“Lovecraft Country” Episode 6 Recap: “Meet Me In Daegu”

“Once is a coincidence. Twice is a coincidence. The third time, it’s enemy action. So here is advice from villainous Auric Goldfinger of James Bond novelist Ian Fleming on how to tell the difference between chance and a real model. If we can apply this advice to another slice of pulp fiction, Lovecraft Country is now two episodes in what could be a hot streak. It’s a little too early to tell, but after this episode and the one before it, I have more hope than ever.

Not only is this week’s episode (“Meet Me in Daegu”) an extended flashback to the events before the actual series began, but it’s not even a flashback from either of the main characters. Indeed, Atticus Freeman is just a supporting actor in a drama centered around a Ji-ah (Jamie Chung), his local love interest during the Korean War. Only, it is much more than what we see.

Much more.

In a backstory that slowly unfolds throughout the hour, we learn that Ji-ah is actually a kumiho, a nine-tailed fox spirit who can be called to inhabit in the form of a beautiful woman. to avenge the crimes of men. In Ji-ah’s case, she was called by the mother of a young woman who was raped by the older woman’s husband in order to end the abuse. Unfortunately for the two of them, she has to kill 100 men in total for the girl’s spirit to return to her body and for the kumiho to return to the supernatural realm.

Much of the interpersonal drama centers on the two women’s tumultuous relationship, as their growing love for each other is perpetually overshadowed by the mind’s unfamiliarity with the concepts; of her ideas about love watching musicals subtitled by Judy Garland at the local theater and the desire of the mother (Cindy Chang) to find her real daughter. The dozens of murders the couple conspired to commit were largely combed through until Ji-ah met Atticus Freeman and developed real feelings for him.

But these feelings are extremely complicated by the way they meet for the first time. By day Ji-ah is a nurse who treats wounded American soldiers, and a friend of hers during her shift, a woman named Young-ja (Prisca Kim) is a Communist sympathizer. One day, the entire shift is transported to an American base and lined up on their knees; someone on their shift leaked information to the enemy, and the Americans intend to find out who it is, even if they have to shoot and kill each one first. After the first nurse is executed in cold blood, the soldier’s weapon locks, and Private Freeman steps forward to perform the second execution himself. There is no hemming and hawing on his part, no too indulgent retreat in the guilt he might feel and, refreshingly, little consideration for what he does might make us feel. for him in the future. He just walked around and committed a war crime, end of story.

Only the story does not end there. Months later, Atticus finds himself in the same hospital, recovering from his own injuries. Ji-ah befriends him with the intention of seducing and killing him. During the process, however, she discovers that they share similar interests, due to the relative merits of the count of Monte Cristo and its film adaptation, emerging under the thumb of a controlling parent, and so on. Thus ignites their romance. Atticus even gets an impression of Summer stock of his uncle George at home to organize a private screening, just for the two of them.

When Ji-ah tries to take the relationship to the next level, she learns that Atticus is a virgin and that he harbors a lot of guilt for what he has done, on behalf of a country that treats him like shit. . “I did horrible things,” he says, “things that I tried to forget. And when I’m with you, it seems possible. It’s like because you see the good in me, I know it’s there. She ends up throwing him out of her home before they consummate the relationship, lest her more monstrous side take over.

But then she does something unexpected: she reveals her intention to kill him to avenge her murdered friend, a plan she abandoned when she realized her feelings for him were real, not just faked. “We’ve both done monstrous things, but that doesn’t make us monsters,” she insists.

So their relationship continues. They have a lot of sex, during which Ji-ah manages to keep her tentacle “tails” from extruding and impaling her until she lets her guard down a little too much.

When his “tails” fit into a man to consume his soul, Ji-ah also absorbs the victim’s memories. In Atticus’ case, she sees his abuse from his father Montrose, and his role in the torture to death of Young-ja. But she is also able to see his future, his strange and strange future, which ends with his death. She begs him not to return home to the United States to his own loss, now that his stay in Korea is over.

The episode ends with Ji-ah and her “mother”, with whom she has reconciled, returning to the shaman who helped summon the kumiho in the first place. “Your deadly concerns don’t make sense,” the shaman laughs. “You haven’t even become one with darkness yet. You will see countless deaths before your journey is over.

It’s an anti-climax note, of course, and in a series that has had issues figuring out how to end the episodes. But it was everything that came before me that impressed me: the bizarre complexity of Ji-ah’s character, who is part romantic with starry eyes, part devoted girl, part fish out of water. and partly tentacle monster; the no-bullshit approach to Atticus’ horrific conduct during the war; the implicit comparison between the lynching of communists in Korea and the equally brutal treatment of minorities in America; the way Ji-ah is and is not the daughter of a woman who tries her best not to like the spirit she called, because helping that spirit to devour souls is the only way for her to get his real daughter back, etc. The emotional valence of the episode is constantly changing, even at the risk of making it harder to find the hero of the show, and that’s admirable.

I still have my gripes: The CGI remains shaky, and while the gruesome visuals here are memorable, I wouldn’t call them scary exactly. But it’s a much better show than it was just two weeks ago during that scavenger hunt episode. Will next week prove that the third time is the charm?

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) written on TV for Rolling stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anywhere who will have it, really. He and his family live on Long Island.

Current Lovecraft Country Episode 6 (“Meet Me In Daegu”) on HBO Max

Current Lovecraft Country Episode 6 (“Meet Me In Daegu”) on HBO Now