'Lovecraft Country' Episode 6 Review: Who is Ji-ah and what happened to her?
Spoilers for 'Lovecraft Country' Episode 6 'Meet Me in Daegu'
It's not just Lovecraft's world anymore. Mingling the genre of all things horror and science fiction with supernatural beings from Japanese folklore, HBO's 'Lovecraft Country' might have just given out its the most stellar installment so far, and we have a certain Korean counterpart of Atticus Freeman's to thank. The mystery of the Asian woman Tic keeps dreaming has been solved; we finally know who she is and what was done to her. Episode 6 'Meet Me in Daegu' takes us back to Tic's time in the war where he had met the enchanting nurse Ji-ah. Played by Jamie Chung and a harbor of dark secrets, Ji-ah just might be the air of consistency 'Lovecraft Country' was lacing so far, and who would have thought shifting focus from the main character was all it was going to take. For those wondering who she is and what had really happened to her, the answer lies in a lot of flashbacks, each as disturbing as the other.
Ji-ah's story, much like Tic and Let's, is rooted in magic too. It begins all the way in her young age when Ji-ah's mother discovers that her new husband has been raping her young daughter. So her mother goes to a shaman and summons a kumiho, a nine-tailed fox-like creature prevalent in Korean folklore. The kumiho possesses Ji-ah and kills her mother's husband but here's the catch, the creature is also stuck in Ji-ah's body and won't leave her alone until it takes a total of 100 souls.
But Ji-ah's predicament isn't just about whether to kill or not to kill. The kumiho is who she has been all this while, who she has grown up being. She isn't Ji-ah entirely, but she wants to be the daughter her mother wants. If she takes 100 souls, she will go back to being the Ji-ah she was. But then she won't entirely be the person she has been all this while. With intense layers to the story, the only thing that makes it better is the way Chung portrays Ji-ah, commanding and vulnerable in equal parts the way one would imagine this character to be. But the other, an equally major contributor to making all of this so spectacular has to be the visual effects that the series seems to be so proud of. If you thought Ruby stripping off her Hillary with puddles of blood and gore melting down her body was disturbing, the kumiho's nine tails wrapping around its victim - that it kills only during sex - is next level disturbia. Every bit as climactic as it should be, it's a horror fanatic's dream come true.
The episode also goes in-depth with American imperialism during the Korean war as we see Tic being ordered to kill one of Ji-ah's friends in cold blood in an attempt to expose a spy. Tic and Ji-ah meet again when he gets admitted to the hospital where she works, and although she wants to kill him, she chooses not to after growing fond of this man twisted and bent into atrocities by his overlords. It's easily a more preferred chemistry than the forced one we see between Tic and Leti; the tension between the two also make their sex scenes come alive with a spark as the will she, won't she comes into play about her innate desire to take life.
While it will be interesting to see how Leti takes all of this, what has caught our attention is the way Ji-ah came close to devouring all of Tic's memories during sex, which, by the way, is how she ills her victims. Ji-ah only absorbed some of Tic's memories, but somehow, instead of seeing the expected past, she saw his future. Could this be because of the strain of magical blood in him? The answer isn't entirely clear, but the question of who 'dies' as Tic had learnt in Episode 5, is. It's Tic, he is going to die as Ji-ah had predicted, thus explaining the frantic phone call from Episode 5.
Sometimes swimming under the high tides of its own mythology and unnecessarily drawn out dialogues, this glimpse of Tic and Ji-ah's connection was the much-needed respite to ground our faith in HBO's adaptation of Matt Ruff's namesake book. What Tic does with this knowledge is yet to unfold.
'Lovecraft Country' airs on Sundays at 9 pm only on HBO.
