The Bequeathed (2024) K Drama Episode 5

Episode 5 of The Bequeathed starts with Seo-ha’s flashback to when she visited her father. She tells him that she and her mom are doing great, that her mother has found a man who is better than him, and that he treats them right.

Her father asks her not to look for him anymore and leaves her outside the gate when the little boy calls from inside the house. Back to the present, Seo-ha is in a hot seat with the landlord regarding the death of Hong-sik. He says that her half-brother is lucky he is behind bars, or else he would not have been very nice since Hong-sik meant a lot to him.

While conversing with the landlord, Seo-ha gets a call from Sang-min asking her to file a complaint against Young-ho, but she refuses. The landlord is aggravated since he believes that Young-ho is the killer and talks about asking his lawyer friend to talk to him and get the issue with the claim to the land resolved. Mool-joo offers to help her deal with Young-ho, and she agrees and lets them use any means necessary. 

Sang-min tries to hand in his resignation to the police chief but does not accept it. The chief tells him that Sung-jun chose to quit the force and that Sang-min should beg him to solve the current case before he leaves the police force.

Meanwhile, Mool-joo texts Seo-ha and asks her to create an alibi since they just met with Young-ho. We see Young-ho with the guys who kidnapped him, and they knock him out when he tries to struggle. Sung-jun arrives back at the precinct and finds the other detectives sitting around deliberating about the case. He asks if they have security on Seo-ha and Young-ho. Sung-jun believes they are in danger and orders them to hustle and check on the two half-siblings. 

Elsewhere, the shady lawyer and the goons who kidnapped Young-ho try to force him to sign over the land, but Young-ho fights them back with anything he can find in the office. He bites the lawyer on the nose, scratches the eyes of another thug, and then jumps off the window, landing in front of Mool-joon’s car.

Mool-joon calls Seo-ha, suggests a change of plans, and asks if they should make him disappear, which would solve her current predicament. Seo-ha panicked since she wanted them to scare him so he could sign the paperwork. Mool-joon insists, saying they will do a clean job since his daughter’s wedding is on the line. The landlord cuts communication, and his phone is no longer unreachable when Seo-ha tries to call back. Seo-ha leaves her house in haste, and a grey double cabin, which had previously followed Young-ho from the police station before he was kidnapped, follows her. 

At the precinct, Sang-min and Sung-jun get into a fight because Sang-min feels that Sung-jun has been treating him like a charity case, and he is resigning so that Sang-min will not be fired. Sang-min thinks that he has never been the captain, and the fight gets worse when Sang-min blames Sung-jun’s son for his injury. He says he is a cripple because his son made him a disabled person.

A flashback explains the rift between Sung-jun and his son. He blamed him for his wife’s death since he had headphones on, and he blamed him for her death. Sung-jun says he was wrong for saying such a thing to a young boy who had just lost his mother. Instead of consoling him, he blamed him while already blaming himself. Sung-jun blames himself for what happened to his son and Sang-min’s injury.

After the flashback, we get back to the case when Sung-jun receives a call from one of the detectives reporting that they found Young-ho’s car at the side of the road with the doors open and windows shattered. They have not yet found Seo-ha since she was not home, and they will update him as soon as they do. Sung-jun tells Sang-min about the DNA and suggests they find Young-ho’s mother as soon as possible.

Sang-min and Sung-jun start working together to solve the case and follow up on the neighbour, who said she had known about Yoon’s family since they were young. When the two detectives talk to the two elderly women, we get a shocking revelation that the villagers thought that Seo-ha’s father and Young-ho’s mother were siblings and had a romantic relationship, giving birth to Young-ho. Seo-ha’s father left her family to stay with his sister and raise Young-ho together. The revelation explains the medical examiner’s finding about the foreign DNA found on Seo-ha’s husband’s neck. 

The women continue to tell the story about Young-ho and his mother. After some time, Seo-ha’s father came back, and the family used to call Shamans to try and exorcise him, saying he was possessed. Therefore, Young-ho’s mother left with him and went to stay at the temple, claiming that her son had a gift of visions, but he was just ordinary. Sung-jun remembers the woman mentioning that Young-ho’s mother was bullied when she was young, and he learns that she was born with a cleft palate, but she had it fixed later. Sung-jun remembers his interaction with the elderly woman when he arrived at Myung-gil’s house and remembers she had a scar.

The following scenes reveal that the strange woman is the one who killed both Seo-ha’s husband and Hong-sik. At the end of the episode, Young-ho’s mother catches up to Seo-ha, who is frantically looking for the landlord and injects her with a drug, and she lies beside her car in the pouring rain unconscious. 

The Episode Review

The last episode left us wondering whether Young-ho results from a romantic relationship between a brother and a sister, and this episode suggests that might be the case. Even though it is still a rumour, it adds a layer of mystery and complexity to the series after revealing that our serial killer is Young-ho’s mother. Why is Seo-ha so naïve? She has been trusting strangers and letting other people think on her behalf.

How can she trust the landlord when he is just a stranger? Will he kill Young-ho? Why is the landlord insisting on helping Seo-ha by getting her the land? Does he even own the building he is trying to sell her? The revelation of the possible dark secrets of Seo-ha’s paternal family adds an eerie atmosphere and disturbing psychological horror to the narrative.