The Heavenly Idol: Episodes 11-12 (Final)
by Unit
The good news is: we’ve come to the end of our heavenly tale. The bad news is: to get to the end, we continue in our loop of confusion, plot twists, and conflicting information. There’s also a little bit of betrayal from the deities and their devotees, but yunno, nothing too serious.
EPISODES 11-12
Sigh. Where do I even begin? What started out as a really fun and lovely story slowly degenerated into such ridiculousness, that it’s hard to tell if this was the drama’s real destination from the get go or it lost its navigation midway and just decided to wing the rest of the journey.
As we approach the end of this very bumpy ride, Wild Animal is officially invited to the Korea Music Awards — their first ever invitation to an award show. Rembrary is also nominated in the Best Rookie category at a drama award scheduled for the same day. But since Rembrary is fully committed to Wild Animal, Dal has to turn down his appearance at the drama award show.
Naturally, Wild Animal is excited to be in attendance at the music award show, but their excitement fades with each category they lose out on. Jung-seo is a nervous wreck, and he has to step out mid-show to breathe — and then get chased by the devotees of the religious group because he reported them to the police for cult activities after they tried to scout him and drag Rembrary into the group as well. Phew! I really thought he had betrayed Rembrary by selling him out.
Wild Animal eventually wins the “Discovery of the Year award” (which is probably tongue in cheek for all the funny/nonsensical categories in these music award shows, lol) and their win stems from a practice video Jung-seo uploaded earlier in the year which got Wild Animal noticed. It’s such a full circle moment for Jung-seo, who has been plagued with self-deprecating thoughts about not doing enough as Wild Animal’s leader. The euphoric moment is made even better when he gets an “I’m proud of you” text from his mom in the hospital, and an assurance that she’s all better now thanks to Rembrary’s visit. Of course, he visited Mom!
But when Wild Animal goes on stage to perform, The Evil One arrives at the venue as a literal show stopper. It’s a show off of powers between Rembrary and Evil from the stage to outside the hall to the stairs, and Rembrary is stabbed — just as he’s announced as the Best Rookie over at the drama awards. Thus, the vow of confusion is fulfilled and Yeon-woo returns to his body as an award winner, while Rembrary goes back to meet The Other World in disarray no thanks to Yeon-woo’s antics over there. Ugh! Just when I think I can’t dislike Yeon-woo any further.
*Deep breath and exhale* Now, this is where the already confusing story takes an even more confusing and eye roll-inducing turn. Rembrary heads to Lord Redrin’s shine to seek her guidance, and she appears to him looking all bruised and tattered. She claims that the Master of her earthly devotees (the religious cult) stole her powers and severed ties with her, and the only way to defeat The Evil One is for her to kill Rembrary and harness the divine powers she bestowed upon him. Oh! She’s such a fraud.
Rembrary almost buys her story, until she slips up and he catches her in her lie. For someone who really trusted Redrin enough to willingly give his life for her, this is the ultimate betrayal, and Rembrary is furious. “The one who killed my family and friends was you! The deity I served my whole life!” he rages. Rembrary moves to destroy Redrin’s statue and obliterate her as well, but she manages to escape to the earthly realm.
Back on earth, the religious cult begins to massively recruit people and collect their souls under the guise of being a volunteer organization. Unfortunately, even reapers cannot fight the cult, and Rembrary is the only one who can. A fearless Dal then goes with Gam-jae to the Afterlife to request passage into The Other World in order to bring Rembrary back. And since everyone and their mothers have begun to cross realms now, what is one more realm for Dal? She’s granted her request to pop into The Other World, and she brings Rembrary back to the Afterlife.
In the Afterlife, Rembrary learns that Redrin created him using a part of her soul which is why he possesses a deity’s powers. And to destroy Redrin, the powers have to be separated from him and destroyed since they’re connected to her. There’s one slight problem, though — once the powers are destroyed, the people who have been supportive of him will no longer love or trust him. But the drama seems to have forgotten that just last week they said Rembrary did not get his powers from Redrin. *Rolls eyes*
At the moment I’m barely hanging on, and the first — and only — laugh the drama gave me this week is from when Rembrary confronted Yeon-woo at Wild Animal’s dorm, leaving the rest of the members reeling from the doppelgänger situation. But the ridiculousness soon returns when Yeon-woo changes forms to become an ahjussi, and that’s how we learn that “Yeon-woo” is actually a heavenly ahjussi who came to the earth five years ago to join Wild Animal.
Apparently, Ahjussi was envious of the pontifex’s face, capabilities, and powers, and wanted to be like him. So he struck a deal with Lord Redrin to become Rembrary’s alter ego on earth. Redrin promised to give Ahjussi divine powers if he made people on earth hate him, and it makes sense now as to why Yeon-woo was such an ass all along. No wonder when he gave Dal the signed CD back then, he told her that his calling is to heal people. Dude was just cosplaying Rembrary. Pfft.
And considering how Rembrary lost his powers when everyone hated him during the candy scandal last week, it’s safe to assume that Redrin intended for people to hate the alter ego and thus weaken Rembrary’s powers during his inevitable soul swap with Yeon-woo. But what I don’t understand is…why create Rembrary in the first place? What kind of sadistic being creates a person with a part of herself only to want to kill the person?
It turns out that Redrin feeds off on souls to get her powers, hence the religious cult and the humans signing away their souls to her with the help of the Afterlife’s stolen relic. Since Redrin’s source of power has now been exposed, Dal makes a vow to give up her soul in return for the destruction of the relic. And with the destruction of the relic, all the contracts ever signed with it are no longer binding. The souls get released, and Redrin loses her powers.
But giving up is not part of Redrin’s vocabulary, so she kills the Master and The Evil One as well to boost her powers for a final showdown with Rembrary — which she loses even after harnessing Rembrary’s powers, because, plot twist: Redrin isn’t even a real deity. She used to be… wait for it… the spirit of seaweed living in the ocean. Apparently, she once helped a human being, and the person worshipped her for it. So she began obsessing over becoming a perfect deity. Shoot me now! Redrin is a sea-freaking-weed!? I swear, you cannot make this stuff up.
At this point, I just want Gam-jae to wipe my memories of this drama — grim reaper style — but that’s obviously not going to happen. Besides, the reapers are too busy locking Redrin up in purgatory and erasing Dal’s memories of Rembrary no thanks to her vow of destruction.
In the end, Rembrary gets to keep living as Yeon-woo to help the Afterlife get rid of the remnants of black magic in the world. Wild Animal becomes so popular that they barely have time to rest, Sun-ja and Woo-shil (who used to date) rekindle their romance, and best of all, Gam-jae stops wearing black — becomes even hotter — and retains his job as Wild Animal’s roadie! Rembrary does need a hand with the black magic mission. Heh. Finally, Dal regains her memories of Rembrary, and all’s well that ends well.
Honestly, this show did the most for a 12-episode drama, and I’m disappointed at what could have been. I signed up for heavenly hijinks ft. grandpa Rembrary and the Wild Animals, and the drama was so much better when the focus was on Rembrary’s fish-out-of-water antics, and the occasional backhanded and fun criticism of the idol lifestyle. But the drama just had to go on and be everything everywhere all at once. Guess who’s not winning any Oscars? This show!
For an idol drama, there were no memorable songs, and as someone who’s a fan of drama OSTs, it was a let down. But the drama did provide me with a female lead that I actually liked. A lot. A poor and helpless female lead, Dal was not. Sure, she had her moments of weakness, but overall, she was such a badass. Whether it was Dal as a fangirl or as a manager, a girlfriend and even just as Dal as a person, she came through for Rembrary multiple times over the course of the show, and it was a really refreshing role reversal to see a female lead coming to the male lead’s rescue. My girl even got a scouting offer from the grim reaper, and it cannot get any more badass than that!
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The Heavenly Idol: Episodes 11-12 (Final)
Source: Buzz Pinay Daily
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