Recap

Backing up in time a little, red-thread zombie lies in its hiding space, remembering everyone treating it poorly except Yi Yong.

When Yi Yong’s mom shows up it hides further and hears her talking to a box of the dad’s stuff. She tells the Dad about Yi Yong wanting to know if he suffered and tells him to tell Yi Yong himself. The zombie cries and its heart beats.

Forward in time, Chu Ying and Yi Yong look for the zombie. Yi Yong remembers it couldn’t leave because of the power of the human heart. They find it at the motorcyclist’s parent’s home. The body forced it to go there, where it prostrated itself in front of them before leaving.

The zombie is dropping red threads and deteriorating, though Chu Ying can’t see them. It explains that it was created from the hearts of people, but they vanished. We get a POV shot of the river flowing over it, and the city getting built. It came to see Yi Yong because two years ago it received an incomplete word with the same power as the heart of the people who first made him. 

The zombie hands Yi Yong a burnt piece of calligraphy paper from the accident. It wants Yi Yong to release it using the power of the heart. Yi Yong remembers his grandfather’s client saying something similar and doesn’t understand.

Then he remembers being with his grandfather at a funeral for a kid. The kid’s brother was there, bruised and sad. He sobbed when he looked at Yi Yong’s grandfather’s writing.

Yi Yong feels he’s too stupid, and brings out a box of words from his grandfather’s classes so the zombie can pick one. Words fly everywhere, there are red threads and smoke. Yi Yong writes something and the zombie lights up from inside. 

It leaves, telling Yi Yong it really liked him. Chu Ying tells Yi Yong that she gave him CPR at the accident, mildly horrifying him. She and the police then find the motorcyclist’s body under the bridge. 

Yi Yong calls, wanting to know if she saw his dad’s body at the accident. She did, but lies and says she didn’t. He tells her to let the motorcyclist’s parents see the body, so they don’t guess. Chu Ying suggests it to her boss.

Chu Ying and Yi Yong search the river together, finding a stone statue too heavy to lift. Yi Yong says it’s an empty shell now.

Chu Ying solves the case after the loser pharmacist posts online. She tracks down the doctor who was the main bully and discovers he slipped the motorist a diuretic that interacted with the blood pressure meds. He fell into a coma, crashed, and died.

Chu Ying sends Yi Yong the statue, which he doesn’t care for, and gets praised at work.

Guang Yan is back! And his Dad is unemployed! So he takes a job in the school medical lab for money! And he moves in next door to Yi Yong! With the creepy older lady!

Guang Yan and Yi Yong meet again and it’s epic. Guang Yan’s father starts a noodle shop in front of the house and Yi Yong does the calligraphy for it. Guang Yan takes handwritten flyers to pass out at school.

Yi Yong reunites with his old friends, learning his mom urged them not to see him after a certain amount of time. Yi Yong thinks his friends were his two subscriptions to his comic, but we learn they only had one. WHO IS THE OTHER SUBSCRIPTION? (It’s obvious, right?)

Guang Yan keeps seeing dried petals on the ground at his feet. When he picks them up his friends don’t see them and think he’s doing finger hearts. He goes home and joins his father, Yi Yong, and Yi Yong’s mother for noodles. He sees falling petals. Then he notices Yi Yong sees them too.

Guang Yan chases after Yi Yong, arguing about whether he saw it or not. Yi Yong punches Guang Yan and sees a lady under a blossoming tree.

Thoughts

I’ve half-reconsidered. I think those aren’t red threads coming out of the zombie, but veins that carry blood to and from the heart. Really, I want to think they are both because it’s fun when things have multiple interpretations.

But one of the themes about this show, which I’m getting more clarity on with this watch, is about the heart. The long-ago people who somehow created the statue spirit did so with the power of their feelings. It connected with the body because of the power of the motorcyclist’s feelings for his parents. Feelings so strong the body couldn’t let go even after the statue-spirit inhabited it. 

Not to mention the first episode, with Yi Yong copying the Heart Sutra and his grandfather accusing his calligraphy of having no heart. 

We’ve even got Guang Yan making a finger heart in this episode. Hearts everywhere! ?So it makes sense that those are blood veins.

A really interesting conflict in this show is between Yi Yong and his mom. She doesn’t want him to see his Dad’s body and didn’t want his friends to see him lying in a coma. Yet Yi Yong himself has been all about facing a painful reality. He wants to see his dad, he wants the motorcyclist’s parents to see the body, and he wants Chu Ying to find out the truth behind the motorcyclist’s death no matter what it proves. 

Since Yi Yong’s mom is awesome and smart and strong, there’s not a real negative connotation to her actions. I can’t remember where this theme goes exactly, so I’m looking forward to paying better attention this time and seeing where it goes.

Also, yay! Guang Yan is back! He and Yi Yong’s antagonism is a delight.

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Oh No! Here Comes Trouble is currently available in the US on iQIYI.