As Im Fascinated By What Ifs And Alternate Scenarios, And Im Going Over Back How I Felt About Dex And

As I’m fascinated by What Ifs and alternate scenarios, and I’m going over back how I felt about Dex and Sylvie, I would LOVE someone to explore an alternate version of their lives.

(I also have a soft spot for rare-pairs, or in defiance of ‘the big destined love’. Every now and again. For balance and literary roughage.)

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Across Dex’s life there’s reinforced messaging that Dexter doesn’t know what he wants, that he lacks purpose and drive and care, and this frustration only adds to lots of his other struggles.

But there is one thing we’re told Dexter once cared about: at some point in his childhood Dexter *loved* photography.

His mum mentions it when they get lunch, and thought we realise later that she was dealing with lots behind the scenes then, her remembrance of this hobby and her retelling of it then are actually quite hurtful and ham fisted. She (in a loving way) disparages this hobby, implying that Dexter wasn’t very good at it, and that this obsession confused his parents who (by the sounds of it) didn’t support or nurture this love.

And that would be interesting enough, coming in the same conversation that she bemoans Dexters lack of purpose and worries that it will cause him unhappiness in his life. But Dexter’s reaction to this memory is fascinating.

Its startling to see him so uncomfortable. He seems genuinely hurt and confused by this summation of his hobby; whether this is in response to the general sense that his mum didn’t think he was very good, or specifically that it was directed at his fascination with photography we can’t know for sure. But it gives an impression that there *was* once something that Dexter loved to do, or was fascinated by, and it was disparaged by his parents who didn’t support his interest and now he is seen as generally lacking any purpose or anything he’s interested in.

However you look at it it’s an interesting juxtaposition within one conversation. (I also kind of wonder if other interests were also treated this way, and so Dexters lack of care or interest is partially a learned behaviour…but I digress)

We get a call back to this photography again much later in the series, when the camera focuses on several taped up photos of gravel on his childhood bedroom wall. Again whatever the intention of this, it does remind us as the audience of Dex’s previous hobby that was important enough to him that he still keeps mementoes of them on the wall.

And though Dexter struggles massively with purpose and direction, we see in his last years with Emma that with the right support (and probably following on from a period where he reached the right level of desperation to swallow his pride and self motivate) he can choose a direction and job that he enjoys.

So I kind of love to wonder what other way his life could have gone.

What if, for whatever reason, Dex and Sylvie don’t go to Tilly’s wedding? Whatever the reason, probably combined with Dex both wanting to see Em again but also being slightly terrified of it, they can’t make it.

So Dex and Em don’t get their emotional reconciliation scene; they still likely make up and become friends again (Sylvie is still preganant, they’re still getting married, Dex will likely still invite Em and Tilly at least) but without them having that time and privacy at Tilly’s wedding to lay out all their cards…. are they *as* close afterwards as they could have been?

Does a Dex who hasn’t fully regained that romantically-tinged friendship with Emma (they shared a quick kiss minutes after he shared he was engaged and about to be a father!) then turn to Sylvie more than he did in the series? With Emma back as a good friend but not kind of a flirty-friend does Dexter emotionally commit a bit more to Sylvie and their marriage?

As they don’t re-meet Callum at Tilly’s wedding I think it’s unlikely he’s invited to theirs, hence Dex probably doesn’t get an offer to work for him.

So a Dex who is still professionally unfulfilled, looking for job options and a change, right when everything else in his life is also changing (marriage, fatherhood)… does this Dex now have a similar level of desperation/motivation as the one who we saw in Paris? Could this Dex also find the motivation to retrain in a new field, but not as a chef (as he hasn’t worked in a cafe) but instead…. as a photographer?

There was *something* there that drew his attention and held it as a kid, something which a appealed to him and made him proud of his little foray into that world. And when people are struggling with purpose and direction, don’t they say go back to what you once liked?

A Dexter who rediscovers this childhood love, now with the focus and need of an adult to try something new: that would be interesting. Also I think Sylvie is a model (?) in the book, so if that’s the case she probably has contacts or friends to help her new husband learn the ropes. It might even help their relationship to have her able to help him work on that passion, and for him to have something he is definitively working towards: both for them and also to reassure her family.

Plus if they don’t meet Callum at Tilly’s wedding, who then doesn’t offer Dex a job, Sylvie won’t be having an affair with him. In addition being with a Dexter who is slightly more emotionally attached to Sylvie, with a new career to focus on, and who hopefully feels less impotent might mean Sylvie doesn’t feel the need to cheat at all?

Do I ultimately think they would stay together? Probably not. They do appear to have differences in personality which would mean they aren’t the best of bedfellows. Dex’s sense of humor is shown to grate when Sylvie needs reassurance, and Sylvies inability to relax comes across to Dexter to be a lack of trust or belief in his competency. I don’t think different circumstances would have magically ‘fixed’ these differences in attitude and personality.

But I do think they could have ended better, and had a nicer and more interesting middle-period, before they went their separate ways.

But a Dexter who got to explore that tiny bit of passion and interest we’re told he once had? That would have been a fun version of him to get to see. And the poetic irony of Dexter finding purpose in the field his mother once disparaged, who found that interest and passion she worried he lacked in something she dismissed and mocked, would have been so narratively satisfying and well tied off!

Just finished The Fall of the House of Usher and wow I have thoughts.

……….

Verna is fascinating!

My interpretation (I have read literally NO Poe so sorry if this is obvious) if that Verna is a personification/demon/something for Choices and Decisions.

When she first meets the Ushers she offers them a choice: here is a possible outcome of the decisions you’ve already made, which might well happen on its own, but would you like to *ensure* that it happens? What would you choose to give up to get what you want? I don’t think she’s *creating* this outcome (as it’s literally what Madeline said would happen while they bricked the CEO into the wall) but she’s saying she can make sure certain possible outcomes are the only ones that happen.

Death and killing might be part of her powers but at least in the case of the Ushers she’s only killing the children because the deal was none of them survive Roderick.

I think her deal with Madeline and Roderick is a mix of be careful what you wish for as you’ll get it in unexpected ways, and exposing their own hypocritical choices. The Ushers believe they are entitled to the company due to their father, that it is their legacy, that if he had only acknowledged them and planned for them to continue the company in their name they would have everything they deserve. But in order to get that legacy, they have to behave in the exact same manner their father did, and think only of themselves while not plan to leave anything for their children.

Verna even offers choices to the other people we see her interact with.

For Perry she reminds him he could choose to stop recoding people, choose not to peruse his brothers wife, choose to end the party. It’s not too late. Even at that party when she tells Morelle to ‘leave now’ it is still a choice, one Morelle doesn’t take which leads to its own consequences. And in the run up to the party we’re shown so many moments when Perry could have chosen differently and the outcome would have been different: having the party at all, inviting Morelle (he turns away and then back to offer her a ticket), Napoleon saying he’s better than this and doesn’t need to become a drug pusher, the building not having water and so choosing to use the assumed water on the roof… right up to the last moment when he chooses to give the signal for the sprinklers to go on.

And her conversation with Perry Verna almost admits it: the series of decisions which lead to him, some small ones, a big one, and then another smaller on and now here he is. Choices he wasn’t involved in have led to him being there that night. And she loves bad boys because they always make all the wrong choices.

For Camille she refuses entry to the lab multiple times and offers her the choice to turn around and go home: it won’t change her fate as she’ll die either way, but if she goes home she’ll die in her sleep instead of being torn apart. She doesn’t *need* to see everything with her own eyes, she already has the proof. But Camille chooses to revel in her sisters shame, to twist the knife, and so she dies painfully.

And Napoleon is told the cat he wants to buy isn’t for sale and to choose to go back home to his boyfriend (and likely confess his actions) but he pushes through with his money and demands that he should get what he wants. He even has a moment within his confrontation with the cat when he thinks this might be a drugged hallucination, but instead of stopping or calling his boyfriend he continues to destroy their home.

Victorine also gets choices: the file of perfect patient data is handed to her but she doesn’t have to call Verna back about the human trial. Verna asks at multiple points if this procedure is safe, if the surgeon has agreed, even if her patient data is safe in this clinic. And Victorine chooses to lie at every opportunity, chooses to sacrifice this woman’s life in the pursuit of her dream. And so she is haunted by her lies, driving her to a more gruesome death than necessary.

For Tammy Verna shows her how to make better choices from their first meeting: we only saw one other sex worker play out the fantasy scene pretending to be Tammy but their interactions with Bill were surface level. When Verna appears as Candy she plays fake-Tammy as caring about Bill, showing Real-Tammy how she could be a better partner from the get go. Verna compliments his cooking, says she’d been craving his ‘famous chicken Alfredo’, asks about his work earnestly and listens to his replies. Even later, when she is Tammys hallucination double, she keeps showing Tammy how she could choose differently: Bill would probably set your fight aside considering another sibling has died, you could call him? Bill would probably be concerned about your health, you could apologise? And after her breakdown Verna pretends to answer Bills call (which Tammy had thrown across the room) and apologises to him for how he’d been treated. The whole time Verna is telling Tammy ‘it’s not too late, you could choose to be kind, you could choose to make yourself happy’: like Camille it wont stop her inevitable death but it could have been easier. And again she didn’t have to die in this manner, she could have gone in her sleep but her chosen treatment of Bill and her own guilt over her decisions has been keeping her awake.

For Frederick, Verna even admits that she has chosen his manner of death *due* to the choices he made: he would have died in his car from a heart attack but he chose to take his wife home, chose to torture her, ‘chose to pick up the pliers’ and so here are the consequences of his decisions.

For Lenore, the only innocent in the whole family, Verna wants her to know that her *choice* to give a statement, her choice to break with her family and get her mother out, will have lasting consequences. That Lenore’s decision will have changed the world.

That Verna’s power focuses on choices is further emphasised with her knowledge of ‘what people would have been’ as I think that’s an expansion upon what different choices would have led to. Of people had chosen differently then this is what they would have become.

And in Verna’s interactions with Pym all of the moments she references are ones where choices are made: the choice to leave a man in the desert, to abandon a guide in the snow, to assault a woman in the arctic. Moments when a choice or decision was made.

So I think she is a bargainer, or demon of decisions, and while she isn’t inherently evil she has her own morality as seen when she chooses deaths which are painful or peaceful, depending on a persons actions.

And really the message of the whole show is choices and their consequences.

I haven’t read the book and only have vague recolections of the movie (though I remember sobbing violently at several points) but I hoped I’d love Netflix’s One Day adaption. And of course I did but one of the things I loved was so unexpected.

I love how they portrayed Sylvie.

Particularly how that relationship both ended and endured. How even at the start there were issues but the small kind you want to work on and work through. She knew her family were hard work but she was on Dex’s side and wanted him to be accepted: but still knew that her opinion was the one that mattered. Dex knew he didn’t fit it but he was trying so damn hard to, and hoped that if he kept trying it would be enough eventually. And she wasn’t this demon or harpy, even people who just met her liked her. She was a nice person.

So many times when the male lead is with another woman before they eventually get together with the female lead this ‘other woman’ is portrayed as toxic, unmanageable, cruel, snobbish, etc… or even just unpleasant to be around; someone we’re happy for the male lead to leave. Maybe it helps us to support the male leads pursuit of the female lead and not confront his poor behaviour as a romantic partner if that ‘other woman’ is unlikable and we’re happy to see her gone?

But here they made it clear: Sylvie is a kind nice woman who loves Dex, and didn’t handle the crumbling of their marriage well.

It was almost voyeuristic how we saw the breakdown of her and Dex’s marriage. It seemed so bloody real. New baby, no sleep, renovating the house, all of it building up until you’re being a bitch and you know you are, and you’re apologising after the fact for what you said but you don’t know how to talk around the fact that you still meant some of the things you said. And a partner who you know is struggling with direction and purpose, and you want them to do well, but *god* you’re the one fielding questions and having to go to bat for them every time someone asks, and as a result you never feel safe to take a break or question them yourself.

And (I don’t know how intentional this was) but Dex’s joking tone which is clearly meant to relax and reassure just came across as him not taking things seriously or being trustworthy. Sylvie lists a whole range of food options for Jasmine while she’s out for the night, clearly showing she has prepped *everything* ahead of time: she isn’t leaving Dex in charge of finding or cooking Jasmine dinner, she’s leading him by the hand to the ready made stuff and telling him now to reheat it. Kind of like he’s a child too. It really shows how capable she feels he is.

And then Dex jokes about giving Jasmine crisps. He’s clearly trying to break the tense atmosphere and joke around with his wife, but it just comes across as ‘I wasn’t listening to you, I don’t realise how much work you’ve done, you were right not to trust me to cook dinner because look what I immediately suggested, you can’t rely on me’.

In all their conversations the tone of their voices just show they’re not sure how to talk to one another anymore, that they know everything they say will be taken the wrong way and so they have no idea how to speak.

It felt like no one was particularly demonised or made into a caricature. Just two people who were different, put under stress until they broke and grew apart. And Sylvie had been responding to this state of her marriage by having an affair, so she is clearly in the wrong there and the one who causes the divorce etc, but… I don’t know; here it comes across more as a plea for help or freedom in the midst of her confusion and less a lack of care or thought for Dex and her daughter (like I remember it coming across in the movies).

Even when they have the brief mention of dramatics and anger around the divorce, afterwards she’s back in the picture as a level headed co-parent: joking around to relate to Emma, sharing co-parenting pains with HER too (‘Jasmin’s learning the violin?’ ‘Yes that’s why we’re fleeing the country’). And genuinely congratulating them in their relationship and marriage.

You don’t see many ex-wives in media who are so openly concerned about how their ex-husband is handling his second wife’s death. She’s present, caring and supportive. And keeps reaching out to him well after she could be forgiven for stepping back.

So yeah I loved all of One Day and yeah it made me cry AGAIN, but I also loved how real they made those significant relationships look. How adult and complicated and messy and ‘no one was a monster/you were both wrong in different ways/there is no right and wrong’ they played out as.

Just because she wasn’t the ‘love of his life’ doesn’t mean she was a footnote either.

Loving the complexity of Madeline Ushers character: a woman who declares she doesn’t want to be limited by men, who’s life is defined at every turn by the decisions and actions of her brother.

……

Madeline Usher is doomed by her attachment to her brother, and it is the root of all her eventual pain.

When Verna offers them the deal, it’s Roderick who ‘charges forward, straight at it’ and accepts the terms despite the fact that the only ‘next generation’ they current have are his kids. Madeline agrees afterwards but only once Rodrick makes it know he is already in. I don’t think she’d have gone for it if he had objected, she’s always had a very ‘both of us or neither’ kind of attitude.

And then she is as much these kids parent (from what we have seen) as Roderick is. Granted we see next to nothing of the kids biological mothers so we have to assume they weren’t very involved (either by their choice or other circumstance) with their kids after Rodrick got his claws into them.

That first scene when we meet Perry Madeline and Roderick are equally dismissive of him, but she is the one asking questions and prompts: you’ve had a year to come up with an idea, is this it or is there more? How are you going to make this successful? Why will your pitch be different? She even asks Roderick to jump in ‘anytime now’ to help her handle this train wreck. And Rodrick has just received the news he’s dying but I think it’s telling that Perry is looking at both of them for validation, for support. They are equally intimidating but equally supporting him.

With Camille we don’t get 1-2-1 interactions between her and her father (despite her own obsession with winning his approval) but we do get a scene with Madeline. After Perry’s death Camille lobbies to be given the power to lead the family’s PR response, and Madeline takes her seriously and asks what she would do. When Camille lays out her plan it’s Madeline who gives a proud nod of approval and okays her actions.

Leo unfortunately gets no parental interactions from either senior Usher. Victorine only gets it right at the end just before her monstrous actions are revealed. Otherwise all she gets from Roderick is pressure and the interactions of an investor, not a father.

Tammy gets the most parental interaction from Madeline, which is tragic as she’s trying to show her father that she can be the heir to his empire. But her aunt is the one who shows up to her presentation, who gives her the pep talk, consoles Tammy (in her own way) about the failure of her marriage, who believes Tammy when she is terrified by someone in the crowd.

Frederik is always focused on his father so Madeline doesn’t get many moments with him, but again Roderick is more of a CEO or boss than a father: focused on how to protect the company, how to secure the future. Little to no concern or support to his son as he mourns his wife’s injuries, as he deals with his siblings deaths, as he takes on more pressure from the world and the family. Roderick only mourns his son (as opposed to his heir) after Fredrick is dead.

Added to this: the security on all the kids? Madeline arranges it. When more kids die? We see Madeline demand it be doubled. She’s the only one still fighting for them, fighting fate itself.

With Lenore we see more interactions with her and Roderick but her interactions with Madeline are just as sweet and show a close, loving relationship. Lenore even calls her Granny Madeline. And Madeline is the one planning to preserve Lenore via AI: this must have been the main reason she begged Roderick to kill himself. Not to save her to but to spare Lenore. What’s the bet that she started working on the AI project in earnest when Morelle announced she was pregnant?

Madeline tracks down the supernatural entity they made a deal with and tries to negotiate a new deal: again (now we know the original terms) this is likely for Lenore’s benefit, not hers. She faces down a power far beyond herself and tries to save or protect what’s left of her family. Not Roderick.

Madeline took steps to preserve and protect her nieces and nephews, and grand niece while her brother did next to nothing. Once you know the nature of their deal with Verna, Roderick’s attitude to his remaining children after they remember who Verna is is just baffling.

Madeline even makes reference to birth control that she took on the off chance the deal was real. She says to Tammy that she didn’t want children with her first husband and hasn’t since, but she has been a mother to Rodericks kids. This lack of biological motherhood hasn’t spared her for the heartbreak of loosing a child. Or a grandchild.

And it’s even the decision of a man (again her brother) which is going to end her family’s legacy in another way. His marriage to Juno, his treatment of her, his denial of her fight to get clean and his horrible reference to himself as Victor Frankenstein and Juno as his monster - this is what pushes her to sign away the company when she inherits it. Madeline speaks about the board choosing her and moving the company away from pharmaceuticals, into the fields of AI and tech. Sure Madeline then died but a lot of the groundwork was likely there, and it could have been a possible path for the company. If Juno didn’t inherit it all and break it apart. Because of Roderick, and the way he treated her. Once again Madeleine’s legacy is destroyed by her brothers actions.

The irony of 1970’s Madeline declaring she doesn’t want to be limited by men’s choices or by a man, taking steps to protect her self and her heart, focussing her work on things outside of medical drugs in the hope that one day that can be what they become known for… then being doomed to more heartbreak and failure by every one of her brothers careless actions is so sadly tragic.

It’s almost like the Usher children *knew* they weren’t going to live long and so they intentially left no marks upon the world.

Camille’s speech about how none of the kids actually makes or does anything is so startling: here is a group of people given all the opportunities and access money can buy, all of whom have had this their entire adult life, and they haven’t used it to create or build anything.

You can almost sense Roderiks disappointment in them, in his speech to Perry. He has this hyper focus on what his ‘investment’ money will fund, and says that ‘Ushers change the world’. But outside of himself and Madeline, not one of them has.

Frederick took the money, if he ever got any, and probably funnelled it back into his house or the company. By the looks of it he doesn’t have anything other than his family and his job, so there’s nothing for Roderick to invest in.

Tammy funnelled the money into a lifestyle brand, but one that wouldn’t have her at the front and centre. She scathingly reveals to Bill that she selected him to be her husband based upon his brand and marketability, showing she was ready to create this new empire but with her pulling strings in the shadows. From the outside it probably looks like she hasn’t created anything at all and that it’s all Bill, using his wife’s money. On top of this, the running gag of her storyline is that her brand and ideas aren’t even original, but are ripped off of Goop. So she hasn’t made anything new, and if Goldbug has any impact at all it will be no different to another more successful, more well know product. Hardly ‘changing the world’.

Victorine has some medial training but she looks to be a supporting role to her partner within their clinic, in which Al is the talented surgeon who people come to see and Victorine is a kind of silent partner. So she decided to go into medical devices or smart medical tech, but she relies upon the ideas and skills of others. As Camille said ‘the mesh is the surgeons, that’s why she’s fucking the surgeon’. And her medical knowledge seems to be limited if she thinks just her word and some money will move their experiments into human trials. So she also hasn’t ‘changed the world’ she’s just found someone else who was trying to and co-op-ed their ideas. You could even argue she poisoned those ideas, as Al mentions that the pain medication Victorine has been supplying looks like street drugs and wouldn’t stand up in any medical paper or research study.

Camille is, like she said, spinning furiously and going nowhere. She looks skilled in her field (from the analysis scenes we get, and Madeleine’s signing off on her PR analysis post Perry’s death) but she works from the shadows and hasn’t ‘created’ anything that wasn’t there before. There have been PR spin doctors before and there will be more to come; Camille offers nothing new ans hasn’t ‘changed the world’ in any measurable way. From what little we see of her work she hasn’t recreated a PR agency, hasn’t trained up other spin doctors under her, hasn’t created a brand or company which will outlast her. She leaves nothing behind to show what her skills or talents were.

Leo is shot down quickly when he claims he makes games: he doesn’t, he gives money to people who do. So he too will leave little to nothing behind when he’s gone. His references to past boyfriends show no long lasting relationships in his life and he has no other hobbies or pursuits we know of. Like Camille he hasn’t created a company to help with game design, hasn’t trained up others within this field he claims as his own. Even with the gaming ‘world’ it sounds like he changed very little. Fredrick’s throw away comments about Leo’s flat reveal that Leo hadn’t even had input in the decoration or style of his own home: he just latches onto the styles, ideas, aesthetic of his current boyfriend and goes with their ideas and plans. It’s such a small tiny thing but he truly has no original ideas in any aspect of his life.

And finally Perry, who’s desperate for that start up money but clearly has no plans or ideas on how to use it. He’s had a year and his main idea is an exclusive whisky bar. Even this idea, for all its crude intentions, shows his lack of vision: he doesn’t understand that to get the reputation he claims his bars would have will take time. You don’t just ‘create’ a consequent free bar celebrating decadence and privilege overnight. Reputations take time and as Madeline asks ‘what will be different about this one’ to draw people in to begin with? Studio 54 (which he compares his club to). only operated for 3 years before closing: not the smartest inclusion in an investment pitch.

To be fair to Perry though, looking at what the other siblings did or didn’t do with their loan money it seems a bit unfair that his ‘Blow job whiskey bar’ was shot down so decisively and cruelty. Assuredly Leo’s ‘video game studio for just myself’, Camille’s ‘PR agency just for me with my two assistants’, Victorines ‘medical training and clinic where I help out other surgeons’, Tammys ‘subscription lifestyle brand ripped off from a celebrity’ and Fredrick’s ‘I’d just like to work with you Dad’ were all clearly given the green light. But Perry apparently wasn’t good enough. Maybe this was a reaction to Roderick getting the news he was dying as so he wanted Perrys investment at least to actually change something, but still. He might as well give him the money either way at that point.

And I think it’s probably intended as a commentary on the ultra wealthy. Like of course people with more money than most counties have no plans to leave anything for the next generation. They have achieved their high levels of success by being solely focused upon themselves and so are honestly incapable of considering others. They are solely interested in enjoying the life they are currently living and why strain themselves to fight and build something when they don’t have to?

But it also works so well as a supernatural legacy and ironic conclusion to Roderick’s deal: he agreed that none of his bloodline would outlive him, and so none of them built anything that would.

Ooh interesting! I thought that was the eldest son in the wheelchair but I’m realising now maybe not, as he was up and standing in the office later.

Ooh so in the OG timeline the gramps/chairman didn’t die in the car crash. So it’s kind of all going down the same way in the ‘new’ timeline as in the OG one.

I hadn’t considered that we would be to see much of Do-Jun’s story continuing after the hit on Hyun-woo is complete hit I kind of want that now. How would he settle back into life again after all of this, with his future knowledge all gone?

Ok first real post here so go easy on me.

If anyone’s been watching the Kdrama Reborn Rich, I have so many thoughts and predictions that I’m sure are going to turn out to be hilariously wrong but I just had to vent *somewhere* so forgive me my crazy ramblings. plus it’ll be fun to look back later and see how shockingly wrong I was.

But also potential spoiler warning in case I’m right about anything, plus I’ll be referencing events in the show up to episode 11.

SPOILERS

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So.

THE WORLD/ TIME TRAVEL/THE RULES

I think the world Yoon Hyun-woo has been reborn into, where he is now Jin Do-Jun has elements of self fulfilling prophecy and timeline correction. My evidence? Yoon Hyun-woo’s mum and the story Yoon Hyun-woo reads in the chairman’s autobiography that he shared with him as Jin Do-jun.

Jin Do-Jun is working off of the knowledge that he has from the previous OG timeline, and as such he can only make decisions based upon this. As Yoon Hyun-woo he didn’t know that his mum had bought stock: either the family never found out after she died or his Dad didn’t tell him.

So though he went to great lengths in the ‘new’ timeline to remove the reason why his mother died in the OG timeline (trying to save his fathers job, trying to ensure his father still got worker protections, finally trading and bartering leverage so that his father wouldn’t be on the picket line protesting and being beaten up on television) in an effort to save her life, he didn’t take any steps to stop his mother buying that stock or to protect its value. He also wasn’t aware how bad her mental or emotional state was in the OG timeline, and so couldn’t have predicted she would take her own life once that stock failed. And so in the ‘new’ timeline he’s blind sighted by her suicide.

So his future knowledge is limited to things he knew, and he might not know all the information about something. In those grey areas Hyun-woo knew nothing about, things can happen or could have happened to affect change. Plus in some ways the timeline will try and correct itself: In both the OG and new timeline the mother died. Some events are inevitable.

Secondly, when the chairman goes missing Do-Jun thinks he knows exactly where he will be, due to a story in the chairman’s autobiography that he read in the OG timeline as Hyun-woo. However this turns out to be wrong: the chairman is luckily nearby but not where Do-jun expects him to be and not for the reasons he thinks the chairman would be there. When Do-Jun shares the reasoning/story he knew from his life as Hyun-woo the chairman laughs, and then states it’s a good sounding story and he will use that from now on.

So Do-Jun’s knowledge from the OG timeline can be compromised or incorrect. Plus the chairman’s statement, that he will use this PR worthy story/reasoning going forward, could explain why this was the version in his autobiography that Hyun-woo read in the OG timeline. Self fulfilling prophecy, plus Do-Jun might not necessarily have the right information.

My read on this? While Do-Jun can make small changes, the larger events will still happen as the timeline corrects itself. The changes he can make are dependant on what he knows, and even that can be incorrect. And he may even *cause* some events to happen.

EPISODE 10/11 AND THE ACCIDENT

We’re made to think that in the OG timeline this crash happened and the OG chairman and Do-Jun were killed. Due to the changes Hyun-woo/Do-Jun has made as 4-2 (befriending the driver) this didn’t happen in the ‘new’ timeline. Wether this is true or not in the OG timeline I’m not sure. But if so the ‘new’ timeline will work to self correct and events will play out as if they had died.

We’ve seen the chairman is loosing mental capacity, likely a combination of the stress of the crash compounding his chronic condition. I think (once it comes to light) the siblings will use this to question his decisions regarding Do-Jun and the succession, and act to remove him as chairman. It will be as if the grandfather *had* died, but likely much more messy and dramatic within the family (due in no small part to Do-Jun’s actions in the series so far to ruin them all). Within this messy transfer of power I think Do-jun will loose much of his power and influence in company: the siblings taking the opportunity to get revenge on him for his actions in episodes 2-10. So in regards to the *succession* it will be as if Do-Jim *had* died in that crash.

But wait! In the OG timeline Do-Jun died in that first ‘accident’. And we can guess this lead to much of the tension we see between 4 and 4 Alpha and the rest of the family in the OG timeline in episode one. And why 4 Alpha wanted to ‘know the truth about the accident’. Surely this will be changed in this new timeline due to Do-jun’s survival?

No.

I think the timeline will move to correct itself.

I think there will be a second attempt on Do-Jun’s life, by the same person as the first (at this time we don’t know if this is his cousin Jin Seong-jun or Seong-Jin’s father/ Do-Jun’s uncle Jin Young-Kim: all that has been confirmed is that it’s not Seong-Juns wife, Mo Hyun-min). In this second ‘accident’ Do-jun will survive but, realising that this family member won’t stop trying to kill him and not wanting to put other friends and family at risk, he’ll decide to allow the family to think he is dead, and continue to work from the shadows to take the Jin family down. Do-Jim will realise that with his grandfather/the chairman having been removed he has lost much of his protection within the company and family, and he might not survive a further attempt on his life.

Do-jun will go into hiding, I think only telling his CEO friend Mason Oh that he’s alive and working to take Soonyang down. And once the ‘new’ timeline’s Hyun-woo turns up at Soonyang, Do-jun can use this resemblance to move around the place practically unnoticed: why would you think it’s Do-jun who’s been famously dead for 15 years? Much more likely to be a minor employee wandering where he shouldn’t be.

In essence I think the ‘new’ timeline we are in will eventual become the OG timeline, with some small changes. Think Harry Potter time turner rules: small things can change, but the overall narrative remains.

This second ‘accident’ will take the place of the first from the OG timeline: in this ‘new’ timeline Do-Jun’s mother 4-alpha will be suspicious of foul play as she overheard Do-jun and his father confirming the first accident was an assassination attempt. This will lead to the family breaking ties with the Jin’s until 2022, when 4-alpha once again returns for answers, offering her shares in the company as a bribe for the one who knows the truth.

The second ‘accident’ and Do-jun’s supposed death will cause Seo Min-young ( the prosecutor) to shut herself off enough to become the cold and focused person we saw in the OG timeline, and explains why she has a target on the Soonyang company: in this ‘new’ timeline she also knows the first ‘accident’ was planned and so will believe that her boyfriend has been killed by his family.

And my final out there prediction….

THE KILLERS IDENTITY

The whole series the main background mystery has been ‘which family member killed Hyun-woo in the OG timeline?’.

I think… Do-jun killed himself/hyun-woo in the OG timeline, and will order the hit on the Hyun-woo in this ‘new’ timeline.

Firstly and mainly, he will realise the self fulfilling prophecy and cyclical aspect of this life. In order to go back and effect these changes, Hyun-woo has to die and in that way (violently betrayed) so that he is motivated to destroy Soonyang once he becomes Do-jun.

Secondly Hyun-woo has to die in the course of brining Soonyang’s corruption to light, so that afterwards Do-jun can reveal himself, come back into the light and revel in the groups destruction. Do-jun can’t reveal himself if Hyun-woo is still alive: they’re in essence twins. Questions will be asked and mainly by Hyun-woo himself as to why they are identical. But no one is going to suspect foul play if there is clearly Hyun-woo’s body, in the centre of an international corruption scandal, with a well documented life working for Soonyang, who can’t speak for himself anymore to contradict Do-Jun’s and explanations.

Plus as time passes from Hyun-woos death people will forget *exactly* what he liked like and only remember that he resembled the prodigal son who has just returned, Do-jun.

So yeah, I think Do-Jun will have to spend the next ~20yrs working from the sidelines and background to make small issues and problems for Soonyang and the Jin family, kind of like how he did before he was revealed as the main investor in Miracle. Lots of sneaky work and near misses, kind of a death by a thousand cuts plan. And he will set up/add to/make worse the things he knows the family will do between now and present day, so that they will be caught by prosecutors in 2022. And when that time comes the whole group and family will be taken down in one go.

Anyway, that’s my thoughts on the world, we’ll have to wait and see if it’s correct! I haven’t read the web comic the who is based on so I have no idea what’s coming down the line.

Anyone agree? Or really disagree with these thoughts?