The last episode of Revenant ended on a huge cliffhanger with San-Yeong meeting Woo-Jin, Hae-Sang’s ghost friend. She has a lot to learn from him, and so does Hae-Sang. Just as we thought Hae-Sang and San-Yeong were getting closer to each other as well as getting closer to the truth behind Mok-Dan. Now, it looks like things are changing, and there may be a deeper connection between the ghost and Hae-Sang’s family than we knew beforehand. This is probably why San-Yeong’s father was keen on Hae-Sang helping her if something happened to him.
Spoilers Ahead
What Happens In Episode 7?
San-Yeong confronts Woo-Jin and asks him who he is. A cryptic Woo-Jin (yes, even a ghost can be cryptic) tells her to look into a person named Cho Man-Wol and disappears. In Hae-Sang’s house, San-Yeong looks around and finds the room filled with his research. She touches the artifact he found in her grandmother’s home and suddenly gets a vision. It’s as if she’s looking through the eyes of the girl, Mok-Dan. Hae-Sang finds out from the shaman he visited that his mother knew San-Yeong’s mother because they were both looking to get rid of the same evil spirit. Simultaneously, Hae-Sang and San-Yeong start to piece together everything that happened with Mok-Dan. The second child of the head of the Jongjin-ri family dies for the fortune of the town. Hae-Sang finds out that his own younger sister died in his mother’s womb. Mun-Chun finds out everything he knows about Mok-Dan in the meantime.
At the same time, we see what happened to Woo-Jin back in the day. He was brought to Hae-Sang’s family home by his father after his mother had died. Woo-Jin’s father had been working for Hae-Sang’s family. Quickly, Hae-Sang and Woo-Jin became friends, but Hae-Sang soon realized that he was possessed by a ghost too. In the present, Hong-Sae gets a visit from Woo-Jin’s dad to keep an eye on Hae-Sang and Mun-Chun. The grandmother wants to know everything going on with the two of them so that there’s no trouble stirred. He hands over a document that could help Hong-Sae get a promotion (the poor guy had his own reasons for doing badly at the academy, but everyone is after him about this promotion). Hae-Sang tells Mun-Chun everything that he knows. According to Mun-Chun’s research, Choi Man-Wol was caught killing the girl in 1958. The detectives at the time had found all the evidence they needed, including the child’s finger. In prison, though, Man-Wol, too, had committed suicide, but the case was completely buried. Something seems extremely fishy since anything that may remotely relate to this case gets hidden. There are five items that relate to the case of Mok-Dan: a red hair accessory, a piece of pottery found in San-Yeong’s grandmother’s home, a black rubber band, a jade hairpin, and a glass bottle. If Hae-Sang is able to find all five items, he should be able to defeat the juvenile ghost.
At the same time, San-Yeong and Hong-Sae go searching for Woo-Jin. All San-Yeong knows is that he used to go to a certain school in the same year as Hae-Sang. They want something from each other, and that’s why they choose to team up and get the work done. Hong-Sae really wants to know more about Hae-Sang at the end of the day, so he’s happy to accompany San-Yeong. They find the school Woo-Jin went to and that there were similar deaths in the school in 1999 as Yoonjung’s victims. Basically, Woo-Jin was possessed by a “Hungry ghost,” and a bunch of his schoolmates had died. When the school found their possessions with Woo-Jin, they conducted some disciplinary actions and dismissed him. Fortunately, the parents of the deceased did not make a big deal out of it all. Unfortunately, Woo-Jin was killed in a car accident soon after. San-Yeong tries to contact Hae-Sang’s grandmother, not knowing who she is calling, but when the grandmother hears the name Cho Man-Wol, she screams at the top of her lungs, making San-Yeong drop the phone.
At the same time, Hae-Sang finds the shaman Choi Man-Wol’s great-grandson and visits him. He’s able to find out some more things about the shaman, specifically who gave her the money to kill the child. It’s a huge sum of money, enough to buy a building in Gangnam (one of the most expensive areas of Seoul). While Hae-Sang is connecting the dots, Hong-Sae clearly tells San-Yeong that the family she’s looking into is Hae-Sang’s. She had no idea that that was his grandmother she had called.
What Is Junghyeon Corporation?
After some digging, Hong-Sae found Hae-Sang’s family tree dating back all the way to 1933. While they’re now a money laundering company, Junghyeon was earlier a business that mediated exports during the Japanese colonial era but began to fail during the time of the war. In 1958, the corporation was handed over to Hae-Sang’s grandfather, who then turned it into a conglomerate rather quickly. After his appointment, the now-Junghyeon Capital became known by the name “river Styx”, the river that flows between our world and the underworld. According to Hong-Sae, anybody who stood in the way of the company’s success mysteriously died.
Who Killed Mok-Dan?
Finally, we see the whole scene play out through the eyes of San-Yeong. Mok-Dan shows her everything exactly the way it happened in 1958. At the same time, in the present world, San-Yeong physically finds herself following the kid and landing up in front of a blue door. In the visions, Mok-Dan was part of a gathering of all the second children of the Jungjin-ri region. She was then chosen sacrifice and handed the hair accessory as a representation of that. The whole village practiced the ritual that killed Mok-Dan. It almost looked like a celebration—definitely not murder. Mok-Dan was told she would get delicious food and then starve to the brink of death. We finally see that it was Hae-Sang’s grandparents who had the girl killed for their own success. It was Hae-Sang’s grandmother who was especially keen and even had a wicked smile on her face when she saw the girl’s body. An evil spirit would be sent to the head of this family for many generations to come, but as long as that brought prosperity to the home, Hae-Sang’s grandparents were unbothered by this fact. The spirit will also fulfill its own desires with the family.
At the same time, Hae-Sang is inside the house, confronting his grandmother about everything that went down in 1958. She admits to it all and argues that if they hadn’t done that, the family would never have become so prosperous, and Hae-Sang would not have lived in luxury. If it weren’t for Hae-Sang’s mother, the ghost would’ve possessed him, and things would’ve gone back to normal, but after Hae-Sang’s mother’s interference, the ghost was passed onto San-Yeong’s father, who was in search of a juvenile ghost. The blue door that San-Yeong had walked up to in the pouring rain, as directed by the visions, was the place where Mok-Dan had been killed—Hae-Sang’s grandmother’s home. In a fit of rage after seeing Hae-Sang, San-Yeong wonders out loud if he is happy living an excellent life after his family killed a child to do that. She then picks up a rock and destroys his car as Hong-Sae watches from some distance in his car.
Hae-Sang reaches home but can’t muster the spirit to go inside. He goes to the same bridge where he saved San-Yeong and contemplates his entire life. Woo-Jin had overheard a conversation between Hae-Sang’s grandmother and San-Yeong’s father when he was alive. San-Yeong’s father knew how to get rid of the evil spirit thanks to Hae-Sang’s mother, but he didn’t know how to summon it; that’s what he needed from Hae-Sang’s grandmother. This whole time, Woo-Jin knew what had happened, and Hae-Sang was terribly upset that his friend watched him struggle for so long while he searched for answers that were right in front of him. Hae-Sang realizes that he would not be anything without his grandmother’s inheritance, meaning he would have nothing for himself if not for the wealth brought by the killing of that child. At the end of the episode, some dark shadows come toward Hae-Sang, and Woo-Jin tells him to pay attention to them. Unfortunately, Hae-Sang is too consumed by his thoughts, so to save him, Woo-Jin sacrifices himself (I’m not sure ghosts can sacrifice themselves, but he basically gives himself up to the evil spirit). It’s too late for Hae-Sang to do anything, and Woo-Jin’s ghost is taken into the water. Hae-Sang is completely devastated, realizing that now there is really no one else in this world for him.
San-Yeong gives a monologue about not living like those people who used the evil spirit and how she would end things, but the evil spirit then tells her that, just like her dad, in the end, San-Yeong would also want to gain from the evil spirit. The ghost shows her something at the last second, but we can’t see what it is because it’s too blurry. We’ll find out soon enough what San-Yeong’s desires might be that the ghost is so eager to grant her.
