This article contains spoilers.
Lead cast: Kim Nam-joo, Cha Eun-woo, Kim Kang-woo, Im Se-mi
Latest Nielsen rating: 6.3 per cent
Wonderful World is a show about grief, how people deal with it, how it can affect them in different ways and, in some cases, how it can warp them.
Leading the series are two characters dealing with grief. There is the bestselling author Eun Soo-hyun (Kim Nam-joo), who loses her son to a hit-and-run accident and winds up in jail after avenging him, and there is the mysterious jack-of-all-trades Kwon Seon-yul (Cha Eun-woo).
At first, we are led to understand that Seon-yul is the only survivor of a fire started by Soo-hyun’s remorseful cellmate, who tasks Soo-hyun with relaying her regret to the young man and looking over him after her release.
Wonderful World: Kim Nam-joo, Cha Eun-woo in mystery K-drama
Wonderful World: Kim Nam-joo, Cha Eun-woo in mystery K-drama
After serving her time behind bars for driving her car over and killing the man who did the same thing to her son and got away with it, Soo-hyun re-enters society and slowly attempts to return to some vestige of her former life.
Although she can no longer be the respected professor and bestselling author she was, she has made peace with her loss and with her actions. She is able to reconnect with the people she used to be close with, including her mother and her former manager Han Yoo-ri (Im Se-mi), who is like a real sister to her.
She is also welcomed with open arms by her television anchor husband Kang Soo-ho (Kim Kang-woo), who recently returned from America, where he was assigned as a foreign correspondent shortly after Soo-hyun’s incarceration.
Soo-hyun refused to see Soo-ho after going to jail and filed for divorce, and even now this is the one part of her past that she struggles to reconnect with. However, Soo-ho has waited for her all this time and their life together can now resume.
The uneasy status quo does not remain for long, as Soo-hyun receives an anonymous letter filled with photos of Soo-ho kissing another woman in a hotel room. Rather than stew over it, the hurt but level-headed Soo-hyun opts to confront him.
A guilty Soo-ho claims it was a one-time mistake and since it happened before they reconnected, Soo-hyun chooses to move on – except that her husband neglects to tell her who his mistake was with.
Of greater concern to Soo-hyun is where the pictures came from, especially after a set was also maliciously sent to her mother.
Through some sneaky editing, Wonderful World leads us to believe that a young man named Kwon Min-hyuk (Lim Ji-sub) is the person responsible, and that the reason for his threatening correspondence is that he is the son of the man that Soo-hyun killed.
The big midseason reveal is that that is only half true. The photos were indeed sent by the vengeful son of the dead hit-and-run driver, but that person turns out to be Seon-yul, who has been crafting an elaborate revenge scheme against Soo-hyun for years.
Min-hyuk is the boy who survived the arson perpetrated by Soo-hyun’s cellmate.
7 of the best new Korean drama series to watch in March 2024
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The other major reveal has been another case of mistaken identity. Soo-hyun believed that the woman Soo-ho had an affair with was their neighbour, but part of Seon-yul’s carefully orchestrated plan leads her to discover that the other woman was, in fact, Yoo-ri, her closest friend.
With Seon-yul’s identity out in the open, we can finally see the full picture, flanked by the duelling extremes of grief and retribution.
Soo-hyun’s white-hot grief led to an immediate and impulsive act of bloody revenge and, while she showed no remorse for the killing, she has moved on from it, scrabbling back together what she can of her life.
On the other hand, Seon-yul’s equally passionate anger has simmered for over a decade, during which he put himself in Soo-hyun’s orbit while she was in prison and deliberately positioned himself for her to later approach him under false pretences.
All the energies of his adult life have been focused on this plan and this focus blinded him to everything else around him, including Hong Soo-jin (Yang Hye-ji), the girl who helps him and is clearly in love with him.
There is also Kim Joon (Park Hyuk-kwon), the congressman he does side jobs for who may be responsible for the death that launched this whole story in the first place. Joon is probably using Seol-yun, just as he probably used his father before him.
Wonderful World is not without its faults, but the pieces are steadily falling into place to produce what will hopefully be a satisfying finish.
Wonderful World is streaming on Disney+