Black Knight — Season 1, Episode 2 Recap

The first Black Knight episode ended tragically. The second looks at the scene of its last-second twist from two different perspectives.

First up are the 5-8s. He charges in, assesses the damage, and then carries Sa-wol, who is barely alive, away. The sole surviving would-be assassin chooses suicide rather than apprehension.

Seol-ah's is the second one. A covering that adheres to the features of her face is covering her deceased daughter as she is taken out on a stretcher. She gives the order to start the investigation into what transpired in the flat. This is after having a fleeting flashback to when Sa-wol woke up for the first time under her care. According to the evidence so far, the General Districts have experienced a wave of similar kidnappings.

There’s something funny going on with Sa-wol.

How did he survive a close-range gunshot to the head? The bullet seems to have bounced harmlessly off, itself crumpled and demolished. When 5-8 looks over Sa-wol’s body, he sees a cut on his ankle that seems to show metal poking through. Is Sa-wol some kind of robot?

Later, 5-8 meets with "Grandpa" and speculates that Sa-wol may be a "mutant". His illness appears to be related to his father's employment in the oxyanium mines. It must have a link with the kidnappings.

We discover that Ryu Seok of the Cheonmyeong Group has been orchestrating the abductions. He utilizes Deliveryman 5-7 as the key to the general districts. However, after learning that the people he is removing are being subjected to horrible experiments, 5-7 is starting to change his mind.

Ryu Seok uses an implant in the back of each of his employees' skulls to control them in the manner of the Suicide Squad, with the ability to immediately kill them by pressing a button on his computer interface. This is the outcome that awaits 5-7, who attempts suicide but is stopped by 5-8. But before Ryu Seok murders him from a distance, he is only able to explain experiments in a general fashion.

We also discover that Ryu Seok is acting independently of his father, who seems to be truly motivated by altruism and has always wanted the Air Cores to benefit society. Whatever Ryu Seok is attempting to accomplish with the tests, it would stand to reason that it has to do with how those cores convert oxyanium to oxygen. Sa-wol is considered to be a "mutant" due to her putative proximity to oxyanium; perhaps Ryu Seok is attempting to assemble a private army of these alleged mutants.

A strong emerging theme in this episode is grief. The death of Seul-ah has hit both Seol-ah and Sa-wol very hard. Both feel responsible. When Seol-ah brings 5-8 in for questioning about the crime, Sa-wol sneaks off back to the apartment, and he’s there looking at photographs of him and Seul-ah when Seol-ah returns home.

More flashbacks reveal that Sa-wol was taken home by Seol-ah during a purge of refugees who were resisting the Cheonmyeong Group. Evidently horrified by what she was doing, Seol-ah purposefully avoided killing any of the survivors and secretly brought Sa-wol home.

But he is unable to stay with her at this time. She gives him his suitcase and, I believe, the vial containing Seul-ah's ashes in a heartfelt farewell scene before sending him to be with Grandpa and his buddies. But first, he makes a pit stop to confront the group he beat up in the first episode. He seeks revenge for his guilt by having them beat him up or perhaps even have them kill him.

Black Knight is now streaming on Netflix.