Ji-hyo, the protagonist of the Netflix series “Glitch,” realized a lot of things in the process of solving the mystery behind the UFO sightings. It is said that the past often binds the person if one does not learn to let it go. But the problem with Ji-hyo was that she didn’t even know what her past was. It was like a void that was eating her up. Every fleeting moment, the void was sucking her inside, but the deeper she went, the more convoluted her thought process became. She wasn’t able to get to the root cause of the problem because everything was a blur. She kept getting hallucinatory visions, and she knew that every small element present in those visions was denoting something of great significance. But Ji-hyo wasn’t able to put the pieces together. That convolution had a direct impact on her life. She was living a restrained life. Everything in her life seemed perfect, yet she was not happy. It felt as if she had become numb to her surroundings. She didn’t know how to feel any longer. She felt as if she was sleepwalking through life. Her colleague and friend, Oh Se-hee, was quite envious of Ji-hyo’s life.
Oh Sehee felt that everything was just about perfect in her friend’s life. She had an influential father, a loving boyfriend, a stepmother who understood and cared for her (which was an anomaly in itself), and all the other things that one could aspire for. When Lee Si-kook, Ji-hyo’s boyfriend, told her that he had finally bought a house for them, where they could move in together, he expected that she would show a bit more enthusiasm. Her parents, too, didn’t understand the reason behind her weird behavior. But Ji-hyo, from the very beginning of the series, Glitch, wasn’t in a state to make people understand why she was behaving in an irrational manner. She saw things that she couldn’t explain. She had once again started getting hallucinatory vision. She used to get it in her childhood but then eventually, it stopped. But now, once again, she was seeing this mammoth alien-like creature with a baseball cap, time and again. She was facing a huge dilemma. She knew that either aliens existed in reality and, for some reason, were only visible to her, or she was suffering from something similar to schizophrenia. There was also a possibility that she was suffering from a dissociative personality disorder, which is why she was having a lot of lucid dreams of late. Ji-hyo had gone for a smoke during the dinner with her boyfriend and parents when she had seen the alien standing in the middle of the road. She ran to save her life and out of nowhere she found herself on the terrace of a building, and she had no clue how she had gotten there.
The CCTV camera footage showed that there was no such thing chasing her and she was running without any rhyme or reason. As if the past baggage wasn’t enough, new developments made things even worse. Lee Si-kook went missing and Ji-hyo started searching for any clue or evidence that would lead her to him. Ji-hyo met Heo Bo-ra, who was part of a group that consisted of alien-enthusiasts. Ji-hyo realized that she had been friends with her in her childhood but still had no recollection of it whatsoever. It was as if her memory was blocked and she couldn’t access it, beyond a point. Through her, she came to know that the vision she used to get was not a hallucination completely. She used to go to the reed field and spend a lot of time inside an abandoned van. What happened there, though, was still not very certain. Ji-hyo came to know of another man named Direct Kim, whose daughter had been abducted in a similar fashion, as her boyfriend. Ji-hyo eventually realized that there was a cult that could be behind the kidnapping. The alien cult was presided over by Moon Hyungtae, who was the pastor of the Divine Light Church (the official name of the cult). They believed in the holy “Light,” which was basically a supposed UFO, but the cult treated it with a lot of reverence. Moon Hyungtae’s wife, Back Yoonsun, was the Holy Mother of the cult. It was said that back in the day, she had communicated with aliens, though there was no solid proof to corroborate that fact. The Holy Mother had not spoken from a very long time, but at times she uttered a few incomprehensible phrases. The daily functions of the cult were managed by a group of volunteers referred to as the NPCs (New Beginnings Peace Corps). The members of the cultist church believed or rather were made to believe, in a prophecy that one day a Messiah would come down and grant them the truth of salvation. The Holy Mother drew a portrait of a girl, and people believed that she was the chosen one, the Messiah, who would help them overcome the cycle of life and death. That portrait was of Ji-hyo, who was totally unaware of all these developments. She got caught while she was trying to trespass on the property of the mental health hospital where the cult used to operate from. She thought that she would be killed, but instead, she was made the Messiah, and the volunteers present at the scene bowed down, showing their reverence.
Towards the end of the series, Glitch, when Ji-hyo met Moon Hyungtae, he told her that she neither had any chip in her head nor she was the Messiah (according to him). But Moon Hyungtae still wanted her to play the role of the Messiah so that he could make innocent people believe in his lie. The members of the cult were made to believe by Moon Hyungtae that only when the Messiah suffered martyrdom, would the believers get salvation. Ji-hyo had a near-death experience and was almost killed by Moon Hyungtae. She somehow managed to escape captivity. It couldn’t be ascertained for sure if it was an alien intrusion that saved her or just sheer luck. Ji-hyo and Heo Bo-ra felt like they had an up-close encounter with the alien. Ji-hyo felt that the invisible chip that had been implanted in her head had been taken back by the aliens. She felt that a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. Maybe she was a Messiah after all and served as a link between our realm and the extraterrestrial life, but still, nothing could ever be ascertained for sure due to the lack of physical evidence. The people present there were divided into two factions where one believed that they had spotted The Light, and the other felt that it was merely a hallucination caused by the poisonous gas that was released into the atmosphere.
But whatever transpired during the memorial ceremony of the alien cult changed Ji-hyo forever. It could be said that “the chip” was metaphorically the baggage that she had been carrying on her shoulders for years. She made peace with her past. She finally decided to let it all go. She decided to press the reset button and start from the very beginning. Acceptance is often the key to happiness. She accepted her stepmother as a part of her family. She accepted that people do not necessarily need to be stuck in one place to prove their love. She realized that in life, you have to keep moving on. She respected the life choices that her father had made and stopped blaming him for her misery. She loved Si-kook, but she realized that some people just aren’t meant to be together. They decided to part ways on cordial terms. Ji-hyo made a decision to be happy no matter what the circumstances were. She wanted to shed her fears and insecurities now. She wanted to break the shackles and live a free life. She wanted to savor every moment that life had to offer. She had realized that her time on this planet was limited and that she needed to make the most of it. Though the fluctuations of the transmitter, in the end, made it clear that her so-called hallucinations were not over yet, Ji-hyo was not scared of what the future had in store for her. She knew that maybe she could not control what happened next, but she surely could be the author of her own story and decide who she wanted to be in life.
See More: ‘Glitch’ Ending, Explained: Did Hong Ji-Hyo Witness Aliens In Her Childhood? Was The UFO Real?
