We’re in the penultimate week of Disney+ Hotstar’s latest Korean horror thriller, Revenant, and the show is not making it easy for us to just relax for a moment.
Our main leads are working towards the same goal, but they’re not working together. Be it Gu San Yeong, Yeom Hae Sang, or even Lee Hong Sae, every single one of them has their own goals.
At this point, all seem to be puppets in the hands of the juvenile ghost, who is a mystery itself. The closer these people get to solving the mystery of the loose-haired evil spirit, the more mysterious it seems to be.
Revenant Episode 9 Recap: Why Did Seo Mun Chun Die?
Hong Sae opens the door and sees San Yeong outside, who gives him a creepy smile and says, “You opened the door.” He turns when he hears a sound, but she disappears from the door when he turns back to her.
With bruised hands clutching the restored documents, Mun Chun tells Hong Sae that Hae Sang was right before jumping out of the window to his death. Right at that moment, San Yeong and Hae Sang reach the parking lot.
Hong Sae grabs San Yeong, accusing her. Her body gets taken over by the spirit, who demeans the loss of Mun Chun’s life. This gets Hae Sang out of his trance, and he pulls her away.
Hae Sang is very emotional and questions why the spirit had to kill Mun Chun when it could have easily taken his life. The spirit tells him that it isn’t his time yet and leaves.
The spirit, now in possession of San Yeong’s body, goes to an area bustling with nightlife. It goes to a pub and joins the other patrons of the pub as they dance and make merry.
The next morning, San Yeong wakes up in bed with her mother, having no memory of the night before. Gyeong Mun, unaware of her daughter’s predicament, is happy that she is home after a long time and lets her know it.
Gyeong Mun wonders whether she is comfortable at Hwawonjae and when she will be back home. But San Yeong distracts her with questions about her progress at the barista academy.
Gyeong Mun goes on about selling Hwawonjae, which makes San Yeong uncomfortable. She leaves halfway through the meal, unable to stomach anymore. She sees pictures from the night before when the ghost was partying after killing Mun Chun.
Other detectives tell Hong Sae that nothing turned up in any surveillance footage and that it was a suicide. They rule it out as Mun Chun being unable to cope with loneliness at the thought of his life after retirement. Hong Sae offers to be the chief mourner.
Still from Episode 9 of RevenantOn his way out, he spots San Yeong, who goes to him to surrender herself, just as he had asked. He grabs her hand with a lot of force, saying that at least that much force should be applied to bruise somebody’s wrist and throw them out of the window. No one would believe him without physical evidence.
After people leave the funeral hall, Hong Sae sees Hae Sang. He approaches the latter and asks him to apologize to Mun Chun on his behalf if he could see his ghost. He bursts out in tears, guilty over not being able to stop Mun Chun. San Yeong is outside the funeral hall, unable to go in and offer her respects.
Hae Sang goes to Mun Chun’s apartment. The place is barren, to say the least, with discarded cups of ramyeon scattered around. He goes through his cupboard and sees all the appliances he has gifted over the years stored in their packages. He also finds a bag of socks and is hit by a memory.
Shortly after his mother’s passing, Mun Chun had been by her grave. He found Hae Sang sitting there with no socks to warm his feet in the winter. Mun Chun had wrapped Hae Sang’s exposed ankles with his scarf. Since then, on every birthday, Mun Chun gifted Hae Sang a pair or a box set of socks.
Hae Sang finally breaks down. He cleans up the apartment, moves all the material from his Gang Mo room, and converts the living room of the apartment into his new room of records.
Hong Sae visits him and says that Mun Chun’s death was not suicide. This isn’t news to Hae Sang, who agrees with him and tells him that it was a murder.
Hae Sang reveals that the culprit they are after is a ghost. He gets Hong Sae up to date about the ghost’s possession of San Yeong. San Yeong had no reason to desire the death of Mun Chun, so there might be other factors at play.
Hong Sae remembers that Mun Chun was holding Lee Mok Dan’s case file. Hae Sang also remembers his phone call with Mun Chun, where he told him about the case file being restored.
Hong Sae, having no idea of the contents of the file, plans to retrace Mun Chun’s steps to find out more. Hae Sang tries to stop him as it might put his life in danger, but Hong Sae doesn’t care anymore.
He goes to the document appraisal center to meet Heon Gi. As the restoration is done on original documents, there are no copies of the information that Mun Chun received. Hong Sae tells him to contact him in case he recalls any information that might have been in the documents.
He then heads over to Geumcheon Police Station to meet Il Man, who hands him a copy of the document he had given Mun Chun. It is a declaration by Gang Mo about inheriting some items.
San Yeong wakes up at her childhood bedside with charcoal-stained hands. She follows the stains to the seating room. The stains lead her to a coat closet, and she is shocked by what she finds.
Remembering that she could see through the ghost’s eyes, Hae Sang tries to contact her. He goes to Hwawonjae in search of her and climbs a wall when she does not respond to the doorbell. He finds San Yeong staring at some charcoal scribbles, drawn by the ghost, on the closet wall and the underside of the table and chairs.
San Yeong reveals that she spends lesser time awake. She wonders whether, at that very moment, she is herself or her possessed self. San Yeong is questioning whether they are on the right path. The items they had found thus far were due to the ghost.
Hae Sang tells her that it was the method her father had found. Only by following the path his mother and Gang Mo had followed would they be able to determine where things had gone wrong and how they could remedy them.
He wonders whether she had seen the documents Mun Chun had when the ghost attacked him. She sees the document Mun Chun received from Il Man. But before she could tell Hae Sang, the ghosts threatened his life if she told Hae Sang the information. Scared, San Yeong denies seeing anything.
San Yeong searches through the house for the items her father might have inherited, considering the documents. Hong Sae reaches her mother’s house with the same documents, wondering whether Gyeong Mun knew anything about them or about Jangjin-ri.
Gyeong Mun tells him that Gang Mo mentioned Jangjin-ri a couple of times, but she did not know about anything else. He wonders whether she thought her daughter was behaving oddly. Gyeong Mun is worried but San Yeong doesn’t answer any of her calls.
San Yeong finds the box of items Gang Mo received. In there, she finds Jangjin-ri’s management ledger from 1958. She tries to call Hae Sang but hesitates, remembering the threat. There is a promissory note, the price of Mok Dan’s life. The ledger has all the information about the people paid off, including the detectives in charge of the case.
Still from Episode 9 of RevenantSan Yeong is confused about why her father had it. She remembers the list she stumbled upon in one of the cupboards that had the names of people who attended her father’s funeral and decides to find out more about him.
Hae Sang goes to meet an acquaintance of librarian Chae So Rin from the bruised suicides. There, he finds out that she had torn up a book before she passed away. The book in question, Understanding Art by Shin Seung Ju, was a self-published book with only a handful of copies, and the acquaintance was unable to find copies of the book in any other libraries.
Looking through the case files of all the people killed by the spirit, Hae Sang finds that the author of the book was a school teacher who taught at Jangjin-ri middle school. The book must contain some information that the spirit wants to hide.
Meanwhile, San Yeong goes to meet with one of the people who was present at her father’s memorial. Hong Sae follows her to her destination. The person San Yeong meets is the owner of a lodge that used to be a bed and breakfast that caught fire a decade ago—the place Hae Sang’s mother was killed at.
Gang Mo had also donated a tree to the lodge. He had been there before he died. The item buried there was the baessi daenggi. Sang Yeong leaves, followed by Hong Sae. Suddenly, she stops, unable to see anything.
The next time she gains consciousness, Hong Sae pulls her away from the path of a motorcycle. Terrified, she hops into a nearby taxi and goes back to Hwawonjae. Once there, she shuts herself in the study and wards off the door with a line of prohibition.
Revenant Episode 9 Ending Explained: Why did Gu Gang Mo Fail to Eradicate the Juvenile Ghost?
Hae Sang gets hold of the 1958 yearbook of Jangjin-ri middle school but not the book by teacher Seung Ju. In one of the pictures, he finds a drawing that resembles the one the ghost had drawn in Hwawonjae.
San Yeong realizes that she needs to be safe and protected at night, as the ghost has so far only possessed her at night or on a very cloudy day when she could not be exposed to natural light. Thinking of nights prompts her to think of the moon, and she scrambles through the pages of the ledger again.
On the other side, Hong Sae tells Hae Sang that he met the evil spirit. After San Yeong lost her vision,the ghost possessed her. She climbed into Hong Sae’s car and went to an amusement park with him. She was excited by all the rides and toys.
Hong Sae observed that she was very curious and adventurous. She seemed to be like a child who lacked affection and had severe mood swings. But he also felt that she wasn’t a child. She was also not an adult. She was an adolescent going through puberty. This information is difficult for Hae Sang to digest, as Lee Mok Dan was 10 when she died.
San Yeong goes through the ledger and matches it with the stages of the moon during that period. From the day Lee Mok Dan was kidnapped to the day her body was found, there was no full moon. But in the memory she saw when she touched the blue earthenware, she had seen a full moon.
Both San Yeong and Hae Sang reach the same conclusion. The loose-haired evil spirit is not Lee Mok Dan.
Revenant Episode 9 Review
Gu San Yeong and Yeom Hae Sang are separated again. But they do end up finding out the same thing. They would have found it faster if they had stuck together.
Gu San Yeong’s hesitation is understandable. But these would not exist if they communicated with each other. If only Yeom Hae Sang had revealed that the evil spirit is also after his blood.
On the bright side, Lee Hong Sae has joined our ghostbusters squad. Though he seems more into avenging Seo Mun Chun.
Considering the scene from the taxi after Seo Mun Chun had finished his call with Yeom Hae Sang, we were thinking along the lines of Lee Mok Dan not being the second child. The revelations in this episode are shocking, to say the least.
But then again, what if shaman Choi Man Wol had realized that the sacrifice for the juvenile ghost was not the secondborn and later sacrificed another for the ritual? That would explain the full moon and the spirit not being Lee Mok Dan.
The woman Gu San Yeong saw hanging when she touched the black rubber band could also be the evil spirit. Or she could be related to the evil spirit. This episode just shook the very foundation of the facts we built our theories.
