When Death makes the rules, lessons must be learned on the fly. Think fast and learn fast because too many mistakes in Death’s Game will result in a fall to infinite anguish. Fun game, right? This thought-provoking series will remind you how lucky we are to be living, even through the lowest moments of our lives.
We first meet Choi Yi-jae (Seo In-Guk), at Hell’s Gate where he will pay dearly for mocking Death (Park So-dam). His crime? Cheating Death by taking his own life. His punishment? Dying 12 more times in “Death’s Game.” If Yi-jae can stay alive in any of his reincarnations, he can live out that existence. But the catch is that all of his new lives are on the brink of demise.
Yi-jae grasps quickly that he can use the memories and talents of each “life” to his advantage in the next reincarnation. But this is easier said than done as he just as quickly learns that Death has a twisted sense of humor and the odds are heavily stacked against him.
“Death’s Game” is fast-paced, gorgeously produced and unflinchingly savage. The action sequences look like they came straight out of a John Wick masterclass. But more importantly, in between exploding planes, motorcycle chases, and chainsaws, Yi-jae belatedly learns life lessons in death. Think “A Christmas Carol,” but with sharper edges and less holiday cheer.
5 Quotable Lessons From “Death’s Game”
1. “Isn’t that what you humans do? You care more about the thorn in your own finger than the knife inside someone else’s body.” -Death
After seven years of failed job interviews, crushing debt, suspicion that his girlfriend is cheating and eviction from his apartment, Yi-jae jumps off a building and garners Death’s wrath. “All I could see was darkness whether my eyes were open or shut,” he explained.
When Yi-jae sees his girlfriend, Jung Ji-su (Go Young-jung), in his fourth re-incarnation, he realizes how completely warped his perspective had become. Not only was he wrong about her infidelity, but it hits home how much he took their time together for granted. Now released from the mypotic despair of his last moments of life, Yi-jae acknowledges how much he should have been grateful for in his life and how he lost all sense of perspective.
2. “Why didn’t I realize then that I had people in my life who would cry with me during difficult times?” – Choi Yi-jae
Throughout the series, in multiple reincarnations, Yi-jae deeply regrets his egoism and inability to grasp how his suicide would impact the people in his life, most notably his mother (Kim Mi-kyung) and his girlfriend Ji-su.
When all he could see were his own failings, Yi-jae was blind to the love and help that were only steps or a call away. His tunnel vision also prevented him from glimpsing the ruin that would be left behind.
3. “People are happiest when they can truly be themselves.” – Jung Ji-su
The irony of Ji-su saying this to a person who was and wasn’t Yi-jae was hard to watch. Swamped by self-pity and hopelessness before his death, Yi-jae only saw himself as only one thing: a failure. Not a son, a boyfriend, or a person who had the potential to do so much good with his life.
Too late, he reveals to Ji-su the utter devastation he feels for not appreciating her or the part of himself that was loved by her. He had forgotten the happiness they shared when he was his flawed, struggling self.
4. “I belatedly realized that a person’s character is determined not by the beliefs they hold, but by their actions over the course of their lifetime.” – Detective Ahn Ji-hyung
One of Yi-jae’s longer and more gripping lives is as Detective Ahn Ji-hyung (Oh Jung-se,) who plots revenge against a maniacal adversary, Park Tae-woo (Kim Ji-hoon). In the more bloody and less contemplative parts of the series, Tae-woo wantonly wreaks mayhem in his “playground” of Seoul.
In seeking justice for the people in his life and afterlife, Ji-hyung embodies a person of merit. It’s through this life that Yi-jae reflects on the simplicity and reward of being a person who protects others and tries to do the right thing.
5. “A clear day. A rainy day. A windy day. I learned that life was made up of these different days. And that it was okay to fail as long as I kept going.” – Choi Yi-jae
Through 12 spins of Death’s wheel Yi-jae grasps that perspective and endurance are everything. Hate. Despair. Joy. Love. Forced to look through others’ eyes, he sees that light and dark are only possible together, that one cannot exist without the other.
