Recap Korean Drama "Shadow Detective Season 2 (2023)" Episode 1

While he thinks that he’s already run out of fuel, he’s again called back to work, this time switching divisions, and is transferred to work under Yeon Ju-hyun in the Women and Juvenile Affairs Investigation department. Regardless of the switch-up, he keeps running into his former team colleagues – Sung-ah and Kyung-chan – and running on parallel paths, they work on a new case of thefts involving minors, that could also link back to a bigger picture and replay a painful history. Is the anonymous caller, aka Taek-rok’s “Friend” really out of the picture, or is he planning on coming back for Round 2?

Shadow Detective Season 2 Episode 1 Recap

Kim Taek-rok tries his hand at other jobs, but fails and is finally brought back into the police force again, but a different department. Now working with the Women and Juvenile Affairs Investigation Team, we’re also reminded of how he’s been in the police force for 30 years and has still kept pushing himself after all these years to make it work despite his deteriorating mental heath and growing anxiety issues owing to his daughter’s kidnapping case as mentioned in the previous season.

And then, he was bombarded with the whole “Friend” situation, which had him cornered, pushed off the cliff (quite literally at one point) and led to witness deaths of his several colleagues including Hyeon-seok (his young mentee), Detective Bae and then finally Jin-han. He’s been desperately waiting on his retirement to finally kick in, but this new change marks for another extended waiting period before he gets to rest for good. As for the other past happenings, Chairman Jang died a year ago, and now Taek-rok starts out on a fresh page, or so it seems at least.

Still from the episode.

One day, while out patrolling, Sung-ah and Kyung-chan spot a young girl surreptitiously enter a dark alley in the dead of the night. Tailing her, they come across a group of youngsters, all involved in criminal doings, particularly thefts. As they chase after the kids, Sung-ah comes in contact with a girl named Hana from the same group, and reaches out to her for support in her hour of need. However, the rebellious kid turns her card down, and it also takes us back to her and Taek-rok’s shared memories of the past when he put her father behind bars, but extended support and help to her as a father figure, which she too pushed back against at first.

With their personal memories being invoked, Sung-ah particularly gets roped into the mess and tries her best to help out Hana. However, once she leaves, the young girl again breaks out of the house to unite with the aforementioned gang and they plan out another robbery at a series of offices in the same building. At one of those locations, she and her friend get held back to check in for more things, and they go through the safe as well, but find nothing to their aid. As they’re going though it all, the boss walks in, catches them redhanded and starts attacking the boy beside Hana.

She saves her friend for the time being by bashing the boss’ name board against his head. Though injured, he calls out to his people and demands them to take in the kids. Later, Sung-ah and Kyung-chan drop by the same building when another business owner reports the theft. They walk up to Woo Jang-ik’s office to ask him if he was missing anything, and while he doesn’t talk much, Sung-ah takes a quick glance at his dishevelled office space, and the injury on his forehead.

Once they retreat, the same man walks into a deserted location where the two kids were being held captive and Hana’s friend was being beaten up to speak up the truth about a missing flash drive from the safe. They confess loud and clear of not having chanced upon any such entity, but the gang members keep on torturing her friend, and almost even chop off his foot, but, timely Sung-ah and Kyung-chan come to their rescue as the former had spotted Hana’s teddy key charm on the staircase. Breaking out into another action showdown, the two bring the children to safety. However, later on, Sung-ah traces Jang-ik’s social footprints and starts suspecting him of something more.

She finds out that he moved to Geumo out of nowhere despite not having any friends or family there, and then even went on to invest a huge amount of money in the redevelopment area, all of which when put together drew up the same image as the last season’s dirty happenings. She suggests that something similar may be happening again, but Taek-rok attempts to dissuade her and push her interests elsewhere.

Shadow Detective Season 2 Episode 1 Ending

No matter how much Taek-rok tries to stop Sung-ah from looking into the case, her instincts keeps telling her that something bigger is at play. Woo Jang-ik’s ulterior motives keep tugging at her sleeve and she starts connecting the dots and the possibility of him being involved in a racket like Chairman Jang was in the previous season. Although Hana gave her the word that she and her friend never took anything out of his office safe, the businessman kept on insisting otherwise, believing that the kids had retrieved a flash drive from his safe.

Hana’s statements also gave away the same information, and the Women and Juvenile Affairs Investigation Team Captain Yeon Ju-hyun conveys the details to Sung-ah, who instantly grabs on to the opportunity to talk things over with Jang-ik again. Before taking off on another chase run, she’d mentioned this bit to Taek-rok, speculating that history was repeating itself, but Taek-rok being protective of her, told her to stay off the case as there was nothing for them to meddle with there.

Despite all the warnings, Sung-ah heads back to his office, while Kyung-chan attempts to prevent her from going there alone. When she doesn’t listen to what he has to say, he reaches out to Taek-rok without a second thought and intimates him of the new development. He, too, leaves his job behind to catch on to her.

However, he’s a bit too late as she had already reached the building. He gets on a call with her as she closes in on the office, and once she’s standing right outside the door, she finally gets what Taek-rok was making all that fuss for – a bomb goes off in the office cubicle and while Sung-ah strives to make the run to safety, she’s late in escaping the fateful accident, and Taek-rok is stunned to hear of the blast on the other side of the phone.

The most important question arises – Is she dead? Well, most probably not, but yes, this will equally serve as a major blow to Taek-rok’s conscience, and it sets the ground for another gritty season of thrilling chases and mysteries.

Shadow Detective Season 2 Episode 1 Review

Right at the beginning, a brief outline of all that went down last time is drawn up through flashbacks of the past. It’s followed by an episode full of thrilling and admirable parkour stunts and chasing sequences, and right on, despite just having begun the second instalment, the writers and the director of the show waste little to no time to settle into the action-packed approach for another enthralling season.

What I’ve always admired about this series despite the usual slightly higher than average ratings accorded to it by other critics is that since the beginning of Season 1, the ultimate narrative picked out by this K-drama has been to humanise the police force and its counterparts, especially through the old eyes of Taek-rok. While the show doesn’t particularly do much to dig into the backstories, influences and inspirations pushing the other detectives at their work, it still took a rather unusual chance to portray the frustrations faced by these detectives through the life led by a veteran instead of young blood.

As he uncovers new cases, memories of similar old stories are pulled back to his mind, reminding him and us, that many a times, different people facing setbacks in their lives share quite a few similarities than they would want to accept and acknowledge. Moreover, the fact that he calls back to those old memories quickly, is yet another reminder for the viewer that these detectives working through endless chunk of criminal cases are just as human as the common public is. They don’t just easily brush the dirt off their shoulders, rather carry the traumas of their past and the cases handled by them over the years.

And then we also realise that while the previous season was preoccupied with Taek-rok’s dynamic with Jin-han, it still presented us an inkling of the cryptic bond shared by Sung-ah and Taek-rok. The intriguing factor is further dug into this time and anchors the first episode, again reminding us of the generational gap between them, represented primarily through the antithetical pictures of Taek-rok’s patient wisdom on one side, and Sung-ah’s young adrenaline rush to get things done in the blink of an eye on the other.

While she’s obviously severely hurt, I hope we get to see more of their interactions this season because the latent father-daughter dynamic adopted by their onscreen chemistry is quite palpable. Lastly, even though the “Friend” hasn’t directly been addressed in the Season 2 premiere, I also sense that Taek-rok will be retracing his path some time soon, and probing into Kyung-chan’s possible involvement in the whole ordeal, because as the trailer had set apart already, one man alone couldn’t have accomplished all that Jin-han did in the former instalment.