Shadow Detective (형사록) is a mystery-crime Korean drama series directed by Han Dong-hwa and stars Lee Sung-min, Jin Goo, Kyung Soo-jin, and Lee Hak-Joo, alongside other cast members.
Releasing at 1:30 PM IST, Shadow Detective Episode 8 (finale) premiered on Disney+ Hotstar on November 16, 2022, with a runtime of 61 minutes. The show picks up with the dysfunctional life led by veteran detective Taek-rok (Lee Sung-min), for whom the image of his nearing retirement is his sole inspiration. Pulling himself through his closing days at the police station, he’s soon dragged into receiving a series of prank calls leading up to a mystery involving the murder of his younger colleague.
Will his team, including the new and much younger leader than him, Kuk Jin-han (Jin Goo), Lee Sung-a (Kyung Soo-jin), and Song Kyung-chan (Lee Hak-joo) find the actual culprit before Taek-rok is wrongfully implicated for the murder?
Disney+ Hotstar describes the series as :
WHEN TAEK-ROK, A DETECTIVE NEARING RETIREMENT, GETS A THREATENING CALL AND IS FALSELY CHARGED WITH MURDER, HE DESPERATELY ATTEMPTS TO RECALL THE PAST.
-Shadow Detective Episode 8 Contains Spoilers-
After fleeing the police, Taek-rok is on the run, and Jin-han brazenly warns Sung-a and Kyung-chan about being careful. The police keep an eye out on Jiwoo’s residence in case her father ever turns up there. Jin-han gives him squad orders to shoot on sight in an emergency since Taek-rok has a gun on him.
Sung-a reaches out to Taek-rok before he leaves to find out Jin-han’s truth, while the other confronts An Hyun-woo and claims to leave him be only if he hands over all information about the development committee members. Taek-rok, however, can’t seem to make sense of why Jin-han is working with Chairman Jang.
Being the team leader on the case, Jin-han expands his search for Taek-rok and keeps an eye out for Sung-a and Kyung-chan’s actions. The two lead his team astray to the tower while Chief Gwang-su approaches the new acting Chief and hands over the evidence against Jin-han in Detective Bae’s murder case.
His place is searched, and Detective Bae’s phone is retrieved. Chief Gwang-su is pulled in for questioning regarding Hyun-seok’s death and their corrupt ties. He confesses that Hyun-seok was associated with Mr. Cheon while Detective Kwak Sangkyu was with Ma San-gu as per his orders. Without letting a word out about the whereabouts of the slush fund, he still astounds Detective Han with all the other major confessions he’s made after turning himself in.
Eventually, the reason is revealed to the audience in a scene before Gwang-su’s interrogation. The veteran detective revisits the old place where he shared some warm memories with Detective Bae, Chief Gwang-su, and Hyun-seok in the early days before relocating to Seoul and before everything went downhill. He meets Gwang-su again and grieves the loss of the other two members of their inner circle, who often craved the good old days.
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Taek-rok feels like they let both of them down and need to take responsibility for the same. Leaving Gwang-su’s company abruptly, he asks him to persevere and stay alive. Soon, Mr. Cheon’s secret ledger exposing the corrupt ties between the police and the Geumo development committee is revealed to the public. It seems to be former Chief Gwang-su’s doing and was otherwise kept under wraps by the prevailing police force.
Jin-han is also brought in for interrogation. Later, Taek-rok’s old associate hands him over information on Jin-han, and he starts looking into the supposed suicide case of Choi Sunghoon, the accountant of a company that functioned under Chairman Jang. Tracing his connections with Jin-han, Taek-rok speculates whether Sunghoon was his spy and the likeliness of him being murdered instead. As soon as he glances over Jin-han’s old pictures of the academy, he recalls appearing as a guest lecturer for the aspirants and speaking to Jin-han, again feeling like all of it’s his fault.
He heads back to Mokro Tavern, wondering if Hyun-seok left him anything after all since he’d planned to meet him the next day before the fateful incident occurred. The Tavern’s owner gives him Hyun-seok’s burner phone, and he starts working on the combinations to figure out the passcode to unlock it. Jin-han is let out of custody due to a lack of evidence, and he’s instantly back on the job to bring in Sung-a.
Taek-rok finally unlocks the burner phone, with the passcode being related to him, and on the phone’s cloud, he finds a recording titled “Kook Jin-han.” The same has proof of Jin-han murdering Hyun-seok. Jin-han threatens Sung-a to reveal Taek-rok’s place of hiding. Kyung-chan informs his senior about it. And now it’s Taek-rok’s turn to turn the game around on Jin-han’s head.
Shadow Detective Episode 8 Ending
Bursting out on Chairman Jang, Jin-han tells him that this is his matter now and that either he or Taek-rok will survive. Taek-rok tries to comfort him by handing over the footage and saying he can still turn things around for himself. The younger detective, however, is overcome by anguish and questions Taek-rok why he had to enter his life and make things worse for him.
Speaking from personal experience, Taek-rok guides him to return to his family because otherwise, he’d keep building up the mountain of his wrongdoings which would only become his greatest regret ever. He also mentions that being a detective isn’t cut out for both of them, and Jin-han admits that being a cop was the loneliest task of his life right before getting shot.
As Taek-rok holds him up, the younger cop hopes they will be friends in the next life. While the senior cop dials for an emergency, his biggest nightmare strikes again as he receives a call from the same sinister number.
Shadow Detective Episode 8 Review
In the last episode of the season, Jin Goo pulls his best delivery yet, painting his character’s (Jin-han) heartbreaking scenario of being entrapped in his helplessness and desperation to get out of this vicious cycle. Since the beginning, the tonality of the series has been shrouded behind corrupt wrongdoings that have severely hampered the lives of the police force.
Whether one accepts it or not, each of the counterparts on the police squad was ultimately a victim of the system designed to bring them apart and leave them with no choice. It’s essential to note that despite the number of face-offs between Taek-rok and Jin-han, neither of them is a hero or a villain; they’re just people suffering the brunt of the higher-ups engaged in their maze of politics and preying on others’ lives.
I’d previously mentioned in a review that I wanted to see the two leading detectives as friends instead of rivals, and that’s exactly what they wanted for each other too. However, life is a paradox out of their control, leaving them with no escape. The storyline doesn’t sugarcoat or glamorize the job of a police officer; rather, it sheds light on how isolating it can be.
Taek-rok chose to turn inwards and blame himself for everything, while Jin-han chose to target everyone around him. Both extreme coping mechanisms point to their need to team up and work it out together, but their basic dilemma is that their job forces them to believe that they must go it alone, which is their ultimate crisis.
Lee Sung-min’s Taek-rok and Jin Goo-‘s Jin-han have shared endless similarities since the series’ onset, and it seems to be a very intentional play in terms of their characterizations. They’re both presented as mirror reflections of each other, except for their age differences, and even the characters acknowledge the same throughout the episodes. Together, they could’ve given the system a run for its money, but they’re both victims of their circumstances, thus making their respective character designs extremely humane.
Another memorable aspect of the series has to be the dignity with which the actions are envisioned in the k-drama. The way even the police handle a weapon like a gun is so calculated, and the danger posed by the same is accentuated and hinted at by its restrained utilization in action. However, conversely, if you pick up any western counterpart of the same genre, you’ll see ample visions of the weapon as if it were a mere toy to be played with and not a piece of life-threatening equipment.
Until the end, the series has kept its action majorly cerebral, which is my biggest takeaway from it. While not all characters are unpacked with great attention, it still didn’t turn into a lacking aspect because our prime attention was driven toward the two characters who rather seem to be alter egos of each other. When Taek-rok attempts to guide and save Jin-han, it almost seems to be a metaphysical representation of him wanting to save himself. Yet, his inability to do so is his actual enemy, and that’s the beauty of it all.
Shadow Detective Episode 8 is now streaming on Disney+ Hotstar.
Also Read: Shadow Detective Episode 7 Recap and Review: Taek-rok is Cornered