TV Review: Island Season 1 (Episodes 1-6)

We've recently watched Season 1 of Island, a 6 episode K-drama featuring magic, demons, exorcisms, reincarnation, and a prophecy. It was based on the eponymous webcomic that was turned into a webtoon.

Won Mi Ho is the heir to the Daehan Group. After falling for her treacherous aunt's tricks and being filmed fighting in public, she takes a teaching job in Jeju island to rehabilitate her reputation. However, what she doesn't know is that she's the reincarnation of Won Jeong, whose destiny is to create a protective barrier and imprison the demons of the island. This makes her a target, but she's helped by Van, a demon slayer with a mysterious past, and Johan, an exorcist priest with ties to Mi Ho's teacher/employee Butler Jang. However, the demons refuse to give up, looking for different ways to get to their target.

Island is big and flashy, offering high stakes, cgi monsters, cgi-enhanced fights, and cool characters. We know they’re cool because of how they're introduced: Mi Ho is as skillful at shutting up inquisitive journalists as she is at flipping a much bigger man over her shoulder; Van efficiently slashes demons with his special demon-slashing dagger; Johan performs exorcisms with his headphones on and is braver than the older priests. They're not exactly original, but the cast and/or the writing prevent them from becoming annoying. Van is basically the jerk with the heart of gold, haunted by a dark past filled with pain and tragedy, who pretends not to care while secretly working to save the world. The dagger fights kinda make up for all the brooding, though. Despite her badass introduction, Mi Ho isn't shown as perfect, and her reactions to the demons and early interactions with Van are pretty funny. Johan is the one who fares the worst. On one hand, we're not fans of the young prodigy who's better than everyone and so we liked that he wasn't made as skilled as Van, on the other, his constant failures after he gets to the island end up making him look superfluous.

Maybe it's because of the hour-long episodes, but it felt like the show dragged in the middle, which is weird given that the season only has six episodes. We get Van's origin story, which reveals that he was forcibly infected with lust demon blood as a child along with another boy, so they'd become demon slayers and that at one point they were friends with Won Jeong, pretty early on. However, that feels like an infodump to complement his and Baek Joo's convos about how dark and tortured he is, plus make everyone wonder when the other slayer is going to show up. Baek Joo, who's an old friend and knows his story, occasionally mocks his brooding ways, but she's the only one, as Van's tortured demeanour isn't meant to be a parody.

There's a detour halfway through that the show links to the main plot: Soo-Ryeon's deal with Benjulle to escape her abusive boyfriend. She's one of Mi Ho's students and is friends with Baek Joo's granddaughter, Yeom Ji, who is the one who asks Mi Ho for help. The connection is that the benevolent forest spirit was corrupted by lust demons who targeted the girl to get to her teacher. That explanation doesn't quite work, and even after that final reveal, it feels too convoluted. We do get to see all three leads actively working together, though. Johan may have cool gadgets - a magical, holy sword and some holy silver wires - but he's rather ineffectual. Van's dagger isn't as effective against a god corrupted by lust demons either. So, it's up to Mi Ho, who refuses to give up on the girl to free her and them from Benjulle with a surprise energy blast. You'd think that would lead to her learning about the prophecy or at least her connection to Won Jeong. Naturally, you'd be wrong.

Instead, we get more on Johan. No, not a glimpse into how he became an exorcist, or an explanation about the monastery and why they know and care about the prophecy. He's given a horrific backstory involving being adopted for his organs, and some sudden family drama with a long-lost brother. The latter storyline and its brutal resolution is good if taken on its own, but it's too little, too late. And definitely not what we wanted from Johan. This was a perfect opportunity for another infodump to add to the brief flashback that showed Jang as a young priest, presumably from the same Order as Johan, having just witnessed his fellow priests die at the hands of a lust demon that Van killed. The fact that Johan's family drama is happening right after Van's demon slayer brother Gungtan has just revealed himself and hinted there's something more to that story of Won Jeong the show has been ignoring since the flashback to Van's origins, just doesn't help. The show tries to connect the two, saying that Gungtan was the one who convinced Johan's possessed brother to go after Mi Ho, but there didn't seem to be anything stopping him from sneaking into the house and try to kill her himself. Of course, then we would've missed the shocking death of Mi Ho's friend's fiancé, which was a given the moment he decided to drive to her place in the middle of the night.

That final reveal about Yeom Ji being in league with Gungtan explains the Benjulle plot, since she was the one who told Soo-Ryeon about the avenger god. However, it also means we must accept that neither Baek Joo nor Van realised she was hanging out with the other demon slayer, even after what happened with Soo-Ryeon, who only found out about Benjulle because of her. Maybe Baek Joo is in on it, too, but it doesn't look like it. Hopefully, Season 2 will be able to explain that unexpected connection.

This show is fun, but has some issues, the biggest being its failure to manage the information shared with viewers. We get a lot in the beginning, though not everything, but then the plot and the characters just get stuck in the same place. Initially, it seems that it's not going to take much time to start working on fulfilling the prophecy. After all, not only is Mi Ho surrounded by people who know about it, but she also finds out about the demons and meets Van early on. Instead, we end up getting the usual scenes of people talking about her destiny behind her back, while doing nothing to make it happen. It's only in the season finale that Mi Ho asks Baek Joo about Won Jeong. We can't even remember if she ends Season 1 knowing Jang is aware of the prophecy. Frankly, maybe it would've been better if he wasn't and had no link to Johan - it would’ve been easier to accept total strangers keeping Mi Ho in the dark, than someone who's known her forever and has been waiting for this moment for years. Especially if they weren't all living in the same house.

The lust demon threat is supposed to be a constant one that necessitates 24/7 protection for Mi Ho. However, it doesn't always feel like it. Why is she so confident that they won't attack her in the classroom? Van seems to think it could happen. Why does she go to Soo-Ryeon's place with only Johan? Shouldn't she be avoiding her friends for fear they might become targets? After all, Van tells her the demons went after Soo-Ryeon because of her. Why doesn't she have a problem with the fiancé going to her house in the middle of the night? She knows there could be demons nearby. Also, let's not forget her walk through the woods to go meet Van after he hurt his arm. Where were the lust demons then? And why the mess with Johan's brother? Van was away more than once and Gungtan had ample opportunity to go after Mi Ho himself.

Then, there's the tone. It starts like typical fantasy, with magic, some violence, and peppered with humour. Even Van's tragic backstory is something we expect in this type of story. However, the drama keeps increasing and we don't mean that as a compliment. Van's broodiness achieves new heights, cheerful Johan gets saddled with that horrible backstory we already mentioned, and considering Gungtan's hints, Mi Ho may end up dealing with some past life drama herself. And then there's her relationship with Van that's likely to get more dramatic: they don't get along! He secretly cares about her! She secretly cares about him! He killed her in another life! He's willing to sacrifice himself for her! Unfortunately, all this drama doesn't result in character development or makes for interesting viewing. We fear that it's only a matter of time before the dreaded love triangle rears its ugly head...

In Season 1 of Island, the good outweighs the bad, but there's a lot that can go wrong in Season 2. We're definitely going to watch it, though.

Now, we wrote in the beginning that the show was based on a webcomic/webtoon. We haven't read all of it, just the first few chapters, and the diffences are shocking:

- the story is a lot darker

- Mi Ho is an out of touch rich girl sent to Jeju island by her father to teach ethics to high school students after she told him she wanted to start working (clearly, her father has a sense of humour)

- Van is a serial killer who only saved Mi Ho the first time because he wanted to punish the lust demon for killing one of his intended victims

- there's no mention of a prophecy and Van tells her that the demons will keep chasing her just because she got away

- lust demons don't possess people, they use horniness to lure in their human prey

- Soo-Ryeon's story was a lot worse:

    • she was gang raped and made a deal with Benjulle to get revenge on the culprits

    • Benjulle isn't a corrupted benevolent forest spirit, he's a demon god who wants to impregnate humans with his clone

    • Soo-Ryeon is being assaulted by the demon the whole time and her parents are already dead

    • Mi Ho actually gets mad at the girl because all she did was break her rapists' bones instead of killing them and their entire families

    • Soo-Ryeon kills herself after Van frees her because she has the Benjulle clone inside her

    • Mi Ho uses her connections to get a judge to reopen the case and demands the men's convictions

We haven't read the rest of the webtoon, so maybe everything changes later, but yikes.