Castaway Diva has a rather sweet way of surprising its audiences. The preview for this episode had us convinced that it was all going to be so predictable and cliche, but the way it was handled was a sentimental surprise that has us vying for more. The following is a recap of Castaway Diva Episode 7.
Spoiler Alert
What happens in Heyday Again?
After Bo Geol’s condition to Ran Joo and Mo Rae, Ran Joo is immediately insecure and furious. Right from the beginning, it is not the singing itself that Ran Joo had missed, but the applause and adulation of the audience that came with it. That is the reason she was so comfortable with Mok Ha lip-syncing for her, without an ounce of regret or guilt. When Bo Geol asked them to reveal the entire truth, Ran Joo was scared of losing her stardom once again. That is why she was initially hesitant and started saying that Mok Ha would betray her. For a second, Ran Joo’s insecurities got the best of her, but she brought them down when Mok Ha promised to be by her side, no matter what. It wasn’t a matter of Mok Ha’s trust or credibility but about Ran Joo realizing that there are more important things than fame, especially the kind that she had not earned for herself. Therefore, she asks Mok Ha to get ready to go on stage.
Meanwhile, Mo Rae is equally insecure, and she seems sure that she will lose the competition to Mok Ha. Seo Jun asks her to have some confidence and perform on stage. In many ways, the decency exhibited by Seo Jun in this episode is surprising. He asks Mo Rae to act with integrity, and he himself had the sense to not berate Ran Joo when he saw her crying in her room. On the stage, everything goes as planned, and Ran Joo says that she lip-synced because she wanted Mok Ha to have a stage, which wouldn’t have been possible otherwise. She asks people to vote for the better voice instead of their favorite singer, and as expected, it is Mok Ha who ends up winning the competition.
A lot of the supposed villains have shown a surprising side to themselves in Castaway Diva Episode 7. Seo Jun takes Mok Ha’s number with the intention of signing her up for his agency. Mo Rae and Ran Joo have a civil chat in the washroom, where the latter advises her to not make her mistakes and treat her fans better. Even Mo Rae doesn’t fly into a jealous fit at this and takes the advice, later hugging her fan and promising her to do better. I had recently heard somewhere that the stardom of a celebrity is never their own but what the public gives them, which is why they are responsible to their audience at all times. These words make a lot of sense in this context.
Why does Mok Ha meet Bong Wan?
Woo Hak comes to know at the beginning of the episode that his real name is Chae Ho, and Bo Geol is Ki Ho. His mother had met his adopted father when she had been trying to change her name to escape her husband. The two had gotten married, and they had all taken on the identities of a family that had been missing for a while. This is the reason they could not reveal their truth to Mok Ha or fight against Bong Wan because that would bring out this case of identity theft and put their entire family in danger. Woo Hak finally gets the point, and he demands to know why Bo Geol would risk it all by sending Mok Ha on stage. Bo Geol says that he has been living with this lie for many years, and he knows that telling the truth won’t be the end of the world. Unknown to them, Mok Ha hears their entire conversation. She had her doubts throughout the program, first because of something someone said and secondly because of the oceanic background that Bo Geol chose for the performance, which was the same as what Ki Ho had chosen while making her video all those years ago. When she hears the brothers talking, she understands what must have happened and that they must be running because of Bong Wan. That is why, when she sees him outside the building, she decides to solve the problem as much as she can and goes to talk to him.
Do Bo Geol and Woo Hak find Mok Ha?
Mok Ha has a point: if she knew where Ki Ho was, she wouldn’t have gone to meet him because of the fake message. It is something that even Bong Wan must have thought about, but his target was never Mok Ha to begin with. The reason he was around her was because he thought that it was where Ki Ho might be as well. When Ki Ho saw Mok Ha with Bong Wan, he would either come to rescue her or Bong Wan would recognize him upon seeing him. Mok Ha was a lead, and if she had met Bong Wan before listening to the brothers’ conversation, the problem might have ended right then and there. She did not react when she heard that Bong Wan had two sons, and that was enough of a clue for the man to know that Mok Ha was lying. In a moment of panic, Mok Ha denies everything and leaves. She cannot go back home because she doesn’t want to cause trouble for Ki Ho’s family, and she doesn’t have anywhere else to go, so she catches a train with the least number of people that are also going to the farthest place and gets on it.
She reaches a place, which she says is like paradise compared to the deserted island. Basically, Mok Ha has no plan in place. She texted Ran Joo that she was giving up on her dreams, and then she left. What Mok Ha doesn’t know is that since she is now popular, the brothers know where she is because her fans keep posting about her. At the end of Castaway Diva episode 7, Bo Geol finds Mok Ha at a restaurant, and he tells her that he is Ki Ho, but Mok Ha insists on calling him Bo Geol because acknowledging him as her long-lost friend would weaken her resolve. The significance of the seagull story here is that Mok Ha doesn’t trust herself to stay strong for her friends. She is scared that if she stays in Seoul for her dreams, then her selfishness may cost her friends dearly, and she would lose them the way she lost the seagull. That is why she had left. But Bo Geol has faced his own share of troubles and sacrifices to know that they can get through this, and the couple end up hugging, which is witnessed by Woo Hak.
Final Thoughts
One of the reasons the audience suspected Woo Hak to be Ki Ho was because of the glasses. This is where we must remember that Woo Hak has been accused of copying his younger brother, it could have come from that. Secondly, Castaway Diva Episode 7 also showed us the number of ways in which Bo Geol kept taking care of Mok Ha, perhaps even more so than Woo Hak, proving that he need not be the second lead after all. This is a twist we were not prepared for, and the preview for the next episode is going to give the audience a lot of conflicting feelings.
