The Devil Judge - EP 7
Added 2025-04-07 14:26:05 +0000 UTCit's so good to be BACK even if you guys didn't notice the break
Comments
Never apologise for finding Yohan sexy! (Though I live for the difference tween hair-up and hair-down Yohan - hair-up Yohan is out there being all suave and seductive and generally a diabolical genius, meanwhile hair-down Yohan is running away from his nanny, getting burned by his teenage niece, and asking his souped up Alexa for parenting tips - hair-down Yohan is a giant socially malajusted dork!) There's a subs thing I'm irrationally petty about which is the difference in how they translate the way Gaon addresses Yohan, which is bujangnim, a honorific term I understand means Head of Department or General Manager - NF defaults to 'Judge Kang', whereas the subs I first saw used 'Chief', and I just vastly prefer the latter because, even though I know Gaon's using an appropriate, professional, polite term, for some reason after a while 'Chief' just sounds more affectionate, like it takes on a kind of nicknamey quality when used tween them, whereas 'Judge Kang' always remains very cold/formal. Anyway! I have two main thinky thoughts about this ep. 1) I love how the show doesn't shy away from the uglier side of Yohan's carefully manufactured populism - it's there in the nationalist thugs celebrating the flogging or re-enacting his "justice" on random petty criminals as they chant his power motto, and it's there in the general public becoming more receptive to increasingly bloodthirsty punishments, and then we see it again here with the rather sinister and vaguely fascistic imagery of the prison guards chanting that same motto (complete with pollice verso gesture for added creepiness!). It's a sort of 'be careful what you wish for' sentiment - are these really the ppl you want to be empowering? and is this really the sort of power you want to be reclaiming? But what I truly adore is how Yohan doesn't give a flying fuck! Cos let's be real, he's not doing any of this for love of democracy or equality or justice - he's got a Plan and everything is in service of the Plan and if he just so happens to create an alt-right movement in the undertaking of said Plan then so be it! The rest of the world is just collateral damage! Every time we find ourselves hypnotised into complicity by his irresistible charm and god tier competence and chiselled face, the show reminds us that there are actual societal consequences to his actions, to what he's stirring up, and they ain't all pretty! Lest we forget, (as far as we know) for Yohan this is ultimately about personal revenge - it all comes back down to his own pain, like Gaon said: he'd rather be a monster than a victim. (But then we see him in his dressing gown with his fluffy wuffy hair and sulky pout and all thoughts of encroaching fascism go out the window!) 2) The mirroring of Sunah and Yohan is just...*chef's kiss* They were both these painfully lonely, horribly abused children, but there are three key things that set them apart: a) wealth, b) male privilege, and c) Isaac (and ergo Elijah). Wealth: yes, Sunah is wrong to assume that coming from money = happiness, because we know it didn't protect Yohan from abuse, but let's not pretend wealth isn't a form of protection in and of itself - once he was grown, it provided him with opportunities, with choice, neither of which were afforded to Sunah. Male privilege: of course nobody's saying boys aren't exploited too, but we all know the statistics. Like Sunah says in her lecture, to be a girl is, inherently, to be vulnerable, let alone when you're a girl thrust out into society with no-one to look out for you and no means of providing for yourself. And then there's Isaac: no matter how lonely or abused Yohan was, there was at least one person in his life who showed him love. And again, Sunah never had that. Which leads us onto Elijah, because Isaac lives on in her, and that means love lives on in her, so even though Yohan lost his brother, he still has someone to love, someone other than himself to think of. Gaon says, of his seemingly suicidal plan to take on the elites, but what about Elijah? Don't you think about her? And Yohan replies: Always. We don't know the ins and outs of his masterplan yet, or even the ultimate endgame, but if we're to take him at his word, even in all his pain and fury, he hasn't lost sight of Elijah. But who does Sunah have? Who in her life represents hope or salvation (or just any alternative to homicidal villainy)? Her abuser, who she's been tied to in some fucked up symbiotic relationship for god knows how long? Her hot biker chick-ok, fair play, good for her! Be gay do crime all you want my lovelies! But point is she's never had an Isaac to mourn or an Elijah to protect. The first line of the preview is Sunah saying she's worked so hard to return to the world Yohan kicked her out of, and I just think that's the most heartbreakingly telling thing - everything that both Yohan and Sunah do, everything that they've spent their whole lives working towards, has been in memory of a loss: for Yohan, it's the loss of his brother, of kindness, of love. But for Sunah it's the loss of a world that was denied to her, a world of comfort and security, a twinkly twinkly world of nice things and pretty people...a world that never even existed in the first place. Because she couldn't see past the glittering artifice to realise that the only truth in that world, the only thing that actually made it bearable, was the love of one person for another. And it's just so incredibly sad that she's dedicated her life to becoming part of a world that a) was make believe, built on a violent lie, and b) we know is only held together by greed and extortion and cruelty (aka capitalism!). Oh, I don't blame her, for all the reasons just listed! But it's still just really, really sad. And what I love about the karma's a bitch in a stunning white dress scene is how I think it's the first time we see Sunah drop all the various guises she puts on - subservient secretary, wide-eyed ingénue, conniving conspirator, femme fatale, batshit crazy lady - and we see her stripped bare, seething with the injustice of what was done to her, grieving for and then avenging her past self. I'm such a fan of how the actress chooses to play Sunah - her special brand of evil often (deliberately) comes across as almost campy, like this woman is utterly unhinged and it's delightful and frequently very funny to watch, but then before you know it she's making you cry for the little lost girl who deserved so much better. She can switch between vampy villain and heartbreakingly human in the blink of an eye and it's fantastic. The show would not be a fraction of what it is without Sunah, and that's in large part thanks to her performance.
fishinabook
2025-04-13 02:34:42 +0000 UTCSunah committing highway bobbery the way she's stealing the show every week
bella
2025-04-09 04:45:14 +0000 UTCGod those last few scenes with Gaon & Yohan, and Sunah & the foundation director were so magnificently done. The prison scene sticks so vividly in my mind even to this day because of how impactful it was. Jinyoung’s acting was amazing. THIS MAN IS AN ACTOR!! There’s something heartbreaking about Sunah’s last words to Chairman SEO, and the way she still had to give him the noble death he absolutely didn’t deserve after all he’s done to her. The blood on her white dress was so powerful, and then switching to the all black when she takes over as director. Ugh my Yohan & Sunah, both extremely layered, well-written characters who have been through so much pain. I love how much this show makes me think every episode, and the conversations it sparks.
Nadia
2025-04-08 10:45:39 +0000 UTCAlso yes the blood on the dress, the fact white often represents purity and how she was just a young girl when she came to work for him. The way she sees how the woman speaks to that young girl and then pushes her down the stairs as punishment, the same way she killed her mother
Char
2025-04-07 18:43:32 +0000 UTCThis ep is one of my favourites!!! Gaon realising that the man who basically killed his parents has never spent a day in prison and so he never actually got justice. If everyone is doing everything illegally what's the issue with yohan acting illegally. I also think it's so interesting that seonah talks about how money is the answer and when she worked at yohan's house she thought she had made it after being abused by her mother and yet we know in that house that yohan was also subjected to horrific abuse by his father, not just the beatings bit the fact he was made to live in the bathroom under the house.
Char
2025-04-07 18:41:20 +0000 UTCthey need to challenge each other (in bed) LMAO
Jer
2025-04-07 16:55:12 +0000 UTCWelcome back, Freddie, continuing with a bang! God, this episode is so gooooooooood it hits every time, Jinyoung's acting, all the scheming, Seon-ah finally killing the Chairman and YES THE BLOOD ON THE WHITE DRESS, ICONIC.
mirka
2025-04-07 15:51:00 +0000 UTC
