Reborn Rich: Episodes 15-16 (Final)

Reborn Rich: Episodes 15-16 (Final)

by mistyisles

It’s the end of the road for our reincarnated hero, and time to face the truth of what happened in his previous (future?) life. Who exactly is responsible, and can those wrongs ever be righted?

 
EPISODES 15-16 WEECAP

It’s been a year since Chairman Jin’s passing, and Young-ki is set to become the next chairman. Soonyang Card is on the brink of declaring bankruptcy, and as soon as it does, Dong-ki’s shares will forfeit to Young-ki, making him Soonyang’s largest shareholder.

But Soonyang Card doesn’t go bankrupt, because Do-joon takes over and negotiates a workout agreement for its creditors. With his direction and Miracle Investment’s financial backing, Soonyang Card stabilizes. Now Young-ki isn’t the largest shareholder of Soonyang — Do-joon is. All that’s left is to win management rights, and the chairman position will be Do-joon’s, too.

Meanwhile, Chang-je leads an investigation into illegal political campaign funds. This is a big deal for Soonyang, because Chang-je plans to make an example of big business names who are found guilty, and they have a habit of lining politicians’ pockets for their own benefit.

Fortunately (for them), Dong-ki has already laid the groundwork to frame Do-joon as having made a huge political bribe. Given Dong-ki’s submitted evidence and the fact that Do-joon helped a murderer suspect (Grandma) flee the country, the prosecution arrests Do-joon on an emergency warrant. And that’s how Do-joon again appears before Min-young as a suspect. Still, she doesn’t quite believe he’s guilty — not because she trusts him, per se, but because she knows he’s too smart to get caught so easily.

And, of course, she’s right. This whole investigation was Do-joon’s plan all along. The final step is to incite Dong-ki against his own secretary (which Dong-ki all but accomplishes on his own) and then convince said secretary to turn himself — and thereby Dong-ki — in.

The secretary’s confession checks out, and Do-joon is released from custody. Dong-ki is arrested, and the rest of the family decide it’s a price they’re willing to pay to save their own skins. Dong-ki’s wife and daughter can’t have that, so they report Young-ki and his wife for even bigger, slush fund-related, crimes.

When Min-young confronts Do-joon about getting himself arrested for the sake of exposing the rest of the family, he asks to start over, suggesting they go on a date, get married, and start a family based on the future timeline of a famous weightlifter’s career.

Meanwhile, the Soonyang family scrambles to survive the storm of public opinion against them. There’s lots of twisted talk about blood sacrifices and scapegoating, and ultimately Sung-joon puts all the blame on Young-ki. The scandal serves to officially slate Do-joon as the next chairman.

But, as we know, Do-joon never becomes chairman, because he’s killed in a horrific car crash. While Do-joon’s car is waiting behind a stopped truck, another truck slams into it from behind, crushing it. In his final moments, Do-joon looks straight into the eyes of the person who stopped the first truck for him to be crushed against: Hyun-woo.

Roughly 20 years later, Hyun-woo survives the bullet to the head because Min-young tracked him down, witnessed the shooting, and rushed him to the hospital. He still remembers the 17 years he spent as Do-joon, but now he has no idea if that was all a dream or if he actually went back in time.

Min-young escorts him back to Korea so he can testify as a witness against Soonyang. But there’s now a warrant out naming him as the slush fund embezzler, so he bolts as soon as they arrive in Seoul. While on the run, he briefly reunites with his father and brother before turning up at the home of Soonyang’s former finance manager (the one who wanted to bury the slush fund in the first place) to demand answers. The man is hardly sympathetic, surreptitiously calling for backup as he tells Hyun-woo that revenge is a luxury reserved for those who have power.

Hyun-woo is forced to flee again, but he takes the former finance manager’s words to heart and goes back to Min-young seeking a little more power to work with. While he crashes on her couch, she manages to get the case reassigned to herself. Then she lets him go, not seeing a need to detain him since he’s more than happy to help prove his own innocence.

A hearing is held to question Sung-joon about Hyun-woo’s attempted murder. Sung-joon, of course, denies any involvement, and he has public favor on his side. So Min-young turns the tables by bringing up Do-joon’s murder. Her witness is disregarded (Do-joon’s secretary/driver, who miraculously survived the crash but now suffers from alcohol-related dementia), and Hyun-woo knows what he needs to do.

All these years, he’s held onto a recording of himself frantically telling the finance manager about the car crash (which he didn’t realize was the reason he’d been told to stop his truck there until it happened) and being ordered to keep quiet about it. Now Hyun-woo plays that recording in front of everyone at the hearing, including a part at the end where Young-ki confirms that he was the mastermind.

Sung-joon goes berserk and is arrested, and Hyun-min soon divorces him. Young-ki flatlines in the hospital. The rest of the Soonyang family see the writing on the wall and resign, placing the company in the hands of a business manager instead.

Hyun-woo, having reunited with Se-hyun and restored the hope that Se-hyun lost at Do-joon’s death, joins Miracle Investment, aiming to build a fairer society. Hyun-woo and Min-young part amicably, wishing each other well, and when he repeats words he once said as Do-joon, she recognizes the turn of phrase — but he’s already gone.

Then Hyun-woo moves on with his life, deciding that the reason he was sent back as Do-joon was to atone for betraying not only Do-joon (by obeying orders and not reporting the murder) but also himself.

I have… mixed feelings on this ending. I’m not sure we needed to squeeze in yet another clever business maneuver when we could have spent more of both episodes back in Hyun-woo’s time, making sense of what he’s been through and reuniting him with loved ones from both lives. Despite having spent so much time on Do-joon’s relationship with Chairman Jin, in particular, there was precious little mention of Chairman Jin this week at all, especially once we caught back up to present day (though Do-joon’s goodbye to him before the final car crash was very poignant).

Overall, I think I appreciate the idea here more than the execution. I like the lesson about blind loyalty to the wrong person or institution being a form of self-betrayal. And I even like the idea of someone who allowed himself to be complicit in a murder being sent back in time as that person and having to live their life, see through their eyes, and unexpectedly come to love some of the people around them along the way. But I think that would have been much more impactful as the premise, not the last-minute reveal.

Still, I’m glad that ultimately Hyun-woo was able to nudge the Soonyang family into self-imploding and then walk away and start fresh with a little bit of both his lives still intact.

 
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Reborn Rich: Episodes 15-16 (Final)
Source: Buzz Pinay Daily