
Ju Oh-Nam has been bullied all his life. As a child, he was so severely bullied that he started fearing human beings. Ju Oh-Nam ended up alone for all his life and soon became invisible to the world. He’s an incel and can’t look women straight in the eye. Instead, he looks at their hands. By 2009, Ju Oh-Nam had started living with an adult doll and celebrated his birthday all alone. He even gets her to gift him adult anime. Oh-Nam’s mother is unbothered about him and calls him not to wish him, but to remind him that she’s traveling to a church in Jeju on that day. Oh-Nam finds Mo-Mi to be the only person who is nice to him.
Oh-Nam gets infatuated with Mo-Mi and, at the same time, uses the livestreaming website at home. After some time at work, Oh-Nam notices Mo-Mi’s green manicure, and the two moles on her hand match the moles on the hands of the masked girl. After that, he becomes dedicated to her as a fan. From home, he makes comments on her videos, and at work, he tries to watch her from afar. He starts imagining their life together in the future and how she’d fall in love with him too. When he heads home after the night of the company dinner, Oh-Nam hears Mo-Mi’s story about Mr. Park in the cab. He gets infuriated, and as the man behind Prince in a previous life, he comments on Mo-Mi’s life that if she were to date that man, he would kill himself. On the day Mo-Mi saw Mr. Park and her junior kissing, Oh-Nam, too, found them in a more compromising position. Back at home, he’s first overjoyed by the idea that Mr. Park is not sleeping with Mo-Mi, but then he sees Mo-Mi go berzerk in the livestream and then take her clothes off. The next day, he tries to talk to her, and when he fails, he follows her to the motel, where she takes Mr. Park. That night is when he sends the email to Mo-Mi about knowing who she is behind the mask.
The next day, when Mo-Mi goes on a date, Oh-Nam finds out in the online forum that the man she’s on a date with is fooling her. Mo-Mi thinks she’s met a nice guy who calls her beautiful, even though she knows that no Korean would do such a thing. She hears the man say a few words in English and then believes his story about him being from the US. He makes jokes, and they have fun together at a bar until he decides to write in the forum that she’s the ugliest person he’s ever met, but he still needs to see what she’s made of. He takes her to a motel on the pretense of continuing their talk, but Mo-Mi becomes more self-aware then. He tells her to wait in the room while he buys some beer, and she starts realizing how bad this situation is for her, but she has no one to help her. When he returns, he tries to assault her, but she manages to fight back and get away from him. He tries to grab her on the water bed, but they accidentally get wrapped in the blanket, and someone hits their head on the marble on the side of the bed. It happens to be the guy. He used to be one of her viewers earlier, and now he lies bleeding in front of her. Oh-Nam calls her at the same time, knowing what the other guy has in mind based on his messages. She calls him to the motel, and he tells her he’ll take care of everything himself. In the middle of Oh-Nam trying to cut the guy’s t-shirt off so he can chop up his body, the man tries to wake up, and Oh-Nam stabs him multiple times with a knife. Mo-Mi, on the other hand, is completely traumatized by the happenings of the day, and she starts disassociating at this point. She decides to leave work, and as the masked girl, she promises one last performance.
Oh-Nam gets Mo-Mi’s address from the office to give her stuff from work back and leaves it in front of her house. When he reaches home, he sees that Mo-Mi is doing her last livestream. He rushes to her house and knocks, hoping she will let him in. She’s still in her Mask Girl attire, and she lets him in.
What Takes Over Mo-Mi?
Mo-Mi tells Oh-Nam that she plans to start a new life, which is why she left work. He tells her she should forget everything that happened with that man, who is not even human but a cockroach. He tells her that he was jealous when he saw her with Mr. Park, but then he lets it go. Mo-Mi realizes that Oh-Nam is the guy with the prince’s username and tells him that he’s no different than the other guy. Oh-Nam, who is mad about her quitting the livestreaming business, ends up trying to assault her himself. It’s possible he thinks it’s how she should pay him back for how much he supported her. She resists at first, but he gets on top of her and takes her mask off. Mo-Mi’s face is completely covered in bandages, meaning she’s had surgery on her face. Mo-Mi then flips Oh-Nam over because he’s distracted by her face, and then she uses an ice pick (exactly in Basic Instinct fashion) and stabs him in the neck, calling him a cockroach too.
Mo-Mi’s transformation means she’s going to be beautiful now, and it’s possible that her new double life will be completely different from her old one. This time, she’ll lure in incels like Oh-Nam and kill them for faking their love for her. On the other hand, because she would be beautiful, she may end up finding better work opportunities and actually getting to pursue her dream. Let’s see how far she can go and how many people she can kill in the meantime, though.
