A man is feeding the old woman, while the others discuss why she drew a face now after all these years of drawing locations. They refer to other candidates for the Messiah, who were taken to the hospital and experimented on. The man feeding the old woman turns out to be the ‘father’. He tells the others that they should find joy in being tested. Their faith should not need any evidence. All of them agree. One by one they kiss the old woman on the cheek and leave. ‘Father’ asks Seo Hwa-jung if she has seen a photo album in the house. She says no. Direct Kim gets a call from Hwa-jung. She says she has a gift for him and directs him to a large box in a cabinet. He opens it to find a gun and some darts. She wants him to use it to bring Ji-hyo to her, unharmed. If he does so, he will become a team leader in the NPC. Ji-hyo, Bo-ra and gang are on the way to Jeonju when their car breaks down. As they wait, Ji-hyo gets a call from Direct Kim. She tells him they are going to the psychiatric hospital. Right then, Cap injures his hands and the responsibility for driving ends up on Ji-hyo’s shoulders. Detective Kim and Oh Se-hee visit the house of the officer in charge of the mass suicide case. She tells them it used to be a nursing home but was closed when this happened. She was looking into the divine light church and their pastor, but suddenly the higher-ups told her to close the case. Thanks to Ji-hyo’s abysmal driving, the group get lost in the jungle and the car’s tire gets stuck in a patch of mud. They walk the rest of the way to the hospital, to find the main gate locked. Ji-hyo and Dong-hyuk jump over it but before the others can, a new set of cars enters. NPC members take up positions across the place. Phillip goes up to the ones standing by the gate and asks for help with the car. While he distracts them, Bo-ra and Cap sneak inside. The guards go with Phillip to the car, where another NPC member — a young girl — arrives. When she realised Phillip doesn’t know how to drive, she asks who he came with. While other NPC members chant the Cleansing Prayer in the parking lot, Ji-hyo and Bo-ra take a video. Phillip soon calls Cap for help, pretending that they were travelling together. Cap and Dong-hyuk head back to the car. Ji-hyo has a theory that both Si-guk and Direct Kim’s daughter were kidnapped twice, once by aliens and once by people. They notice people loading long boxes into a truck. While Ji-hyo says she will check out the truck, Bo-ra sneaks inside the building through a window. She finds a lab coat. Meanwhile, Phillip is in more trouble with the young girl who has searched the car and realised he was with a group of people. Luckily, Cap and Dong-hyuk aren’t far off. Wearing the lab coat and pushing a nurse’s cart, Bo-ra explores the hospital from the inside. When a group of NPC members suddenly arrive, pushing an empty bed, Bo-ra hides inside a room but it turns out to be the one they were headed for. She holds the door shut even as they try pushing it open. Right at that time, Cap and Dong-hyuk manage to take both cars and Phillip and escape. The girl shoots at them and then calls Code 17 on a walkie talkie. All of the hospital staff leave to attend the call, including the ones outside Bo-ra’s door. Inside the room, Bo-ra makes a shocking find — there are multiple patients in beds, seemingly unconscious, all of them with VR headsets on. She communicates this to Ji-hyo and says that since they are all women, the men are probably inside the truck. Bo-ra finds a door to another room inside where star light is projected on everything. There are flowers on a bed and a mantel with numerous photographs. A voice startles her and she finds that the ‘father’ is in the room. He says it is his hospital. He takes her phone and stamps on it. He says they should take turns asking questions. Bo-ra asks what place this is, to which he responds it is where he first met his wife. He asks if she was the one who took the photo album, to which she admits. She asks what he wants to do with all these people who have had some form of alien contact. His reply is, “Salvation”. As they talk, Bo-ra secretly opens up a bottle of ethyl alcohol and pours it near the photographs. ‘Father’ says that he is confessing all of this to Bo-ra only because he is going to kill her anyway. He calls for someone on a walkie talkie. Nonchalantly, Bo-ra lights a cigarette. In a flash, she throws it over to the photographs which burst into flame. ‘Father’ gets distracted and Bo-ra escapes. Ji-hyo notices Bo-ra is in trouble, gets into the truck and calls out to her. Bo-ra gets in and they drive but end up blocked by the gate. Bo-ra manages to climb out the window and over the gate but Ji-hyo is still in the truck. She tells Bo-ra to go ahead and herself gets out of the truck and tries fighting people off with a wrench. Bo-ra runs through the woods, looking for the car. She calls the boys but two NPC guards suddenly find her. Just as they are tying her hands, a car turns up and the guards get shot with darts. It is Direct Kim. Ji-hyo is running through the woods but ends up surrounded by guards on all sides. The young NPC girl arrives in a car and shoots a dart at Ji-hyo, who gets woozy. The young girl recognised Ji-hyo from the drawing and calls her the Messiah, after which all the members fall to their knees, calling her “Your Holiness”. Ji-hyo falls unconscious. Elsewhere, a nurse looks at a patient. A man sitting nearby asks the patient why he would come all the way to Bangkok to commit suicide. The camera pans and we see Lee Si-guk lying on a hospital bed.
The Episode Review
Episode 6 has slight pacing issues once again, with things being slower than before. The investigation of the psychiatric hospital, while gripping, took a while to really get going. Apart from that, it’s a thrilling episode that keeps you wanting to watch ahead. The hospital setting is effectively creepy and the realisation of all the people kept there, suitably horrific. The character of the ‘father’ too is equal parts fascinating and spooky, with all his twisted dialogues about salvation. Overall, the show is creating a vivid picture of cults and their blind devotion. I wonder if the young girl we see in the NPC is Direct Kim’s daughter. She seems the right age. With four episodes to go, there are still a lot of questions to be answered. Particularly, the overarching connection to aliens. Here’s hoping that the dots start to connect.
