Well, ladies and gentlemen, this might be where I step off the ride that it is Sweet Home season 2. I was lured into a false sense of security with episode 1, which absolutely changed the game for the show. Episode 2 of season 2 deviated away from the main character but I excused it as them trying to introduce a new world. Surely they couldn’t let the same thing happen again? I was wrong. Episode 2×03 of season 2 of Sweet Home was by far the worst episode of the series. They continue to ignore the main character while setting up all these people that I don’t care about. Oh and let’s not forget that they have killed off most of the characters remaining from season 1. And not even the useless ones. They killed the useful characters.
But that’s not the worst part of Sweet Home 2×03 or the real reason why I am just fucking done. What they did to Yi-Kyung’s character was disgusting. We found out in season 1 that she was pregnant and that her fiance was going through the change and trying to manage it. What they did not tell us is that he was still having sex with her while going through the change. This means that Yi-Kyung could not consent to having a monster baby. She did not consent to having a monster growing inside of her at a rapid pace to the point where she fainted to only go out and end up giving birth on a river, and then in it, after falling through the ice mid-birth. It shows a lack of respect for her character and for women in general to go in this direction in Sweet Home.
Then there’s the fucking baby. I’ve seen some weird shit in my life. I’ve watched plenty of TV and movies and still remember that zombie baby from Dawn of the Dead. But I have never seen what I saw in Sweet Home 2×03. As Yi-Kyung is floating down you can see the baby floating up. Extended between them is the umbilical cord. And as you keep watching Yi-Kyung floating down you realize that the baby has disappeared but you can see the umbilical cord. You can also see Yi-Kyung going up even though she still looks like she’s drowning. Conclusion: her monster baby swam out of her vagina and to the surface. When it got there, it pulled on the umbilical cord and started eating it, effectively pulling her up and out of a watery grave. And I think this broke me. On a physical, mental, and spiritual level.
Our main character wasn’t treated decently either. Ui-Myeong came out of nowhere to insult Hyun-Su about being trapped by the evil doctor and how did he like it. Pump the brakes, Ui-Myeong. Hyun-Su has been there for 2.5 seconds. He hasn’t really experienced the full extent of what you experienced. What follows is an epic fight between Ui-Myeong and Hyun-Su that leaves the latter frozen and rock-like for some reason. And again, I’ve watched plenty of TV and movies. I understand context clues. But I have no idea what happened to Hyun-Su at that moment or why he was turning into a gargoyle or troll that saw some sun. It made absolutely no sense and even Reddit couldn’t explain it to me. That’s how off the wall it was.
The only explanation that I can see for Sweet Home sidelining their main character on a more permanent basis is that he is transforming into something different. He’s going into his cocoon. But if the first three episodes have taught me anything, it’s an excuse to not have him around for the next couple of episodes. So again, I went to Reddit and they confirmed that he is gone for a bunch of episodes. That is further confirmed by the Netflix descriptions that show other characters getting focus and Hyun-Su not being mentioned until the very end. I understand the actor might have had other commitments and this is what they were working with. But this is bullshit. They (the writers and studio) could have found another way to make the story make sense without sidelining their main character and swerving so off course that the show is barely recognizable from what it was in season 1.
You would think that Sweet Home would leave some of the other survivors alive as a means of continuing the story while the main character is in his cocoon face. You’d be wrong. They killed Ji-Su. Like Hyun-su actor Song Kang, she’s probably really busy. But for her character, from a writer/studio) this was garbage. Sweet Home had an opportunity to have a character who lived and breathed through her music, have to deal with the shocking shift in her life that she is now deaf. That would have been an interesting journey to see her character take, especially in a world with horrors around every corner. But it also would have been a chance to give people who are hearing impaired or deaf some representation. But no, Sweet Home just killed her off and let that kid who just cries and looks cute survive.
Literally, the only thing that I liked about this episode was that the two military guys who had been beefing for so long, actually worked together to stop the president and higher ups who were killing all those people at the stadium. Just like trauma and death brought together the group in season 1 of Sweet Home, it seems like the knowledge that all those people were going to die brought these two men together. It’s a shift in perspective and goes against the consistent trope you see and end of the world stories where the military just loses their mind and gets power-hungry aka how episode 1 was. Maybe the military aren’t the monsters. But if the military aren’t the monsters and the monsters aren’t the monsters, what the hell is Sweet Home season 2 about?
That’s the biggest question right there. Because I do not understand what this show is doing or the direction it’s going in. And if you tell me that Yi-Keong’s magical monster baby that she did not consent to is going to be the Messiah or the Antichrist that is going to unite the humans and the monsters, I’m going to flip a table. Now that I say it, it’s probably going to happen. And I’m not going to be around. I’ll wait until season 3 of Sweet Home comes around and just read a recap of this season instead of watching it. That’s how bad this season was, it’s making me do things I’ve never done before. But it’s also allowing me to check out the Webtoon. Because if there’s anything I learned from Reddit, it’s leagues above the shit show that was Sweet Home season 2.
Sweet Home season 2 is now available on Netflix.
P.S. Want more Sweet Home? Read our review of 2×01.
uhhh…I like it? I’ve never read the comic, so…I really like the series. I think it’s gripping and developing well, and things are explained later on.
Also, your outrage at “how women characters are being treated” is laughable, and CLEARLY explicable by your photo: you’re one of “those”.
I don’t think women are treated poorly in this series. There are some really strong female characters. Even Yi-Kyung was portrait as fierce and driven and. Sure, the birth scene was weird, but it’s one of the ways to show how fucked up the world is I guess. God knows there’s a lot of those. On the man side, in the same episode you have Ui-Myeong crawling around naked and Hyun-su treated as a lab rat and not much more.
Either way I do agree with the rest. I have no idea what the direction of the show even is now. I’m in episode 6 and I am absolutely lost in the storytelling. I think it might be one of the worst shifts for a show that I’d ever seen. I remember being so invested in the first season because the cast was tight and you knew each person’s story. Here I have no idea why should I even care about half of the remaining people. But yeah, this was a really nice article. I’m happy to find out I’m not the only one full of frustration because of how the show turned out.