In Season 2 of the Netflix drama Weak Hero, Park Ji-hoon returns as Yeon Si-eun, model student and frequent target of a bullying culture that runs rampant within South Korean schools. Or at least he was a frequent target. In “Class 2” of Weak Hero, which is based on a Korean webtoon of the same name, Si-eun has transferred to a new school, where the events of Season 1 – and the rumors of what happened to Si-eun and his friends’ tormentors – have followed. Because the bullies at Eunjang High School are part of the same hierarchy of teenage delinquents as the last one, a group known as “The Union.” And they just aren’t gonna leave Si-eun to his studies.
Opening Shot: Si-eun’s voiceover returns, live from his thoughts. “What I have to do…I have to catch everybody if they start to go over a cliff.” This is heard over artful slow-motion footage of a fight, full of participants we will come to know.
The Gist: Most of what Si-eun expresses in his voiceover is directed at Ahn Su-ho (Choi Hyun-wook), who in Season 1 was the “Hero” to Si-eun’s “Weak” until the script was flipped and Su-ho ended up attacked, seriously hurt, and rendered comatose. Here in Weak Hero Season 2, even while silently attached to machines in his recovery room, Su-ho continues to inspire Si-eun. He learned to defend himself. But he bears the cost as he faces a tough new high school alone.
He’d rather just live inside his head. Compose notes to Su-ho, study for his college exams, and not worry about what Choi Hyo-man (Yoo Su-bin) is up to as Eungang’s chief bully pushes around a wide-eyed type named Seo Jun-tae (Choi Min-young). But in Weak Hero, high school bullying is portrayed as endemic. Powerful groups are enabled by administrators; teachers’ protests against fights in class are largely ignored. Si-eun sees Hyo-man and his minions manipulating Jun-tae into stealing students’ phones – The Union controls a black market economy within the school system – and humiliating him in stairwells. Si-eun could step in. What he and Su-ho encountered at their last school – and how they handled it – has given him a reputation. But at least initially, he’s too zoned-out to care about Jun-tae’s well-being. “Why can’t everyone just leave me alone?” And that includes Si-eun’s preoccupied parents.
But Si-eun won’t be left alone. Jun-tae’s Hyo-man problem will continue. And while there is the potential for allyship with Park Hu-min (Ryeoun), another Eunjang student, there is also a new Union-affiliated junior gangster to worry about, Geum Seon-je (Lee Jun-young), and soon Si-eun’s application of his math studies to the challenge of daily survival in his high school hallways – “Newton’s Second Law: force is equal to mass times acceleration” – will again become a major factor. No matter how much he would wish to remain uninvolved, he can see how everything will play out. The bullying will reach him, and he will be forced to react. “I called my classmate a coward,” Si-eun tells Su-ho in his thoughts, in reference to Jun-tae. “I’m more of a coward than he is.”
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Han Jun-hee, who serves as creative director of Weak Hero, also wrote and directed two seasons of D.P., a military drama with its own exploration of bullying within Korean culture. And Bloodhounds features Woo Do-hwan and Lee Sang-yi as two friends who use their boxing skills to battle loan sharks who prey on the weak.
Our Take: Since the start of Weak Hero, Si-eun’s stoicism has been superpowered. And in turn Park Ji-hoon’s – you just had to wonder when the actor was gonna break out the big guns in reaction to Si-eun’s torment. When that finally happened – the bullied math student bringing a textbook around in a wide arc, where it met with the smug face of bully Jeon Yeong-bin (Kim Su-gyeom) – it unleashed an entire arc of both additional violence and further personal empowerment. But with Season 2 of Weak Hero, Park has returned Si-eun to such a stoic temperament, his fierce stares are initially enough to shut down the bullies before they even try anything. So again, you gotta ask yourself: when is Hyo-man, the latest bully to cross Si-eun’s path, gonna get a book upside his own skull?
The second season of Weak Hero is also expanding on the influence of The Union, which is interesting, as it represents a criminal structure developed and maintained entirely by teens. The adults in the lives of S-eun and his peers are portrayed as distracted, deluded by assumptions, and mostly checked-out on young peoples’ true feelings. It’s up to kids to fight back against more aggressive kids, which plays back into Si-eun’s thought process. We hear him reasoning out how the network of bullying works, how it feeds Union activities, and when the time comes, how he will counteract it. Behind his bowl cut and stoic mask, he’s always considering the threats he and his fellow students have to live with, just to try and fulfill their class requirements. We like the tension this sets up in Weak Hero, and how it threatens to break from where the bullying crowd least expects it.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: “Let’s not cross the line.” During a brand-new confrontation, Si-eun channels the training he learned from Su-ho, and what his friend said to him way back at the beginning of Weak Hero Season 1.
Sleeper Star: Yoo Su-bin, who joins Weak Hero as Choi Hyo-man, is very good at playing the bully. Hyo-man is all gold chains and swagger when he’s picking on people in front of his crew. But Hyo-man is all subservience around the more powerful forces to which he answers.
Most Pilot-y Line: “I heard he transferred here after killing some kid” – the rumor mill is raging at Eunjang, Si-eun’s new high school. And while it’s not fully accurate, the gossip still becomes a wall around him.
Our Call: Stream It. Weak Hero finds an expectant tone between the ruminating of Yeon Si-eun’s internal monologue and the bursts of violence that regularly erupt in its educational spaces. In this series, the bullies are monstrous. But they can’t stuff the power of self-confidence in a locker entirely.
Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.
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