It’s wild to think that we’re only a week away from the finale of “Lies Hidden In My Garden.” This show has been hurtling toward the finish, which promises to be explosive if this week’s revelations are anything to go by. This is one of those rare shows that could have benefited from being longer because there’s just so much to unpack here. Here are this week’s most shocking twists that have us on edge for the finale!
Warning: spoilers for episodes 5-6 below.
It turns out that Park Jae Ho (Kim Sung Oh) isn’t actually a cheating scumbag, but he is a scumbag of a different variety. Moon Joo Ran (Kim Tae Hee) and Choo Sang Eun (Lim Ji Yeon) meet with Lee Soo Min’s (Yoon Ga Yi’s) pimp, who has no clue about where she is but does provide enough information to exonerate Jae Ho. His coworkers and bosses had no issue with underage prostitution, so Jae Ho had no choice but to accompany them on their trips, but he never engaged and left as soon as he could. It bothered Soo Min’s pimp to no end that they couldn’t get blackmail material on him, so they tried to stage a scene.
They had Soo Min jump out in front of Jae Ho’s car in an attempt to get him out and frame him as soliciting Soo Min. Jae Ho does get out, which is when Soo Min’s pimp snaps the incriminating picture that has haunted Joo Ran. But Jae Ho does something unexpected. He whispers something in Soo Min’s ear. Something that leaves her shaken. Then he just drives off without a care. Perhaps things would have been very difficult if Jae Ho hadn’t said anything at all and merely left the scene. But he didn’t, and what he unleashed in Soo Min in that moment changed everything.
The pimp mentions that Soo Min refused to mention what Jae Ho had told her, which leaves Sang Eun at a dead end. What’s worse, Joo Ran’s furious with her because it’s looking like her husband is innocent. She tries to accuse Sang Eun of dragging her on a wild-goose chase to solicit money from her, but Sang Eun refuses to bear the blame. She points out that Joo Ran came to her. She could have gone to her husband with her suspicions but sought out a stranger instead. She tells Joo Ran that if she had this much faith in her husband, she should have gone to him from the start instead of coming to her. Joo Ran trembles at that, and Sang Eun laughs, realizing that Joo Ran actually doesn’t trust herself. That hits a nerve, and Joo Ran slaps her.
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The women part on a sour note, and worse, it looks like Sang Eun actually is pregnant now. She’d been faking it at first, but it’s real after all. Still, Joo Ran isn’t without a heart because when Sang Eun collapses, Joo Ran discreetly takes care of her hospital fees. But Sang Eun’s got bigger problems. Her landlady’s about to evict her, the case of her husband Kim Yoon Beom (Choi Jae Rim) is about to be closed as suicide instead of murder, which means she won’t get any payouts from his numerous life insurance policies, and it’s looking a lot like she killed him. Sang Eun keeps flashing back to drugging Yoon Beom on the night of his death and driving his car to a lake. She swapped him back into the driver’s seat and pushed him and the car into the lake, where he was found. If Yoon Beom wasn’t dead beforehand, and if there’s nothing we’re missing here, then Sang Eun truly did kill him. But what took her from a woman patiently collecting evidence to arrest him to one who killed him? The show doesn’t answer that this week, but we sure get all the answers Joo Ran wanted.
Joo Ran’s first thought upon returning home is to come clean to Jae Ho and apologize. He’s furious that she’s been digging into him behind his back and explains away his departure the night Yoon Beom died as visiting his sick parents. In true gaslighting fashion, he pins it all on Joo Ran, saying that he even has to visit his parents in secret from her because she’s sooo unstable. This man is a walking red flag. Yet, Joo Ran still falls over her feet trying to accommodate him, much to the visible disgust of her son Park Seung Jae (Cha Sung Jae). Just like his father, Seung Jae blames Joo Ran for not fighting harder against what she’s told by him and Jae Ho. While Joo Ran tries to figure out what he means, he storms off.
But Joo Ran’s doubts aren’t so easily assuaged. When she finds one of Soo Min’s super cute 3D flowers from her phone case in her home, Joo Ran knows that Soo Min’s been here. She digs in the backyard like a crazy woman and refuses to let it go when Jae Ho tries to gaslight her. When Seung Jae arrives on the scene, he also snaps and yells that he smelled the same smell that Joo Ran did. Jae Ho finally crumbles, and the ugly truth comes out.
That day in the parking lot, Jae Ho looked at Soo Min like she was dirt and told her that things like her should never have been born. Soo Min, at 15, simply couldn’t get that out of her head. It shook her bad enough to want revenge. So she targeted Seung Jae, pretending to be a classmate and inviting herself to his home. Having no idea, Seung Jae let her in. Then, Soo Min turned ugly, lying that she had slept with his father and was pregnant and about to become his stepmother. It’s worth noting that Seung Jae believed her really easily. He tries to make her leave, but she refuses, and without thinking, he shoves her down the stairs. He thinks he’s killed her. Jae Ho comes home right then and shoves Soo Min’s body in Seung Jae’s closet. The boy literally sleeps with a dead woman in his room the whole night. The next day, Jae Ho buried her in the backyard. It was her body Joo Ran found before Jae Ho moved the corpse to a ravine, where the police discovered it.
Joo Ran’s in shock as Jae Ho yells that he did this for their family—for Seung Jae. Joo Ran wants to take her son to the police for him to confess because she knows that this secret is ruining Seung Jae. But Jae Ho refuses—only he doesn’t have a choice because Seung Jae secretly moves out that night. Joo Ran’s neighbor and ally Oh Hae Soo (Jung Woon Sun) tips her off, and Joo Ran races to him, saying that she’ll protect him. But Seung Jae reveals that Jae Ho didn’t give her the entire truth.
It turns out that Soo Min didn’t die from her fall down the stairs. The next morning, right before Seung Jae was about to head to school, he found that Soo Min was alive. Seung Jae was relieved but needed to hide her presence from Joo Ran, so he promised to come back in a couple hours once Joo Ran was gone and let her out. And he nearly did. He literally skipped school so he could do it. But he comes back to see his father killing Soo Min. Jae Ho literally digs the grave first and strangles Soo Min to death. Seung Jae watches in shock as his father buries her in the backyard. Joo Ran’s face hardens as she hears the news until she’s steely-eyed, finally seeing her husband for who he is: a manipulator with no remorse until he gets what he wants. The next thing we know, the preview shows her calling Sang Eun up and asking her to do to Jae Ho what she did to Yoon Beom: to kill him.
Whew, that’s a lot! This has been a really fascinating character study of Jae Ho through every character’s POV. I wish we’d gotten to see more of the earlier days of Joo Ran’s marriage prior to her moving to their current home. Was he always like this, and are we seeing Joo Ran finally undo years of conditioning and gaslighting over the course of her marriage? Or did this start after the death of Joo Ran’s sister? And does that death have to do with any of this? With the show setting up both women to work together to murder Jae Ho and cover up each other’s crimes, we’re heading into really dark territory. “Lies Hidden in My Garden” has been living up to its title so far! Wonder how many more secrets the finale will uncover!
Source: Soompi