I’ll write my responses out here to Welmaris because it’s easier for me.
@Welmaris said:
It is during the act of lighting the candles on her birthday cake that Eun Tak realizes that her mother is dead. Eun Tak, her ability see others beyond death, and flame will be tied together throughout this drama.
Yes, I agree, if Kim Shin has the ability to see the future and read a person’s fate, then EunTak’s corresponding gift is to see dead people and animals. I think that their ability/gift are connected because death is everybody’s future anyway.
Yes, the flame is a constant motif, just like the butterfly and the flowers (be it on the Queen’s ring or the gift to Euntak).
However, it’s not so much the lighting of the candles that made EunTak realize that her mother was dead but the extinguishing of the flame on the match. If you watch that scene, there were thin tendrils of smoke rising when she looked up to talk to her mother, and she stopped.
Why am I making this distinction? It’s because it foreshadowed how she summoned Kim Shin later in the episode. She lit her birthday candles, then blew them. In his side of the world, smoke came out of his fingers. IIRC, it was a pattern in the story. Whenever she extinguished the flame, she summoned him.
The music starts. “And I’m here…” I’ve seen this scene a number of times, and it is so beautiful, sad, and effective that it still brings tears to my eyes. Eun Tak releases her mom, saying goodbye and wishing she’ll go to heaven. She doesn’t want her mom wandering as a ghost, like the others she sees.
Yes, I agree, @Welmaris.
I like EunTak’s goodbye scene with her mother. She wanted her mother to go to heaven and avoid turning into a wandering ghost.
But I also like how the mother prudently went to Samshin on the bridge to tell her to watch over her daughter. She said, “Would it be okay if you look over EunTak here and there sometimes?”
I also like that mother reminded Samshin that it had been the goddess who told her to pray earnestly. When Samshin retorted that only s stupid girl like her would believed that sort of blather, the mother smiled. She understood that behind Samshin’s mean words, she truly meant well for her. So she thanked Samshin, “Thanks to believing that I lived on a bit more. Thanks, Grandma. I came to say goodbye. I’m going.”
To me, though, her mother was a tad meek and compliant for somebody who died with unfinished matters (i.e., raising a child) to take care. I’d probably be kicking and screaming at Samshin if I had to leave behind my child to fend for herself.
The red knit scarf: it’s what Eun Tak’s mother was wearing eight years ago when she was the victim of the hit-and-run driver then restored to life by Goblin.
Yes. The red scarf became a fashion statement.
I note that the calendar in Eun Tak’s home had September 13 marked with stars. That must be her birthday. But shortly before, when she was at the beach with her mother (before they talked about her wanting a real cake for her birthday), Eun Tak had caught a cherry blossom petal in her hand and said spring was coming. Not true. Fall, then winter, will come before spring. That out-of-season cherry blossom petal was a sign of Goblin’s happiness. He was near, watching her.
Yes, her September 13th birthday threw me off, too because I didn’t notice the passage of time. One minute young Euntak was petting a dead puppy at the beach and in the next minute, she was coming home from school with good news about her perfect English test. When she was at the beach, she and her mother were wearing light clothes. But when she came home from school, she was wearing a warm coat. I didn’t know that time had elapsed.
But it’s possible that the beach scene was in springtime, and she was talking about her coming birthday that year. In the foreseeable future, she wanted a real cake for her birthday. It’s cute though that she wanted a real cake (i.e., cake made of flour) because her birthday wishes could finally come true. She was blaming the rice cake for her failed birthday wishes.
What struck me about her birthday is that it was her deathday, too. She wasn’t supposed to have a birthday, and she was supposed to die in utero that fateful day.
And because the Grim Reaper missed her on her birthday, every ninth birthday (9th, 19th, 29th and so on) was a deathday.
I also thought that young EunTak’s vow to never make a wish again mirrored Kim Shin’s words as he was dying in the noon-day sun.
9-year-old Euntak: I’m not going to make a wish. I’m not going to wish for anything. No one’s going to listen so who would I wish to.
19th-year-old Euntak: What the heck am I doing? Who am I begging? There’s no god. (thunder. then she blows her candle)
KS: (telling his loyal servants) Do not pray to anyone. Since God is not listening.
They were both disillusioned with the heavens because the gods didn’t listen to them. And for Kim Shin, he believed that the gods never listened because the gods didn’t look after people like him. As the King said, “When did the heavens side with you folks?”
Because of Episode 1, it struck me that this drama was nihilistic. It was demonstrating how meaningless life was. The gods were apathetic to the cries of the people so people should just do what they had to do in order to survive their miserable existence.
There was little joy in the life of Eun Tak and Kim Shin until they met each other.
Eun Tak’s mother was a good person. Before her soul departed, she thanked the bridge granny for giving her the advice that extended her life.
Eun Tak can see Grim Reaper while he’s wearing his hat. For normal, living humans, when he’s wearing his hat he’s invisible. We can tell from Grim Reaper’s conversation with Eun Tak that he’s not omniscient. He doesn’t know Eun Tak’s identity, at first. And bridge granny (we’ve gotten enough hints she’s some sort of divinity, right?) stymies Grim Reaper with a technicality: he can’t belatedly escort Eun Tak into the afterlife along with her mother because Eun Tak now has a name, but when he received his orders eight years ago she didn’t have a name. And we see that Grim Reaper is hampered by bureaucracy, as are other office workers in life.
I thought it was funny that Samshin found a convenient loophole. True, the Grim Reaper must call the name of the dead by name. We saw this in “The King: Eternal Monarch.” As EunTak’s name wasn’t on the card, she couldn’t be declared dead.
Bridge granny tells Eun Tak, “After midnight tonight, a man and two women will come looking for you. Follow them. You’ll suffer a little bit, but you don’t have any other choice. Later, we’ll see that Eun Tak still calls her aunt and two cousins, “a man and two women.”
Really? I was annoyed with the Samshin telling her she’d suffer a bit but she doesn’t have a choice in that. Gee thanks, Samshin!
Eun Tak had divine beginnings, even before Goblin saved her life and her mother’s. When the granny responds to Eun Tak’s question why she’s giving advice, she tells Eun Tak, “Because I like you. When I gave you to her…I was happy.” She reveals herself as Sam Shin, the goddess of birth (among other attributes). It’s good to be loved by the gods and have them on your side; but ease of life isn’t a given even when that is the case.
Agree, @Welmaris. EunTak had divine beginnings. Not only did she make Samshin happy, but she also defied “Fate.” She wasn’t supposed to be born but she was born. In a sense, too, her whole existence is flouting the conventions of heaven.
I also thought this was a foreshadowing of their happy ending.
Young EunTak: If I move, he can’t find me?
Samshin: He can’t. That’s why the land you choose is important.
She and Goblin chose to settle in Quebec City, Canada, and leave South Korea.
Again, a memorable moment–and iconic cinematography–of this drama is when Sam Shin and the grandson of Goblin’s assistant pass each other on the bridge in 1998 (after Eun Tak’s mother dies) and it changes to present time. Another incarnation of Sam Shin is shown. Can you believe the same actress plays both the granny and the gorgeous woman? The wonders of makeup and prosthetics!
I can’t remember when that jerk-of-a-god entered and took over DeoHak’s body but in this scene, I thought DH was still he’s horny 25-year-old self.
The schoolgirls gossiping about Eun Tak during lunchtime: “Look at her. She can hear everything but pretends not to.” We know from the rain outside, which reflects the mood of the main characters in the scene, that Eun Tak does hear their unkind words and they hurt her. She is depressed.
She’s acquired that skill to tune out her classmates from living with her “adopted” family. Nothing seems to faze her. When she got hit on the head with the bowl of rice, I expected her to throw something at them right back. But she didn’t.
Instead, she retaliated by scaring her cousin about a ghost hanging around her. Neat. Her physical pain would last an hour, tops. But her cousin’s psychological fear of a ghost would last all day.
I think knowing that she has this “special” gift to converse with ghosts and spirits, helps her rise above her peer and ignore their snide remarks. She knows that she scares them anytime she wants
The ghost who accosts Eun Tak on the pathway says she’s heard she’s the Goblin’s Bride. She hasn’t just hears a rumor: she was one of the ghosts in the background on the day of Eun Tak’s birth.
Thank you for pointing that out. I didn’t scan the faces on the window. And the ghost confirmed it when Goblin appeared in front of them.
The marriage of beautiful music, acting, and camera work does its magic again during the scene where Goblin and Eun Tak pass each other on the walkway. In the initial shots from behind Eun Tak, it seems Goblin is looking right in my eyes, not hers. Powerful! Then we see how they lock eyes as they pass one another. Goblin sees images of the future. They brush arms as they pass each other.
Yes. We’ve watched so many “first” meetings in kdramas, but I’ll always remember Goblin and EunTak’s meeting in the rain. It’s iconic.
Can you remember other first meetings? 🙂
In the following scene, Goblin is sitting at his long dining table, so lost in thought he hadn’t lit his candles (which we’ve previously seen he can do with just a thought). The implication is that he’s thinking of his encounter with Eun Tak. We learn a little more about Goblin’s existence, that he must adopt new identities and live in different places every 20 years or so to hide the fact that he doesn’t age. That explains why he was in Paris in the 1960s, and why it had been 20 years since he’d last been in Seoul when he arrived before Eun Tak’s birth.
Yes. He was sitting in the dark thinking of his encounter with EunTak. He was probably wondering if his time to die was near.
Yes. I agree. He must leave Seoul so people who knew him in Seoul wouldn’t wonder why he wasn’t aging like the rest of them. I found the line, “I am your uncle, then I will be your brother. Then, I’ll be your son, and your grandson,” very poignant.
Thanks for your comments, @Welmaris. And thanks to the others for their input in this rewatch. Enjoy the rest of the weekend!
@packmule3, I agree that ET’s mother was not quite blythe, but in front of the Samshin, she seemed unsurprised byband unresentful of her death. Perhaps it is because she emphasised her unborn baby rather above herself in her prayer some 9 years before. I noticed that the Samshin didn’t meet her eyes.
As to the characters being nihilistic, I believe that they all THINK that the gods don’t listen to them, yet clearly they do, or at least some of the lesser divinities do, otherwise KS wouldn’t have heard the prayer and Samshin wouldn’t have defended ET against the Reaper as she did in episode one.
I also wonder if ET hadn’t learned earlier, maybe always, that she was Goblin’s bride. Maybe in other encounters with ghosts it had been mentioned or it was in her psyche since that time of birth? She seemed unsurprised when the ghost in episode 1 said it. It would also explain her unconcerned and almost gleeful way of telling KS when they spoke after they met the last time in episode 1. She said
“Saranghae” so teasingly and cheerfully – as though she had been waiting for him to bring her away from her unhappy, uneventful life.
Sorry about the typos above.
I also thought about the wasting of rice when the rice bowl was thrown. Earlier in the episode, the sailors trod upon the rice wrap that the little boy had been given by KS and I wondered if there is some sort of bad luck associated with wasting rice as there is in Western cultures about spilling salt?
An afterthought-type comment went missing. I wondered about the spilled rice from the thrown bowl as well as the boy’s rice wrap trod upon by the sailor. Is wasting rice bad luck, as spilling salt is in Western culture?
OOps, now there are two. @packmule3, please could you delete one?
Thanks @Welmaris, @pkml3 and @Fern
On the Supernatural Abilities
The thoughts that arise after re-reading this.
Grim Reapers can only see the true identities/past lives of people they touch. This could be a statement about how they failed to honour or value or even have their own connections to persons in their past lives, since they chose suicide instead of to live on bravely, like Eun Tak. They are appropriately punished by having to spend hundreds of years ‘living’ a routine life on earth, ie having to work, to eat, to find a place to sleep, to pay rent, and constantly buried under bureaucracy.
KS (or goblins because there might be more than one) was created over a desperate or powerful desire for something to come/a future something. Desire is reflected in the eyes, and so just by looking/glancing briefly into the eyes of persons, he sees the future. I didn’t really catch on until @pkml3 said it, but with everyone else, KS was able to see their future clearly… he saw the boy’s future in such detail, he could tell him the correct answer on the test paper. But with Eun Tak, he only saw a vague smattering of images that made no sense. Those images actually pertained to him, but they were in broken bits that he could not decipher. The interesting thing of course is that this also means goblin could not see his own future. He didn’t think any of the images looked familiar. And so he stared into her eyes when he passed her. She noticed him of course because who goes around with a great burning sword sticking out of them, and carrying an umbrella to boot!!
Eun Tak is able to communicate with the beings of the supernatural world who are invisible/inaudible to human eyes. She is placed a little beyond the mundane world with this ability, and it gives her, her only friends for 10 lonely years. So she talks to Reaper even when he has his hat on and to ghosts. I agree that she’s more able to face the disparagement, and practically the ostracism of the human world, because she is aware that she has this gift that others fear.
Her first real human friend is Sunny and then the class President. With Deok Hwa, it’s uncertain to what extent he was just a human when he was with ET. I believe that he’s often been inhabited by the god who punished KS. Just because KS (like ET too) did not believe that there really was a god, or if there was, that god listened to him/cared about him. We find at the end that the god was engineering the meetings so that the characters who shared the same time in their past lives would be entangled in the present to clear the air once and for all. In other words, god was miffed that they refused to believe in him or that they thought he didn’t listen when he did, so he did a real number on them by hanging around them all the time to meddle, without letting them know.
SPOILER
SPOILER
But he was a callous god as well, just throwing out fate and letting them bungle and suffer, and just wiping memories, without permission, when that made them miserable. It was only Sunny who stood up against him and he relented and I think he apologised.
MINOR SPOILER
MINOR SPOILER
Anyway with DH, god seems to have been using him from the beginning where ET was concerned. His buying the book with the autumn leaf and then returning it to ET later at their first meeting, so that she came back in possession of that leaf was god at work. LOL what a pathetically cash poor god that was, since he also wanted to get the $10 from Eun Tak! He should have sold his car. 😉
More later…
I want to add, @GB, that reapers aren’t deity the same way that Sam Shin and Goblin are. Unless a reaper is sent on assignment with a card, they don’t know the who, when, and why of a death. Reapers also appear to only handle one, maybe two, deaths at a time; if several deaths happen at one time and place, multiple reapers are deployed. (Hmmm…where were the reapers when Goblin sank the ship? Waiting underwater?) Part of the humor of Goblin is seeing how the transition from life to afterlife is run like a business.
I seem to recall suicide is not the only reason someone may be assigned the job of reaper: something heinous done in life might earn the deceased a penance stint as a reaper.
Gah I just watched Ep1 and I can see why everyone raves about this drama. Everything about it just works. The seamless time leaps (which don’t work to confuse but seems fluid). The story telling and world building. Hubby has been rewatching Harry Potter so I am seeing similarities galore with the mean adoptive foster family. 😂. Who also harbour fear with their charge because he (HP)/she (ET) possesses this supernatural ability which they don’t quite understand.
But yes to that iconic first meeting scene. Loved how the footage slowed and the raindrops remained suspended in the air as if time stopped for the lovers.
@GB was there a flaming sword that I missed in that first encounter? I didn’t see it in Ep1. But it was obvious that KS was waiting for her to say that about him. And she didn’t. Although Butler did mention in passing that the sword isn’t always apparent? And it’s not there all the time? And that he’s met many women but none have seen the sword to be able to remove it.
I think the fact that ET was so “sensible” when she realized her mother was dead and how she knew that releasing her (having her go straight to heaven rather than remain wandering as a ghost) was the most loving thing she could do for her. This will probably stand her in good stead when she has to do the same for the Goblin KS. Releasing him from his immortality by removing the sword and sending him to the afterlife (?). And I guess the fact that the extinguishing of flames was how ET summons KS (like how she extinguished the flame and realized her mother was gone – her mother’s life (flame) snuffed out) is a foreshadowing that she’s the one destined to snuff his eternal flame out?
Hi @nrllee, sorry to spoil you, if you’re reading here as well as the rewatch thread.
Sword – It’s not always visible to us, ie, the Show has to put in the special effects and the props to make it evident to viewers … but I believe it’s always visible to KS and to ET. That’s why he expected her (and any other female whom he thought might be his bride) to see it immediately.
No one else seems to see it. Reaper and Sam Shin know about it and so does Deok Hwa’s grandfather, but they never look at his chest as far as I can tell, so it looks like they don’t see it.
About the extinguishing of fire – I noted that KS has a fire in him… he is identifiable by his blue flames, but his bride is the one who extinguishes fire to summon him LOL. He’s met his match! @pkml3 suggests that they are matched by being complementary to each other, to which I agree. It’s like they are opposites made to fill each other’s gaps.
More on extinguishing fire and summoning.
Having a Guardian: Why Eun Tak Did Not Summon Goblin at First
On her 9th birthday, when she blew out the match, I would have expected that KS should also have been summoned, but he wasn’t. My guess …
ET realises that her mother is dead, however her mother’s ghost is still with her to watch over her for a while. Mother also asks Samshin Granny to help keep an eye on Eun Tak. Once both of them have left Eun Tak to fend for herself, she has no other guardian until her lousy aunt takes over, and even then it’s arguable if aunt can be considered her guardian. More like her exploitative employer.
She regards birthday candles, wishes and deities as hopeless things, not worth investing in because her birthday falls on her mother’s death day. Her dearest wishes had died as well. It’s not until she’s desperate to get out of her aunt’s clutches at age 19 that she attempts once again to have a cake and 3 wishes, while wondering if there’s a deity to hear her. She actually once again denies the deity’s existence. I feel that the deity was miffed at all the disbelief in him, and so had a hand in bringing our characters together, while keeping close by.
As a 19-year old, without a caring guardian, when ET desperately (with powerful desire?) makes a wish, she gets a new guardian in Kim Shin. It could be that the Goblin mark connects them or that the deity engineered it, or that it was time for the bride to appear in Goblin’s life. Anyway, he sees the smoke of the blown out candles rising from his hands, hears her wishes and gets pulled into her space.
We see him in scenes after this, acting more like a guardian than anything else. And definitely not like a boyfriend (yet). He treated her age appropriately. The title too is reflective of his role. “Guardian: The Lonely and Great God/The Lonely Shining God/Goblin”. The term ‘Guardian’ comes first.
He is/was a guardian to more than just ET too. He cared for Deok Hwa’s grandfather and even for DH. It was the threat to DH by Reaper that got him to let Reaper stay in his house. He also meddles in human lives from time to time, to hopefully bring about a good outcome.
He was at first the guardian of his own sister, and then was assigned to guard and support the young king, by the previous king. It was because he took his role so seriously, because he refused to budge even under threat of death, that he ended up getting so many people killed. If he’d just obeyed the young king, instead of trying to carry out his obligations to the old king, and found another way to help from a distance, he could have saved his own life and his family’s, the soldiers etc. He was really too rigid and narrow in his thinking.
Samshin, Deity and Deok Hwa
MINOR SPOILER
MINOR SPOILER
I believe that Samshin has always been able to recognise the deity embodied in whichever human he chose. She had drinks with deity in the body of DH more than once and from one of those times, we get to hear them ‘arguing’. At the end of the series, Samshin looks at Deok Hwa and reaslises deity was no longer in him. She says something like, “So he left?” She refused to drink with DH then, telling him to go drink with a human being.
Even when DH first invited Samshin for a drink, it was the deity in him that she agreed to drink with. So it was doubly funny that he was embarrassed by having his card cancelled. What kind of pathetic god is this who could not even pay for his and the lady’s drinks? LOL.
About ET’s Birthday
@pkml3 I rather think that ET’s birthday was not her death day. She should have died in Winter, when there was snow on the ground, but didn’t. Her mother gave birth to her months later on 13 September (1998?). 9 years later on 13 September (2007?) her mother was killed in a traffic accident. So ET’s birthday became her mum’s deathday.
@Growing Beautifully, I wondered that too, about ET’s birthday. Her mother was pregnant but didn’t didn’t look it yet, not even enough to sustain a premature baby.
@nrllee, thank goodness I’m not the only noob watching. I’ve been feeling like a school girl who walked into a PhD course.
@Fern 😂 high five girlfriend! You’re right about walking into a PhD course. Feeling totally out of my depth here too.
@GB Interesting take about why KS didn’t appear when ET blew out the candles when she was 9. Her mother “summoned” KS when she had that accident. Do you think maybe it was their desperation (which then propels them to even call/pray to a deity) which is key? That despite their cynicism about deities and that they called out to them anyway (be it in the form of wishes or desire to see them) which was the key to getting them to appear? So it wasn’t just the extinguished flame that caused KS to appear but their desires. Initially I thought it was because KS was destined to be with ET which was what caused him to materialize in front of ET’s mom. Because if her mom died, so would she. So he was her guardian. And would protect her even in utero. But the library (?) incident where she blew out the fake candles contradicted that thought. But yes your interpretation of Guardian KS fits too.
Also who is Nam DaRum playing as a character? When he was running away and KS saved him from his abusive stepdad? Is it the old butler?
PS Nam DaReum is brilliant playing sullen angry youths. You can feel his pent up anger just waiting for a release valve to explode. And I had dejavu with Kim SoHyun (?) playing the lady (was that KS’s wife? I wasn’t sure) in the olden days. Took me back to River Where The Moon Rises. 😂
@nrllee,
Nam Da Reum basically did a cameo here. As @Packmule3 wrote on the main thread of our rewatch, it was a nice way to show us that the Goblin is a good hearted Shin himself. He does good deeds and can see one person’s the future.
KSH plays Kim Shin’s sister that is also the Queen…
Correction:One person’s future*
Thanks @Cleo. I didn’t read the main thread. Not yet. 😂
@nrllee Nam Da Reum pops up twice in this series. Once in Ep 1 and another time in a later episode … and he meets Kim Shin once again…. I love that scene. I’m reducing info here to avoid spoiling you.