Image Source: YouTube user TVN Drama
The K-drama “Eve” serves a cold dish of revenge with a hefty dose of adultery and melodrama on the side. Starring Seo Ye-Ji as the lead femme fatale, Lee Ra-El, the TvN drama (also streaming on Viki) follows her elaborate schemes to exact revenge on the corrupt chaebol family behind the conglomerate LY Group that destroyed her family 13 years ago.
Fueled by her desire to take them down once and for all, Ra-El strikes up an affair with the CEO of YL Group, Kang Yoon-Gyeom (Park Byung-Eun), to get access to the powerful people who ruined her life. While Ra-El has made vengeance her sole focus in life, the developments between her and Yoon-Gyeom make the audience wonder whether her facade is cracking and if she’s actually falling in love with the CEO of the LY Group. Keep reading as we break down all the signs that suggest that Ra-El may be falling for Yoon-Gyeom and the sneaky clues that may suggest her true love may not be Yoon-Gyeom at all.
Who Is Ra-El’s “Twin Flame”: Yoon-Gyeom or Eun-Pyeong?
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While Ra-El’s feigned seductive tactics grab Yoon-Gyeom’s attention as she had intended, they connect on their shared love for the tango art form, bandoneon, and his unhealed childhood wounds.
Though Ra-El has tunnel vision regarding her mission, as the audience, we can’t help but wonder if she is feigning her feelings for Yoon-Gyeom or not. Later, during the initial episodes, she replays her stolen moments with Yoon-Gyeom in her mind, but it’s unclear if it’s because she was actually being swayed by him or if she was just reviewing her machinations.
She later learns that she crossed paths with Yoon-Gyeom back in the day, at which point he learned the fable of Piazzolla’s bandoneon from Ra-El’s mentor, Maria. Now, in her old age, Maria posits that fate has thrown them into each other’s lives because they are twin flames, destined to have met and connected eventually.
While Ra-El’s apathetic attitude toward Yoon-Gyeom appears to shift as their bond deepens and her dazed reaction to finding out about their connection from years past may suggest she’s developing feelings for him, there’s a chance she’s still just playing a game. After all, there’s another man irrevocably entwined with Ra-El who she’s recently crossed paths with again: the lawyer turned would-be presidential candidate Seo Eun-Pyeong (Lee Sang-Yeob).
Eun-Pyeong may not love tango, but he was the one who helped Ra-El escape LY Group’s clutches when she was a teenager, and now he’s the only person who knows Ra-El’s true identity and the extent of her struggles, which is why he’s willing to risk everything to help her. Is Ra-El’s relationship with Yoon-Gyeom a red herring to distract from Ra-El’s true twin flame, Eun-Pyeong? We’ll have to keep watching to find out.
Who Is Ra-El’s Inner Monologue About Love About: Herself, Yoon-Gyeom, or Eun-Pyeong?
Yoon-Gyeom finally gives in to his temptation and chooses Ra-El over his wife, Han So-Ra (Seon Yu), at the end of episode five, at which time the two spend the night together. In the morning, come episode six, Ra-El stares at his sleeping face, gently patting his hair. As the scene plays out, Ra-El’s accompanying voice-over may suggest the walls she’s put up around her heart are wavering. “Love cannot be hidden. It is madly impulsive, clouds your mind, and with great force of destruction . . . it numbs reason,” she says. The same internal struggle repeats when Yoon-Gyeom throws himself in front of Ra-El to shield her from ricocheting glass shards.
It could be the realization that she’s falling for Yoon-Gyeom that propels her to ask her fake mom (and a partner in plotting the revenge), Moon-hee, to file the lawsuit against YL Group even though she knows they might be jumping the gun without enough ammunition. Ra-El urges Moon-Hee to expedite the process in a bid to be done with the pretense and her potential feelings.
On the flip side, Ra-El’s inner monologue may not reflect her feelings but rather be a vocalization of what she knows Yoon-Gyeom is experiencing while falling in love with her. After all, both monologues occur when Yoon-Gyeom is acting recklessly on behalf of Ra-El. Not to mention, this isn’t Ra-El’s first rodeo. She has experience seducing men, having seduced her husband, Jin-Wook, under false pretenses as well, so she knows all the signs that a man is falling for her hook, line, and sinker. Considering how much experience she has compartmentalizing for the sake of her mission, would she really falter for Yoon-Gyeom?
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It’s also worth noting Ra-El is entirely aware Eun-Pyeong is also becoming invested in her plot to seek revenge against LY Group, even though it could impact his political career negatively. His efforts to help her despite the potential blowback also reflect the impulsiveness and numbed reasoning Ra-El speaks about in her monologue. And while the knowledge that he’s risking his career to help her doesn’t sit right with Ra-El, she’s also not above accepting it. Could Ra-El be trying to speed up her plan for revenge to avoid dragging the one person truly on her side, Eun-Pyeong, down with her?
Why Does Ra-El Tell So-Ra About Yoon-Gyeom’s Affair?
At the end of episode six, Ra-El drops a major bomb on So-Ra by tipping her off about her husband’s affair. While she doesn’t share the name of the other woman (understandably so, since it’s Ra-El herself), she might’ve been sowing the seeds for the couple’s eventual split. Now that Ra-El knows that So-Ra called the shots that resulted in her father Lee Tae Jun’s brutal murder and her mother’s subsequent disappearance, Ra-El might’ve blown the lid off Yoon-Gyeom’s infidelity simply out of spite. But there’s also a possibility that she took the step to clear her way to be with Yoon-Gyeom. Talk about killing two birds with one stone!
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Furthering this possibility is the preview for episode seven, which airs on June 22. In it, Ra-El’s godmother urges her to stop hoping for the outcome where Yoon-Gyeom divorces So-Ra. “What if I were to become the lady of LY Group, not Han So-Ra?” she asks in another scene.
Still, Ra-El is a pretty resourceful woman. If she senses that becoming the lady of LY Group could help her further her plot to destroy them, there’s no doubt she’d pursue it. If she does, in fact, want to speed up Yoon-Gyeom’s divorce, it isn’t necessarily because she loves him.
Does Ra-El Hold a Secret Grudge Against Yoon-Gyeom?
One question “Eve” has yet to answer is how much fault, if any, Ra-El believes Yoon-Gyeom bears for what happened to her family. While Yoon-Gyeom seems not to have played an active part in taking over Ra-El’s family business, Gediks Semiconductors, we don’t know if he’s actually blame-free for the catastrophe just yet.
Though Ra-El seemingly sees Yoon-Gyeom as a mere pawn in the vicious game, the writers might throw in an unexpected twist in the next 10 episodes, which might also delve into the actual reasons behind his mother’s sudden death, which Eun-Pyeong hinted he may have played a part in when he warned Ra-El that Yoon-Gyeom is capable of anything.
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Has he been planning a revenge plan of his own this whole time against So-Ra’s father, Han Pan-Ro, and his sidekick, Kim Jung-Chul? Did he order the forced merger between two companies? Will Ra-El succeed in achieving her goal of making Hans suffer? Only time will tell!
The 16-part Korean drama airs every Wednesday and Thursday, with the seventh episode of “Eve” coming out on June 9 on TvN in Korea and Rakuten Viki in the US.