A Bloody Lucky Day doesn’t hook you in right away, but when it does, you won’t be able to let go of it anytime soon. The tensions, the character growth, and the sheer amount of madness have you gawking at the screen enough times. Cha Woo Sik delivers an enviable performance, but Lee Sung Min is the show stealer, as you will see in the recap and ending of A Bloody Lucky Day.
Spoiler Alert
Who is Geum Hyuksoo?
Oh Taek is a cab driver who is down on his luck and needs to arrange some money fast if he is to get back into the good books of his wife. Oh Taek believes that he is having a lucky day, which is perhaps why he is ecstatic when a passenger offers to give him a huge sum of money for a taxi ride to the nearby port. This man is Geum Hyuksoo, and Oh Taek doesn’t know it yet, but this is going to be the worst day of his life.
Geum Hyuksoo is a serial killer who is starved for thrills. According to him, after a crucial part of his brain was damaged, he stopped feeling fear or pain, which is why nothing excites him anymore. People derive happiness in their daily lives by overcoming small adversities, like catching a bus in the nick of time that would have otherwise made them late or taking the thrill of a new adventure. Essentially, fear is a central emotion that makes one human, and in the absence of that, Geum Hyuksoo is starved for simulation. I am pretty sure that he was a psychopath, to begin with, and this just enhanced his sensibilities. Initially, he found his thrill in killing people. His first kill was Gong Cheonseok, the boyfriend of the girl who had dumped him. Hyuksoo said that Yoon Sena was his first love, and they always spoke about their forbidden fantasies, which usually revolved around their hate for the wrong people in their lives and how they wished they would die. But Hyuksoo had taken it too far and actually killed Sena’s father’s pet, which was when she cut all ties with him.
Hyuksoo couldn’t bear to see her dating someone new, and he kept following him, eventually causing him to fall off a rooftop. That was when Hyuksoo discovered that he liked killing people. After that, his targets were mostly homeless people, who would not be missed even if they disappeared. But eventually, Hyuksoo lost the thrill of that as well when he found that it was too easy. That was when he decided to diversify his methods. He saw an interview of a boy named Nam Younho, who was a popular person on campus and just wanted a good life for himself and his mother. It was perhaps his positivity that attracted Hyuksoo. He discovered that Younho was gay, and he revealed his secret along with a few malicious rumors. That negatively affected Younho’s social life, but Hyuksoo was not done. He started secretly medicating Younho to replicate signs of depression. He also followed Younho everywhere to increase his fear and make him look more delusional. People did not believe Younho, as they thought that he was mentally ill, but it was Hyuksoo who was doing it all alone. Finally, when he killed him, it looked like suicide, and everyone believed that Younho’s depression had gotten to him. His mother, Hwang Soongyu, also believed that until she went through her son’s messages, where he spoke about someone following him. Upon speaking to his friend, Edeun, she came to know about Younho’s fears and realized that he may have been murdered. Her doubts were only confirmed when she saw a video that actually showed someone following her son.
Hwang Soongyu was ignored by the police for a long time, so she tried to gather evidence by herself. On the day she was about to meet Edeun, he got into an accident, and Soongyu found a doctor who had most likely killed him. That doctor was Geum Hyuksoo, and Soongyu was convinced that he must have killed Younho as well. That was when she started following him. The police got on Geum Hyuksoo’s trail when Soongyu gathered evidence, which included photographs of random people in his house. The detectives realized that these were all murder victims, and since then, they have been on his trail.
Why does Geum Hyuksoo target Oh Taek?
As said before, Geum Hyuksoo lived for the thrills he could get out of people’s misery. But as Oh Taek said later on in the series, he did not have a sense of creativity. Geum Hyuksoo’s real name was Lee Byeongmin, and he had been Hyuksoo’s accomplice till that ‘bloody lucky day’. This was also uncovered by Oh Taek in the second part of the story when he became obsessed with finding him.
Lee Byeongmin met a fellow psychopath, and that was Geum Hyuksoo. Hyuksoo had been at Younho’s funeral, where he met Seungmi, Oh Taek’s daughter. Both Byeongmin and Hyuksoo thought that Seungmi’s niceness was fake, and they wanted her to show her true face to the world. This meant that they wanted to drive her to the point of desperation, like they did with Younho, and then kill her. But Hyuksoo decided that he wanted to be with her for the rest of his life. It would be too much to say that he was in love with her, but he had found his source of entertainment. This did not sit well with Byeongmin. In the meantime, Seungmi had started suspecting that something was wrong with her boyfriend, and she had her friend, Edeun, keep an eye on him. Byeongmin caught him following them, and he tried to kill him by setting a fire in a goshiwon (a house). Edeun did not die, and Hyuksoo was mad at Byeongmin for going against his wishes. He decided to kill Byeongmin and make his own escape plan. Hyuksoo was going to borrow Byeongmin’s name and take a taxi, leaving a few dead bodies in his wake. He would blame Byeongmin for everything, including Seungmi’s death, and then pretend to leave through Mokpo port. Once people believed that Byeongmin was the murderer and he had escaped, Hyuksoo would go back to his life. Byeongmin simply stole this plan by switching their drinks and giving the poison to Hyuksoo instead.
Seungmi had come to meet Hyuksoo, thinking that he needed her help to give himself up to the police. He had been planning to kill her anyway, but Seungmi met Byeongmin instead. Before Seungmi died, she told him that her father would avenge her death, and that was why Byeongmin targeted Oh Taek’s taxi so that he could have fun with the man whom Seungmi was so confident about. It may also have to do with Byeongmin’s fascination with Seungmi. He found her goodness intriguing, as he thought it was repulsive and powerful enough to make Hyuksoo change his plans. He perhaps wanted to see whether Oh Taek was the same and whether Byeongmin could push him more.
How does Byeongmin escape?
Oh Taek takes a while to sense that there is something wrong with the passenger he has taken on. It starts innocently with their common interest in drama and their shared love for Robert De Niro’s film, Taxi Driver. But Byeongmin, who is going by Hyuksoo’s name, starts telling him about Sena and cuts his hand to prove that he doesn’t feel pain. Oh, Taek starts getting scared. Byeongmin kills a man at a rest stop, and Oh Taek sees some blood splatters on Byeongmin’s clothes that he feels are not from the cut before. The moment Byeongmin convinces Oh Taek about his killings is when he shows him a severed finger. Oh Taek tries his best to get help, but Byeongmin simply kills them all as he sees them. Oh Taek manages to reach the police, but Byeongmin calls him and tells him to come back to drive him to Mokpo if he wants his daughter alive. Oh Taek doesn’t know that Seungmi is dead, and he continues to help Byeongmin. Meanwhile, the police are aware of everything and are desperately trying to locate Seungmi while helping Oh Taek.
After many hurdles, the duo finally reach the port, and that is when Byeongmin reveals that Seungmi is dead. He pulls out her severed head from the suitcase, and Oh Taek is devastated. Byeongmin stabs him, and when Soongyu comes there with a gun, she recognizes that the man is not Geum Hyuksoo. Before she could say anything, Byeongmin stabs her as well, and this injury ends up being fatal. He leaves on the boat, and Soongyu’s last words are a plea for Oh Taek, asking him to take revenge for their children.
Once the ordeal is over, Oh Taek comes to know that he has won the lottery. This is bittersweet indeed, because if only this had happened a day earlier, he wouldn’t have taken Byeongmin as a customer, and maybe his daughter would also have been safe. Oh Taek sees the picture of Hyuksoo, and he immediately declares that this is not the man who had tortured him all night long. However, Oh Taek cannot remember his real face, and that erases his credibility, making the officers and everyone around him write off his claims as PTSD or delusion. But Oh Taek is far from giving up. Not only was his daughter killed, but his wife also gave up her life as she was unable to deal with the shock. Byeongmin had destroyed his family, and Oh Taek wanted revenge.
How does Oh Taek find out Byeongmin’s secret?
Oh Taek had no life left other than to get justice for his wife and daughter. Since the police told him that ‘Hyuksoo’ had likely escaped to China, Oh Taek also went there and kept looking for him, until one day when he ran into his old business partner, the one who had scammed him of his money and landed him in jail, which is why Oh Taek had been separated from his family. The man told Oh Taek that Byeongmin never boarded the boat, and if he did, he got off somewhere in Korea.
That brings Oh Taek back to his country, and his next lead is to find someone related to Byeongmin. Since he doesn’t know his real name, he tries to find Yoon Sena, the killer’s first love. He inquires at all drama clubs until he eventually finds her, though she goes by Song Minsun now. Sena moved abroad and changed her name because she was scared of Byeongmin and what he would do if he found her. Oh Taek doesn’t want to involve her in his revenge, but she is insistent, as she feels that as long as Byeongmin is alive, she won’t be able to live in peace.
Once Oh Taek finds out Byeongmin’s name, he discovers everything about him. Byeongmin is a successful businessman who is ready to welcome his first child with his wife. He has left behind his days of serial killing and is living a good life. Oh Taek kidnaps him with the help of Sena and starts his revenge, except that once again, Byeongmin is a few steps ahead. He had sensed Oh Taek following him, and he had already kidnapped Chaeri, Seunghyun’s pregnant girlfriend, to use as leverage. Byeongmin forces Oh Taek to delete his confession and asks him for Sena’s location in exchange for Chaeri’s. Oh Taek believes that Byeongmin has probably killed Chaeri, and he prepares to kill him in turn, but the police rescue him in time. Seunghyun had sensed that his father was up to something and alerted the police, who tracked him down and rescued Byeongmin. Oh Taek escapes and prepares for his next attack.
Did Oh Taek get revenge?
So far, the police had thought that the story ‘Hyuksoo’ had told Oh Taek in his car was a lie, as it was in his nature to do so as a psychopath. But the moment the officer, Kim Joongmin, came to know that Yoon Sena actually existed, he understood that there was more to the story, and Oh Taek was telling the truth. He got Byeongmin’s name from Sena, and upon meeting him, he observed the scar on his wrist and noted his habit of touching his ear, which told him that he was the killer from that night. But Byeongmin was protected by his mother, who was a judge, and she didn’t allow the officer to push further. However, Hyunji (Byeongmin’s wife) overheared the mother and son’s conversation, where the former was telling Byeongmin to dispose of his body properly. The mother was aware of her son’s psychopathic tendencies all along.
Hyunji goes home and tries to open the safe her husband has always kept locked. It takes a few tries to unlock it, but she does it and finds the pictures of Byeongmin’s murder victims, something that Geum Hyuksoo supposedly collected but was in the possession of Byeongmin. At exactly that time, Hyunji is kidnapped by Oh Taek. Unknown to him, Sena is kidnapped by Byeongmin, and he is prepared to kill her. But he gets a call from Oh Taek, who tells him that unless Chaeri is brought back safely, his wife will be killed. Having no choice, Byeongmin tries to release Chaeri, but she and Sena fight against Byeongmin and escape. Meanwhile, the time given to Byeongmin runs out, and Oh Taek concludes that Chaeri must be dead. Therefore, there is nothing left to do but kill Byeongmin. He releases Hyunji and goes to Byeongmin, knowing exactly where he would be. Byeongmin is under the impression that Hyunji is dead, and these two are prepared to fight to their deaths. Right before Oh Taek kills Byeongmin, the police get there, and Seunghyun asks his father to stop what he is doing for his sake. Oh Taek drops his weapons, but Byeongmin only mocks him for it. In a fit of rage, Oh Taek jumps with Byeongmin from the window.
During A Bloody Lucky Day‘s ending, both the men are alive. While Oh Taek is happy that Chaeri is alive, Byeongmin is sentenced to death for his crimes. When his mother comes to visit him, he claims that she is trying to poison him with the cheesecake. As for Oh Taek, he is released from prison a few years later, and he comes back to his new happy family, with his son and his old friends and a new role as a grandfather. Oh Taek has his revenge and subsequent happiness while Byeongmin likely dies in jail.
Final Thoughts
A Bloody Lucky Day was one of those shows that just got better with each episode. The twists and turns were very well laid out and were exciting enough to ignore the few plot holes in the way. This is the show to watch if one wants to be on their toes with anticipation.
