The first seven episodes of Moving are more or less a high school romance, and it makes sense that this part of the series was released as a clump before new episodes started coming each week. It indicates an awareness of what the story is presenting and how it may or may not hold the attention of the audience. In the seven episodes that we will be covering in this recap, we get a bit of background on some of our protagonists and antagonists, along with a basic idea of their past. It is decently paced for a binge-watch of the seven episodes but would have been slow had this part been released as two episodes each week, so the strategy was good foresight by the marketing team. Here is what we know about the story so far and what we can expect in the coming episodes.
Spoiler Alert
What is the government program that the kids and parents are involved in?
Whatever happened to the kids’ parents and had come to affect their children definitely involves a lot of countries. So far, we know about South Korea, America, and North Korea. We get the impression that it must have been a decades-long program, seeing that the people with the powers belonged to a diverse age group. The parents, who we will call agents of the government program until we know better, were leading normal lives. Mi Hyeon had the power of incredible sight and sound and probably more; her husband could fly; Joo Won (Huisoo’s father) healed from his injuries in no time; and there are certainly others we have seen with the power of either being incredibly strong or being human conductors and what not. Seeing the background of Mi Hyeon and Joo Won, we deduce that something went wrong, and they went on the run from powerful people, which explains why they initially tried to live such anonymous lives.
All these years later, an assassin by the name of Frank is hunting them down. His name suggests that he was the sixth person, a choice, or just named alphabetically, implying a lack of love and emotion in his upbringing in Iowa. He was Korean, but he was probably kidnapped or left there by his parents, and all these years later, his Korean language is a little weak. Frank’s power is that he can heal fast, something he shares with Joo Won and Huisoo.
Toward the end of the seventh episode of Moving, we see that Joo Won kills him when he finds that he is the one who has been murdering his fellow ex-agents. His murder spree was previously put on hold when the Korean secret intelligence chief bargained with the American chief to hold him back or risk making it a diplomatic problem. However, we are not convinced that he is actually dead. Sure, Joo Won bashed his face in and set his truck on fire, but we find it hard to believe that he was only here for seven episodes out of twenty. Otherwise, it could be that the North Korean person is going to be Frank’s replacement and is will come down to investigate Jeongwon High School, where the government is cleverly bringing together the children of the ex-agents.
Bongseok and Mi Hyeon
Mi Hyeon is already our favorite character in the series, despite the limited screen time she has had. She had come to the city carrying her son on her back because he hadn’t learned to walk by then, as he flew away each time he was set on the ground. We hear that she became careful with her expressions of love towards him when she figured out that his flight was influenced by his emotions. Every time Mi Hyeon smiled at him or told him that she was proud of him, the happiness would make Bongseok fly away; therefore, Mi Hyeon reined in her expressive nature for her son’s sake.
Years later, the mother and son have a few systems in place to prevent Bongseok’s flight. He eats more than normal so that he can stay heavy and be on the ground. He also carries heavy bags with him and wears weights on his legs, which is why he is always late to school because they slow him down. Just in case he flies away while sleeping, his mother has attached some foam to the roof of his room. Despite it all, if he still feels like taking flight, reciting the digits of “pi” seems to work. Bongseok comes across a simple and cheerful boy who has not had many friends in life because of his condition. When he meets Huisoo, he instantly likes her, and she becomes his first friend. Soon enough, she reciprocates his feelings for her.
Bongseok is a sensitive person and can be rather insightful at times, and Huisoo is always able to talk to him about her problems. In return, she also tells him that he is a special person, and just because he is different, he should not call himself weird. With time, their group grows to include Shin Hyewon and another girl from their class who runs a YouTube channel to which Bongseok has subscribed. In a way, it is this YouTube channel that finally makes Bongseok want to learn to control his power. When Huisoo is in danger, Kang Hoon saves her, which makes Bongseok want to smarten himself up. He confronts his mother for always holding him back, which is when she reveals that the use of this power is what went wrong with his father. We are yet to know what actually happened there, but our eyes are blessed after seeing Jo In Sung after such a long time.
Jang Huisoo and Jang Joo Won
Jang Huisoo has the power to heal quickly from her injuries, and she gets that from her father. Huisoo tells Bongseok that she and her father had been on the road a lot when she was a child, until Jang Joo Won decided to buy a house and settle down in one place when Huisoo was in high school. They would have continued staying there except that Huisoo ran into a situation. Some of the students had started to bully another girl, Shin Hyewon, and Huisoo was unable to look away. She made a complaint with the teachers, but they did not take strict action or properly investigate the students, which meant that the situation only got worse since it had angered the bullies. At one point, even the class president got beat up because he tried to tell the bullies to step back. Nobody knew at this point that Huisoo was the one to make the complaint, and she also did not say anything.
As uncomfortable as it was, Huisoo thought that she had done what she could. If things had not been set right, it wasn’t her responsibility. She wondered why she had to speak or do more when nobody else was doing that. We see where she is coming from since the person getting bullied was a rich girl, and she and her parents had more power to handle the situation than Huisoo did. However, one day, when the bullies’ behavior got too despicable for words, Huisoo could not keep watching, and she finally spoke up. What followed was that Huisoo got into a fight with seventeen kids, and they were no match for her since she kept recovering from her injuries to keep beating them up again.
In the aftermath, Huisoo was expelled, but in a quiet manner, because her father paid off the parents of the injured students. He lost his entire life’s savings in the process, but he never blamed his daughter. He doesn’t say it directly, but he seems to be proud of her for taking the stand that she did. The two end up moving to Seoul to start a new life, and Huisoo has to reconsider her college options because her father cannot pay her fees anymore. She switches over to PE from Humanities and spends a lot of her time at school practicing for it. Her homeroom teacher is extremely accommodating to her, and she has yet to discover that the reason for it goes far deeper than just a school’s duty to provide the right guidance and resources.
It is at this new school that she meets Bongseok and finds out that, just like her, he also has some powers. The two of them start liking each other, and their relationship can develop once Bongseok stops flying away every time he gets flustered by her closeness. In the meantime, Shin Hyewon transfers to Huisoo’s new school, and another boy, Lee Kang Hoon, seems to like Huisoo. He is the Class President and wants to be friends with Huisoo because he knows that she has similar powers as him. So far, we know that he is likely incredibly strong and fast and might already be learning how to control his power.
What can we expect next?
As we said before, the first seven episodes were about fluff and emotion, with very little being revealed about the conspiracies of the past. But it looks like that is going to change now. It has to be because we will not accept that Jo In Sung will only flit in and out of the screen without leaving an impact. Bongseok will learn about his father and why his mother was so paranoid when the creepy customer (Frank) came to the restaurant. We haven’t been sure whether Bongseok knows about his mother’s powers. Additionally, what will happen when Mi Hyeon and Joo Won come face-to-face? Will they recognize each other, or will it take time for them to realize who the other person is? Also, what is the deal with Kang Hoon, and what trouble will the school bad boy cause for him? There is a lot to unpack here, and we are excited since the series is at a point where it is going to get interesting.
