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

While Taek-rok 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 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 2 Recap

So, it wasn’t a bomb blast per se, rather a gas leak, or so the police believes it to be at first. The case of runaway teens and serial thefts is brought up and interlinked with the blast eventually. Kyung-chan starts suspecting Taek-rok again as he feels that he’s hiding something from them, and so, he keeps the information of a hooded figure watching him from afar from the veteran.

Meanwhile, Ju-hyun digs up old files and videos on Taek-rok, his connection with Chairman Jang, and while she’s doing all this a “No Caller ID” number calls her at night. She seems to be acquainted with the person on the other end as they talk about the old detective, and how much he knows about something.

After the blast, Taek-rok’s visions start haunting him again as his inner voice and conscience start blaming him for all his close acquaintances getting hurt along the way. Back at the Geumo Police Station, all personnel from various departments gathers together and lays down the facts about the blast actually being an arson case.

The person Kyung-chan caught from afar, loitering underneath the site is later spotted on the CCTV footage and identified as Yang Gi-tae by Ju-hyun. Gi-tae was the same man whose name was cleared off from a former arson case with Taek-rok’s help as he helped prove his innocence. However, since his name was already involved in an arson case before, the police starts suspecting him again.

In a parallel scene, Taek-rok speaks with Hana, who, holding on to Sung-ah’s words about him being a trustworthy man, opens up about the night she and her friends broke into Jang-ik’s office. She confesses that she spotted a suspicious man in a hoodie coming out of the same building before they went in, deducing that he may have picked up the missing flash drive.

Shadow Detective Season 2 Episode 2 Ending

Taek-rok is also seen retrieving a device from the site of the blast, which when recovered revealed some shocking photos (not revealed to the viewers yet). And so it happens, we find out towards the end of the episode that Taek-rok had asked Gi-tae a favour which required him to plant a small camera at Jang-ik’s office for surveillance.

Now, he probably asked him to do this to keep an eye on the office owner due to his own suspicions about him, but since he didn’t want Sung-ah to be roped into the mess, he kept her out of it. And this is why he was keen on putting down the idea that the hooded guy who was actually responsible for the arson and Gi-tae, as he was caught on the CCTV, were two different people.

With Kyung-chan doubting Tae-rok at the same time, he pretends to buddy up with Gi-tae in the interrogation room and asks him if he shared any restatement against Taek-rok. He’d intended this question related to their old interactions concerned with the false implication of him having set a man on fire (Season 1).

Therefore, he was counting on something else to come out of this conversation, but when Gi-tae comes clean about the spy cam detail, it catches him off-guard. He also knew well enough that Sung-ah would’ve been against him suspecting the veteran detective, but his thoughts get the better of him as he counts on his own investigation to find out what Taek-rok’s been hiding.

Simultaneously, Taek-rok can’t stop thinking about the revelation that Ju-hyun, his new team leader, wilfully went to the Police Chief and asked him to put him on her team. He suspects if any particular motives on her end inspired this play. Moreover, she was The only one who caught Gi-tae on the footage, so it seems that she may be up to something after all.

Kyung-chan, on the other hand, breaks into an apartment in Taek-rok’s building, possibly Gi-tae’s, to get his hands on the spy cam. The conversation between the old detective and Hana also keeps hitting Taek-rok again and again as he ponders over all the things Hana told him.

She’d mentioned that the person unconventionally used their last two fingers to get the car door when she first saw them on the night of the theft, and then she noticed Ju-hyun doing the same thing at the hospital, almost as if something was wrong with her first two fingers, which ultimately matched a picture detail Taek-rok caught while going though her belongings, capturing a cast around her first two fingers during a Judo championship in her younger years.

Checking out the CCTV in the building, Kyung-chan then moves to Taek-rok’s apartment, where he’s shocked to catch the overwhelming amount of files, paraphernalia related to cases, evidence boards linking past issues of corruption in their department, pictures of all their colleagues who died last time, and now even photos of all the new personnel involved at the station. Taek-rok arrives just in time, carrying a tool for self-defence. He gradually pushes the door ajar, only to catch Kyung-chan standing in his apartment.

Shadow Detective Season 2 Episode 2 Review

Taek-rok’s character is indeed a victim of his own mind. Just like before, the lack of communication with his team members is what lands them in trouble. If only the old detective had come clean about him already working on this case, Sung-ah’s curiosity to head over to the place would’ve been silenced as well. Similar scenes unfolded in the previous season as well. But again, there’s not much we can say to question the detective’s intentions either. Although it’s been proved time and again that him saying silent and not speaking the truth to his colleagues is his fatal flaw, it’s the same thing that puts the cycle of tragedy around him in motion every time.

All his actions arise out of him wanting to protect the people around him, and though it’s obvious that he should allow them a chance to return the favour or at least look out for themselves, he always fails to succeed there. The credit for the execution of this vicious cycle is primarily owed to Lee Sung-min for playing the part so well.

While the intended inadequacies of his character vex the viewer, one must also realise that every hero of a tragedy has to have that fatal flaw as their defining personality trait. Without this, Taek-rok wouldn’t be who he is, and Lee Sung-min’s portrayal affirms that we empathise with him instead of blaming him for his actions (or inactions).

It remains to be seen how he’ll react upon catching Kyung-chan in his room, but this lays down the perfect opportunity for them to see eye to eye and realise that they’re working on the same side of the case, so they might as well work together. But since this thought process itself goes against Taek-rok’s character, we have an equal challenger in Kyung-chan, taunting him to prove his innocence.