Granted, we were only too happy to see Ji-won’s good-for-nothing former lover Park Min-hwan (Lee Yi-kyung) and Ji-hyuk’s despicable ex-fiancée Oh Yu-ra (BoA) get their just desserts, but their deaths do leave blood on our protagonists’ hands.
They may not have pulled the trigger, but they orchestrated events behind the scenes in the hope of achieving this very outcome.
In fact, Ji-won and Ji-hyuk’s actions have more far-ranging consequences. Not only do they manage to find a pair of people to replace them in death, they ruin or almost ruin a few other lives in the process.
There is Ji-won’s covetous and fatuous best friend Jung Soo-min (Song Ha-yoon), who is pushed to become a murderess and languishes in a prison cell on the brink of madness by the show’s close.
There is also Ji-won’s put-upon colleague Yang Ju-ran (Gong Min-jeung), whose future briefly looks uncertain when she is diagnosed with the stomach cancer that Ji-won was supposed to get.
At best, Marry My Husband’s philosophy about second chances seems incomplete. In this world, second chances have to be snatched away from other people. Where the show was more level-headed was in its messaging about facing one’s fears and taking control of one’s destiny.
After years of being maligned and mistreated by an odious superior, the mousy Ju-ran eventually learns how to stand up for herself. Then, in one of the show’s climactic moments, Ji-won turns the tables on Soo-min when the latter tries to get her revenge.
Soo-min, on the lam after killing Min-hwan, hatches a plan that involves breaking into Ji-won’s flat, knocking her out with a taser and tying her up. While she gets that far in her plan, what she does not know is that Ji-won has been expecting her and training for this very scenario.
Ji-won chops her way out of her restraints and judo flips a bewildered Soo-min over her shoulders, before needling her until she inadvertently confesses to her crimes on tape.
5 of the best new Korean drama series to watch in February 2024
5 of the best new Korean drama series to watch in February 2024
In that moment, she is finally in complete control of her destiny. Throughout the series, Ji-hyuk has been hovering around the edges, darting in to save her, whether catching her in a fall or prying her out of Min-hwan’s strangling hands.
This time, she goes it alone. Knowing the danger ahead, Ji-won faces Soo-min on her own terms, and Ji-hyuk, who also knows what is going to happen, stays out of sight until the danger has passed.
After magically being transported back through time with the help of her father’s spirit, after being saved time and again by Ji-hyuk and other men, including college crush Baek Eun-ho (Lee Gi-kwang), this is the moment when Ji-won finally gains her own agency as a character.
As good a romantic pair as Ji-won and Ji-hyuk are, Ji-won’s development as a character was more cathartic than the main couple walking down the aisle.
With its familiar ingredients and bright locations and characters, Marry My Husband leaned into the classic codes of K-drama. It was clear and straightforward, while the show’s dashes of violence and its curious ethical scenarios helped to elevate its guilty pleasure trappings.
Park was bright and endearing as the time-travelling heroine and Na was suitably stalwart as her love interest, while Lee, Song and BoA were wonderfully wicked as the story’s thin-skinned villains.
However, while the story was a legible one that proceeded in easy-to-digest arcs, there were a few balls that were left hanging in the air by its close. Most of these concerned Ji-won’s relationship with her mother and the fact that her mother was also Soo-min’s stepmother.
These elements, which include the fact that Ji-won’s mother tried to kill her, were not satisfactorily resolved. Ji-won’s relationship with Min-hwan’s mother, on the other hand, who she had suffered under as a daughter-in-law in her pre-time-travel life, was given more depth.
In the end, the story was more interested in showing us relationships that Ji-won could escape from, not one she was born with. No matter how often we change where we are going, we cannot change where we come from.
Marry My Husband is streaming on Amazon Prime.