In the first season of “Copycat Killer,” we met two kinds of people: one who maintained their calm and composure even when they were going through inner turmoil and secondly, the people who let their trauma affect their sensibilities and dictate the terms to them. Our intention in pointing out the contrast is not to blame the victim but to show how easily we become like those whom we used to detest at one time in our lives. Shen Jia-wun had gone through a lot in his childhood, and no human deserves to go through the kind of things he did. Moreover, his situation was even more pitiable because the person traumatizing him was not a stranger but his own mother.
Shen Jia-wun couldn’t even get the satisfaction of taking revenge on his tormentor for inflicting such severe mental wounds, and that probably made him feel even more claustrophobic. Shen Jia-wun was venting out his anger on the girls who came his way, and somewhere in doing so, he lost the right to tell the world that he had been wronged since he became a demon far more evil than his mother. Kuo Hsiao-chi also didn’t have a very happy childhood. He held himself responsible for the deaths of his parents, and he knew he would never be able to escape the guilt. Still, in contrast to Shen Jia-wun, Kuo Hsiao-chi held himself together and had the mental capacity to differentiate wrong from right.
Towards the end of the series, we got to know that Shen Jia-wun was acting on the orders of a celebrity journalist named Chen He-ping. We come to know that Chen He-ping was an extremely conniving conspirator, and he knew how to go about his business without getting caught by the authorities. Chen He-ping never committed any crime on his own; he hired people to do the work for him. He loved how he controlled the entire narrative and made the people act according to his whims and fancies. Chen He-ping didn’t kill his victims because he had any specific agenda against them; for him, it was all a game. He already had an inflated sense of self-importance, and seeing the law enforcement authorities struggling to find any incriminating evidence against him fed his ego even more. He believed that he was capable of committing the perfect crime, and he loved to put on a show for the people. Chen He-ping was the kind of guy who didn’t mind getting caught by the authorities as long as he got all the attention in the world and stayed the main attraction.
Kuo Hsiao-chi had realized that he probably would not find any evidence to prove He-ping’s guilt, so he decided that the best option he had was to try to trigger him and make him reach a point where he confessed to his crime in front of the people. Kuo Hsiao-chi went on TNB’s TV show, which He-ping hosted. Mr. Kuo realized that sometimes an investigator has to resort to illegitimate means to achieve the desired result. During the show, Kuo Hsiao-chi, with the help of a colleague whom he met once again in prison, made Chen He-ping feel irrelevant. They discredited him in front of the entire world and told him that he was unnecessarily getting too much importance when in reality, he amounted to nothing. Those words pierced him like an arrow, and it was enough to push He-ping off the cliff. In a fit of rage, he confessed in front of the viewers that he was Noh, the killer, who was responsible for every murder that had happened in the recent past.
How much attention He-ping craved could be assessed from the fact that even after he was stabbed by a person from the crowd while he was being taken to the prison, he asked the cameramen present on the scene to keep recording him. He-ping didn’t care if he survived or not as long as he got the celebrity treatment and all eyes were on him.
What Can We Expect From “Copycat Killer” Season 2?
The ending of “Copycat Killer” Season 1 gave much-needed closure to each and every character. Yen-Jhen Lu became the anchor of the prime spot for the TNB media house, and knowing her, it could be ascertained that she would earnestly try her best to bring the truth to light. Jhen Lu was not the kind of person who would compromise on her ethical responsibilities, so we could safely assume that she would refrain from presenting a dramatized account of things and doing things just for the sake of TRP. Kuo Hsiao-chi had come to terms with himself, and he had stopped running from his own past. He had realized that darkness would always be there in this world, and the only thing people could do was to fill the world with more positive energy so that a balance could be achieved.
If Netflix plans to go ahead with another season of “Copycat Killer,” we might see Kuo Hsiao-chi cross paths with another deranged killer and then try to put them behind bars. In the first season, the internet had still not reached the general masses, so the investigation was still done in a very traditional manner. In the second season, we might see the perpetrators making use of advanced technology, which would increase the work of the authorities and the complexities of the cases even more. Kuo Hsiao-chi had learned to fight his battles and yet savor each and every moment of his life in the best way possible. If there is a season 2, we might see a very different Kuo Hsiao-chi, and surely, his way of looking at things will also change.
In “Copycat Killer” season 2, no matter what happens, Kuo Hsiao-chi will make sure that the truth finds its way home. The most important difference between Kuo Hsiao-chi and the perpetrators was that he didn’t think that he was infallible. This self-awareness gave Kuo Hsiao-chi an edge over the killers, and we believe that it would yet again become the deciding factor in the second season (if there is one). No matter what happens in the future, we can assure one thing: until prosecutors like Kuo Hsiao-chi are at the helm of affairs, people will have faith in the authorities because they will know that there are still a few people for whom getting justice for the aggrieved is paramount.
