Stream It Or Skip It?
Series on streaming services tend to take their own sweet time between seasons. By the time Squid Game comes back, almost 4 years will have passed, and it feels like it’s been even longer since we last saw Stranger Things. The second season of Hellbound, about a society where sinners know exactly when they’ll be sent to hell, has dropped three years after the first season. Will you remember what happened back then in order to understand what’s going on now?
HELLBOUND SEASON 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: A car pulls up to a building labeled “Yulhye Angels Haven.”
The Gist: Police detective Jin Kyeong-hoon (Yang Ik-june) comes upon Jeong Jin-soo (Kim Sung-cheol), the leader of the New Truth Society, who tells the cop about how, 20 years ago, he was told was going to hell, and was given the exact moment it would happen. That moment is now a few minutes away. He feels he doesn’t deserve to go to hell, and living with this knowledge was as hellish as what he’s about to face.
When the demons come for him and finally consume him, though, Jin-soo sees himself as various people in his young life when he was a kid. After starting to burn in hell, he suddenly finds himself back on Earth, somehow resurrected.
Meanwhile, the Arrowhead, who oppose the New Truth Society, perform another public ceremony to see if a condemned man will be forgiven or sent to hell. As the demons come out to claim their victim, a massive street fight ensues, and more than the intended sinner gets killed in the process.
Kim Jeong-chil (Lee Dong-hee), the current New Truth leader, finds his influence slipping, as his car is attacked by Arrowhead loyalists and he’s literally dragged through the streets before his driver can save him. He meets with Lee Su-gyeong, who represents the new government. She proposes that they work together to restore a sense of order in the face of the Arrowhead’s anarchy; the government would rather align themselves with “respectable frauds” like New Truth than anarchists like The Arrowhead.
Lee has knowledge that gives her government leverage: New Truth has a resurrected Park Jeong-ja (Kim Shin-rok) held captive; she can be used as the face of this new effort towards order. But Kim also knows that someone else could be resurrected: Jeong Jin-soo. And the only person who may know what’s going on, Jin Kyeong-hoon, disappeared soon after Jeong was sent to Hell eight years prior.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Take a show about the pursuit of a cult leader, like The Following, and combine it with supernatural elements, and you have Hellbound.
Our Take: It seems that in Season 2 of Hellbound, written by Choi Gyu-seok and directed by Yeon Sang-ho based on Yeon’s webtoon of the same name, is less about the people who know when they’re going to hell and the demons that chase them down at the prescribed time, and more about the society that’s resulted from this development.
While we still see people get grabbed by demons and get violently sent to the “bad place,” the drama seems to be more about two resurrected souls, Jeong Jin-soo and Park Jeong-ja; the former is a spiritual leader, the latter seems to be a regular person who became a symbol because she was the first one to be “demonstrated”.
What it seems the second season will be mostly about is the government and the New Truth trying to leverage having Park Jeong-ja to battle the Arrowhead. This makes sense for a continuation of such a high-concept, dark series. A second season of showing people getting sent to hell isn’t nearly as interesting as keeping track of who is using this new life wrinkle to their advantage. The only issue we had was keeping track of who was with which organization and what they stood for, given that it’s been three years since the first season debuted.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: We see Jin Kyeong-hoon and his daughter Hee-jeong (Lee Re), and Hee-jeong is definitely not doing well.
Sleeper Star: Hellbound has such a large cast, and such a wide-ranging story, it’s hard to find someone who stands out.
Most Pilot-y Line: Lee Dong-wook (Kim Do-yoon), who livestreams Arrowhead ceremonies, has a cultural critic on during the latest “demonstration,” and shows the group’s tented-fingers hand signal. That signal seemed weirdly childish.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Given the time between seasons, the first episode of Hellbound‘s second season may have you a bit disoriented. But once you figure out exactly what’s going on, the story that comes out of the first episode is an interesting one.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
