I am so guilty of multi-tasking while I watch TV.
Sometimes I’m looking at my phone, or cooking dinner, or folding laundry. Sometimes it just boils down to passive viewership while I’m thinking about other things. Most of the time it’s fine, but I recently missed a critical detail in the final episode of Weak Hero Class 1 that I had to come back to in order to understand season 2, which dropped on Netflix earlier this month.
When Si-Eun references that Su-Ho is still in a coma, I was confused. I had seen their heartwarming conversation in the final episode of season 1. The honest boyhood banter communicates the depths of their feelings in roundabout ways. Su-Ho tells Si-Eun, “You really are a psycho”, and the two friends apologize to each other for “everything” instead of nitpicking in detail all the ways their efforts to protect each other weren’t enough to save either from brutal beatings.
But what I failed to see were the masterfully subtle details in the scene that signal to us that the conversation is purely fictitious. Si-Eun’s eyes have just closed, and he seems to be nodding off, drifting into sleep as the sounds from Su-Ho’s hospital monitors fade away (closed captioning calls out this clue specifically). The lighting shifts to cast a warm glow of sunshine on Si-Eun’s face.
When Su-Ho begins speaking, he teases Si-Eun for sleeping. We don’t see him take the oxygen mask he was wearing moments ago off of his face. When the conversation ends, and the room darkens once again, he’s still wearing it, because he always was. What we just saw only occurred in Si-Eun’s imagination.
This realization adds even more weight to the already monumental season finale, and shows the lasting consequences this toxic environment can have. It raises the stakes for season 2, knowing that Si-Eun won’t just avoid violence out of principle this time around. Now that the people close to him have been hurt this badly, his protective nature is sure to only increase as a result.
I’ll just have to finish the latest season to find out if Su-Ho ever does wake up in real life. Check out Weak Hero Class 2 streaming now on Netflix.
Watch On Netflix
Sometimes I’m looking at my phone, or cooking dinner, or folding laundry. Sometimes it just boils down to passive viewership while I’m thinking about other things. Most of the time it’s fine, but I recently missed a critical detail in the final episode of Weak Hero Class 1 that I had to come back to in order to understand season 2, which dropped on Netflix earlier this month.
When Si-Eun references that Su-Ho is still in a coma, I was confused. I had seen their heartwarming conversation in the final episode of season 1. The honest boyhood banter communicates the depths of their feelings in roundabout ways. Su-Ho tells Si-Eun, “You really are a psycho”, and the two friends apologize to each other for “everything” instead of nitpicking in detail all the ways their efforts to protect each other weren’t enough to save either from brutal beatings.
But what I failed to see were the masterfully subtle details in the scene that signal to us that the conversation is purely fictitious. Si-Eun’s eyes have just closed, and he seems to be nodding off, drifting into sleep as the sounds from Su-Ho’s hospital monitors fade away (closed captioning calls out this clue specifically). The lighting shifts to cast a warm glow of sunshine on Si-Eun’s face.
When Su-Ho begins speaking, he teases Si-Eun for sleeping. We don’t see him take the oxygen mask he was wearing moments ago off of his face. When the conversation ends, and the room darkens once again, he’s still wearing it, because he always was. What we just saw only occurred in Si-Eun’s imagination.
This realization adds even more weight to the already monumental season finale, and shows the lasting consequences this toxic environment can have. It raises the stakes for season 2, knowing that Si-Eun won’t just avoid violence out of principle this time around. Now that the people close to him have been hurt this badly, his protective nature is sure to only increase as a result.
I’ll just have to finish the latest season to find out if Su-Ho ever does wake up in real life. Check out Weak Hero Class 2 streaming now on Netflix.
Watch On Netflix