The Uncanny Counter Season 2: Counter Punch (2023) Episode 10

Episode 10 of Uncanny Counter season 2 starts with Pil-gwang making a big decision. Believing that Mun has lost his power, he turns his attention to Ju-seok. Ju-seok doesn’t want to kill the Counters, and after what Choi said, he knows Chung-jae has been caught and justice has prevailed. Pil-gwang is having none of that though and he wants the power for himself.

Pinning Ju-seok down, he contemplates absorbing his power. The Territory suddenly springs up though, taking Pil-gwang’s attention away from his foe momentarily. This gives Ju-seok time to recover and turn the tables. Pil-gwang is eventually thrown down to the ground, as Ju-seok tells him he doesn’t need the Spirit’s help anymore. Pil-gwang though, can’t help but bemoan his fate as his own power can’t match that of Mun’s or Ju-seok’s.

Wi-gen is reunited with her comrades and points out that Mun didn’t need to sign a contract after all. His ties with her go beyond that. And while those spirits celebrate, Mun does the same with his Counter family. He thanks them for helping him but then gets down to brass tacks. The real issue here is the potential merger of Ju-seok and Pil-gwang. He know the latter wants this to happen but Ju-seok’s motives are still a bit unclear right now. In fact, a chat with Ju-seok’s mum shows that he’s not outright evil and is actually still conflicted over what he wants to do, especially as he mourns the loss of Min-ji.

The time comes for Chung-jae to be transported to the penitentiary. However, the bus loses control on the road as Jeok-bong sniffs out Ju-seok. In fact, he’s just right there in the middle of the road so once again Jeok-bong’s power isn’t exactly the most useful! Ju-seok shows off his awesome skills all the same, using his powers to move the seatbelts, pinning everyone down. He also levitates the guards outside and drops them, all whilst speeding off after taking the bus for himself.

Ju-seok drives Chung-jae to the memorial park and decides that they both need to die in order to complete his vengeance. He moves the engine with his mind so it causes serious friction, and also consequently for the entire interior to completely fill with smoke.

As fate would have it, Ju-seok’s mother happens to be there and she stands in the way of her son, telling him to control his anger. “I can’t lose you again,” She says. Unfortunately, Ju-seok grabs her round the neck but he’s shocked as the spirit inside points out that Ju-seok’s human side is not in control anymore.

While this is going on, Chung-jae leaves, only to be picked up by the Counters. Back by the bus, Mun and Ju-seok’s spirit square off. The thing is, this Spirit has grown in power and that’s thanks to something that occurred earlier with Pil-gwang. It wasn’t initially clear then but now it’s brought into focus.

Ju-seok has absorbed the territory power, although that seems impossible given our understanding originally was that only a complete evil spirit could do it. Consulting the Spirits at the Office, they wave it away, simply saying that Ju-seok “reading the territory was already inexplainable” so it just happens, I guess. 

Even worse though, Ju-seok is getting stronger every time Mun summons the Territory so he needs to use it sparingly. For now though, Ju-seok still has a chance to be stopped while his human counterpart is stuck in limbo.

At the prison, Chung-jae uses his ace card to try and convince Mo-tak to save him from Ju-seok’s wrath. He has juicy evidence to hold against Mr Hwang, the true mastermind in this housing fraud scam. Chung-jae took the fall for him two years back and now he’s trying to save his own skin by throwing all the blame on his boss.

The only way to get Chung-jae to talk though, is to put him in witness protection and hide him so Ju-seok can’t kill him. So where is the evidence? Well, it’s actually on a cell phone with a chat involving a blood-spattered Pil-gwang. Should they release this video, it would mean Ju-seok would go right after Pil-gwang. He’d undoubtedly kill the evil spirit and that will make the guy an unstoppable force.

The team contemplate their next move, and eventually decide to lure Ju-seok out of hiding by having Mun use his Territory power and speak to Ju-seok directly from the hospital. He gives an impassioned plea to the guy, hoping that he can come back from the brink and be saved. Mun decides that he needs to go and see him, and through pure willpower, the Evil Spirit slips away into the dark, disgusting pool whence it came from.

At the same time, Pil-gwang manages to find Chung-jae and begins choking him out at the hospital, rasping that he’s glad he’s found him. In fact, he decapitates him and takes the head right tot the heart o the media. He calls a press conference in front of the whole nation and decides to reveal everything about the Baekdu Housing Fraud. He outs himself as a murderer and decides that he’s going to rile up Ju-seok and try to consume his power to become the perfect, complete Spirit.

Ju-seok shows up in a flash and grabs Pil-gwang by the throat. This time, he sees the truth of what happened, which he apparently couldn’t d all those other times he held Pil-gwang by the throat, but there we go. He snaps Pil-gwang’s throat and then consumes his essence. This brings the Evil Spirit back but this time, with a much stronger version than before. Instead of the raspy, evil voiced Spirit, this time Pil-gwang is inside his head and now that we have a complete Spirit to contend with, who knows what will happen next.

The Episode Review

So we’ve established in this series that erasing memories can have a huge effect on whether a Counter has their powers or not… so why don’t they just erase Ju-seok’s memory of key moments and make it so he never had powers? It seems preposterous but given Mun “lost his powers” by having his memory wiped, in-unioverse rules would suggest this could happen, right?

But then some of the writing here is just plain sloppy. That whole chat with the Spirit Office, who just wave away Ju-seok’s power and ability to absorb the Territory as “inexplainable” reeks of bad wrtiing, while the rules are constantly tweaked in this world over what Spirits can or can’t do. For example, Ju-seok read Pil-gwang’s memory right at the end and saw the truth about Min-ji…but why didn’t he do that earlier when he’s held onto him several times?

Despite that though, there’s enough here to enjoy but this second season hasn’t been anywhere near the level the first achieved unfortunately.