Recap "Grid (2022)" Episode 3

Following up from last week, Sae-ha manages to extricate himself from the situation by claiming he was just helping to wash Sun-wool’s tumbler. Ooh, Sae-ha swapped it out with an identical one! Smart.

He hands the original to Sae-byuk, asking her to lift the fingerprints so that he can enter the restricted-access 13th floor. She’s wary of his true intentions that he won’t reveal, but she ends up agreeing to help on the condition that he shares whatever information he obtains with her. Else, she’s reporting this to Sun-wool.

Sae-byuk creates a replica of Sun-wool’s palm, then applies it onto Sae-ha’s. Returning to the office, Sae-ha uses the replica to access the 13th floor, heading into the data storage room that he’d previously seen Sun-wool enter.

He finds the box of evidence, then transfers the data from one of the floppy disks to his phone. Hightailing it out of there, he hacks into the CCTV system to superimpose Sun-wool’s image over the footage of himself.

In another drama, I’d probably be skeptical of how many skills Sae-ha possesses, and how adept he is at them. Here, however, I’m convinced that it’s very much plausible, given his single-minded pursuit of the Ghost. He’s been working towards this for ages, biding his time and slowly setting up the chess pieces for the day he can finally call checkmate.

Later that night, Sae-ha watches the footage he’d downloaded from the floppy disk. It’s CCTV footage of a Ghost appearance in 1997, and we see her materialize in a research institute to accost a man. She presses one of her glowing discs to the man’s chest, causing him to disintegrate right in front of his young child, and then she disappears.

A video of the man’s autopsy reveals that his body was grotesquely burnt, with pieces flaking off. There are also witness interviews from the incident, and one of the witnesses was Sun-wool, who had personally taken the child to the hospital herself. It’s clear the child was Sae-ha; in the present, he’s tormented by the video clips.

Sae-ha shows Sae-byuk the footage of the Ghost’s appearances in various countries, and she’s perplexed. How did the Ghost appear in so many countries, all within a ten-minute time frame? And why did she travel to those places?

To that last question, Sae-ha answers that the Ghost was the one who set up the Grid, saving mankind. Yet she also killed a man in cold blood, and aided a murderer in the present day.

Sae-byuk watches the video of the man’s murder, and she recognizes the glowing disc from her fight with the Ghost. She shows Sae-ha the scar on her forearm, but neither knows why she didn’t die like the man had.

Sae-byuk wonders why the man, a janitor at the research institute, was killed. Did he perhaps try to stop the Ghost from building the Grid? In that case, then for the sake of humanity…

Interrupting, Sae-ha demands to know if that justifies killing a person. It’s the dilemma of whether sacrificing one for the greater good is acceptable — two-thirds of mankind, or one child’s father?

I find it heartbreaking that Sae-ha can’t even resent the Ghost fully, because he might not be alive today if not for the Grid. Despite his steely determination, he’s just a lost child looking for an explanation as to his father’s death, because he doesn’t understand why he had to lose him.

Astutely, Sae-byuk realizes that if the Ghost can travel through time and space, then she could have facilitated Ma-nok’s escape without ever having to show up. So why did she? It would have been easier had Sae-byuk never learnt of her identity, so why did the Ghost attack her?

I’m wondering the same too. Is it a limitation — that the Ghost can’t overexert herself by time-traveling too often — or is it an intentional choice? The Ghost is obviously working towards a larger goal, though it’s not clear what that is yet. Perhaps her motives don’t run counter to our protagonists, even though it may seem that way on the surface; maybe she’s maneuvering them into a situation she’s setting up.

At the noodle restaurant, undercover Bureau agents stake out the building for Ma-nok. As expected, he returns to his hideout to grab money and supplies. It sparks a chase, but Ma-nok manages to lose his pursuers by getting onto a train — or so he thinks, because the agents soon infiltrate his surroundings, keeping an eye out for the Ghost.

A hooded woman enters the train carriage and stands next to Ma-nok, drawing the agents’ attention. Ma-nok makes a run for it at the next stop, and the agents give chase, barely managing to catch up to him and grab him by the collar…

And then everything rewinds back to the moment Ma-nok entered the train. This time, though, the Ghost is behind him. She yanks his bag from him and pulls his jacket off him, revealing the tracking devices that the agents had planted.

The pair manage to lose their trails, walking through an underground train tunnel. It seems like she’s leading him somewhere, until a metal grate suddenly drops down behind Ma-nok — and then suddenly the Ghost is on the other side of the grate. Realizing he’s trapped, Ma-nok angrily batters against the grate and shouts for help, all while the Ghost calmly enjoys a bar of chocolate and a bottle of soda.

Whoa, the Ghost played Ma-nok like a fiddle! I wonder why she set her sights on him, and what she wants from him. If she has power so immense that it was capable of saving mankind, and yet she lay low for the next fifteen years, there has to be something important about Ma-nok to make her reappear after all that time.

The thing I find most compelling about the Ghost is that it’s still unclear whether she’s friend or foe. She seems to be exacting vigilante justice, yet it could be for the world’s safety just as much as it could be for her own self-interest. While she’s displayed the capacity for the reprehensible act of murder, I wonder if she views it as an inevitability or if it eats away at her conscience.

I really feel for Sae-ha, and I’m glad that he’s teamed up with Sae-byuk so he no longer has to fight this arduous battle alone. It’s one thing to witness your parent being killed, and another thing entirely to have the world revere your parent’s murderer as mankind’s saviour.

The Ghost must have had a reason for killing Sae-ha’s father, but can that reason justify murder? For that matter, can anything justify murder? And yet, if the Ghost had chosen not to set up the Grid on the back of a person’s sacrifice, countless people would have died due to that inaction. It’s clear our characters take different stances on this issue, and I hope the drama continues to explore this conflict further.