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Pierce Conran

This article contains major spoilers.
4/5 stars
When it launched in December 2022, Netflix’s The Glory wasted no time showing its cards and left us no illusions about where it was heading.
Since being tormented in high school, Moon Dong-eun (Song Hye-kyo) has been seeking revenge. She has stuck to her game plan and there was never really any doubt that she would complete her vendetta.


In that respect, the show is deliberately structured just like the ancient board game Go, which has featured so prominently throughout this tale of retribution and redemption.
As Dong-eun’s ally and eventual romantic interest Joo Yeo-jeong (Lee Do-hyun) taught her back in Part 1, the purpose of the game is “building territories”.
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Using bowls of black and white stones, players seek to surround more territory than their opponent on the board – essentially trapping them. This is exactly what Dong-eun has been doing throughout her adult life.
Her 18-year campaign of revenge is one long game of Go during which she has slowly built up her territory around the vicious gang of bullies led by Park Yeon-jin (Lim Ji-yeon), who scarred her body and soul during their school days.
Of course, Yeon-jin and her depraved gang of high-society sadists didn’t know they were playing, and what’s the fun of a one-sided board game? That’s where The Glory begins to branch off into different directions after a breathless start.

The series set its pieces – or should we say stones – early on, and we know how the story (or game) has to end. But with 16 episodes to fill over two seasons, the show needed more conflict – and found it when Yeon-jin’s cadre learned they were in a game and began to fight back.
This is a narratively sound tactic, but it was undermined at times by one crucial factor – Dong-eun is too good a player. Yeon-jin is a marvellous villain, cutting through the screen with the sparkling malice of her glare, but intellectually she was never a match for the shrewder Dong-eun.
Their on-screen confrontations were filled with electric dialogue but their broader conflict was largely one-sided. Yeon-jin occasionally worms her way behind Dong-eun’s defences, such as when she ferrets out her loyal helper Kang Hyeon-nam (Yum Hye-ran), but it never felt like she had gained the upper hand.
Dong-eun is always in control, which is exciting at first and cathartic at last, but a touch humdrum in the middle.
Revenge stories with foregone conclusions are pretty common – only a fool would bet against John Wick – but in the absence of suspense these stories rely on set pieces and the satisfactory completion of their sagas.

The early episodes in Part 2 of The Glory don’t have many of those set pieces, and the catharsis is still a few episodes away, which puts a damper on proceedings – but only briefly.
Viewers’ patience will be richly rewarded once the show barrels towards the conclusion we know it’s headed to and which we desperately want it to reach.
Rather than merely kill them or send them to jail, Dong-eun’s plan is to take everything away from those who wronged her, just as they did to her.
This involves turning the group against each other and, particularly in Yeon-jin’s case, turning their own families against them.
After carefully putting everything in place, Dong-eun doesn’t really need to do much any more. She can sit back and watch as these monsters tear each other apart.
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This leads to several moment of deliciously twisted melodramatic excess, including drug-addicted artist Lee Sa-ra (Kim Hieora) experiencing a paranoid overdose and being caught on camera masturbating in front of a cross, and later stabbing the materialistic flight attendant Choi Hye-jeong (Cha Joo-young) in the neck at the funeral of their cretin friend Son Myeong-O (Kim Gun-woo).
Most effective of all is Yeon-jin cracking completely when her mother’s shaman speaks to her as though possessed by the spirit of Yoon So-hee (Lee So-e), the girl she tormented following Dong-eun and who died after she pushed her off the school’s roof.
The Glory may have ended up where we knew it would, but it was able to find new meaning in Dong-eun’s plan.
At the outset there are two camps – the oppressed and the oppressors. But later it becomes clear that there are also two other groups, which cut across the first two – mothers who give life to their children and those that leeched it from them.

Dong-eun and Yeon-jin have monstrous mothers who abandon them at their lowest moments. Both wind up in lock-up, Dong-eun’s manic alcoholic mother, Jeong Mi-hee (Park Ji-a), in a psychiatric institute and Yeon-jin’s mother, Hong Yeong-ae (Yoon Da-kyung) in jail – the same one as her daughter.
On the other side is Hyeon-nam fighting to give her daughter a chance, So-hee’s long-suffering mother still seeking justice for her child, and Yeo-jeong’s mother, Park Sang-min (Kim Jung-young), who appears before Dong-eun at her lowest moment.
After completing her plan, Dong-eun steps onto her old school’s roof, but Sang-min pleads with her to keep on living and save her son, who has been tormented by his own desire for revenge against the man who killed his father.

“I’ll be your executioner,” Dong-eun pledges to Yeo-jeong after stepping away from the edge, returning the murderous loyalty he pledged to her earlier in the show.
Revenge is usually a lonely quest, but together Dong-eun and Yeo-jeong can complete the cycle of retribution and redemption.
The Glory Part 2 is streaming on Netflix.


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Song Hye-kyo as Moon Dong-eun in a still from The Glory. Part 2 of the Netflix series sees her complete her vendetta against her high-school tormentors. Photo: Graphyoda/Netflix

Lim Ji-yeon as Park Yeon-jin in a still from The Glory. Photo: Graphyoda/Netflix.

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Lee Do-hyun as Joo Yeo-jeong in a still from The Glory. Photo: Graphyoda/Netflix.

Cha Joo-young (left) as Choi Hye-jeong and Kim Hieora as Lee Sa-ra in a still from The Glory. Photo: Graphyoda/Netflix.

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Song Hye-kyo’s character Moon Dong-eun has been thirsting for revenge since the opening episode of The Glory, and in Part 2 she achieves all her goals
The interest for viewers lies in how she avenges her torment in high school. There’s a new angle, too, on her comrade-in-arms Joo Yeo-jeong (Lee Do-hyun)


From the start of The Glory it was clear where it was heading, and in part 2 Song Hye-kyo’s character Moon Dong-eun’s long quest for revenge against her high-school tormentors is complete.


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An assessment or critique of a service, product or creative endeavour.  Film reviews, restaurant reviews, reviews of art exhibitions. (Eg. Crazy Rich Asians: an important film, yes, but a good one?)


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Review | Netflix K-drama review: The Glory Part 2 – cycle of retribution and redemption comes to a fitting close