In Your Radiant Season: Episode 12 (Final)
by DaebakGrits
As winter comes to an end — both literally and metaphorically — in our drama, our leading lady uncovers the truth of what happened seven years ago and comes to regret her decision to push away a certain someone who’s brought sunshine and iridescent clouds into her life. But if this drama has taught us anything, it’s that seasons come and go, and happiness — and leading men — can be found with a little effort.
Episode 12
Last week, I predicted this drama would wrap up in one of two ways, but it ultimately landed somewhere in between — with the timeline resetting to shortly after Chan’s departure and the story mostly focusing on Ha-ran as she uncovers the truth about what really happened seven years ago.
As emotional as Ha-ran was after learning Chan had been Hyeok-chan’s roommate and her sometimes penpal, she almost instantly regrets her decision to not hear his side of events after Man-jae steps up to defend his former housemate. Yes, Chan had kept their shared history a secret, but he’d intended to tell her the truth. He’d simply hesitated because his memories weren’t intact and feared acting rashly would cause more harm than good.
Sadly, by the time Ha-ran realizes she should have given Chan the chance to explain his situation, it’s too late. Chan has quit his job and disappeared, leaving behind a simple “End of Trial” note on Ha-ran’s car as his parting goodbye, and a Truck of Doom ensured that Ha-ran wouldn’t get to view the contents of the tablet he’d intended to use as a visual aid for his recap of the pre-explosion events. (At least, not anytime soon.) However, because Chan sketched in a notebook rather than his tablet while trying to piece together his memories, Ha-ran has an epiphany when she sees his sketch of Soo-jin’s bracelet. The doctor she met in passing knew Chan and Hyeok-chan!
When Ha-ran confronts Soo-jin, she’s surprisingly forthcoming. The earlier caginess she displayed when Chan approached her for answers is gone because her own guilt — more on that later — compels her to tell Ha-ran the unvarnished truth. None of what’s revealed through flashbacks and narration it is terribly surprising to the viewer, as we’ve already pieced together the fact that Soo-jin and Hyeok-chan met while he was in the hospital and, because Hyeok-chan’s relationship with Ha-ran was strained from the distance, he’d started dating Soo-jin.
We also know that they went on vacation together, and during that time, Hyeok-chan and Chan’s laptops were switched, and it was Ha-ran’s conversations with Chan that made her reconsider her own waning feelings for her long-distance boyfriend. Soo-jin goes on to explain what happened on the day of the explosion, but for now, the details of that particular part of their conversation remains a mystery while our story systematically checks in on our other characters.
Yoo-gyum has been discharged from the hospital, but his release is not a happy turn of events. Instead, he’s succumbed to negativity. He no longer has faith that he will overcome his injury and play baseball again, and he’s on the verge of burning his baseball gear when Ha-dam finds him. She clocks his pessimism and says, “Not on my watch!”
She doesn’t promise him that he will return to the major leagues, but she does point out the ridiculousness of him quitting so early in his recovery process. After all, there have been several notable athletes who’ve sustained injuries and, after lengthy rehabilitations, came out better and stronger than ever before. His vulnerability on full display, Yoo-gyum admits he’s scared of becoming nothing, but Ha-dam promises to stand by his side on the tough road to recovery. She won’t let him give up until after they’ve tried everything. (Daw, I love this young, ride-or-die couple.)
Meanwhile, Ha-young is doing her best to act as though she never confessed to Tae-suk, and he’s, well, business as usual — until the moment his favorite girl gets herself into trouble. Ha-young, once again, leaves her phone at the office, but this time she doesn’t need Tae-suk to bail her out financially while eating tteokbokki at a street stall. Instead, while on her way to meet with one of the atelier’s suppliers in Gangwon, an unexpected snowstorm cancels her meeting and leaves her stranded on the side of the road. She comically wonders if this is how she will die and rationalizes that she’s lived a pretty good life if this is, indeed, her time to go. But of course it’s not — because it’s Tae-suk to the rescue!
Everyone’s favorite COO arrives on the scene where the police have foolishly closed off the road without checking to see if anyone (re: Ha-young) was still navigating that particular stretch of highway. Tae-suk effortlessly hops over a police blockade and braves the inclement conditions on foot and, given his rather immaculate appearance, it doesn’t seem to take him all that long to locate Ha-young.
Not wanting to get her hopes up, Ha-young assumes he’d have braved the cold for her sisters, as well. Tae-suk doesn’t deny that he’d do the same for either Ha-ran or Ha-dam, but he admits that he lied when he told her that he only saw her as a colleague. He shied away from his feelings because he thought they were inappropriate, but, in truth, how could he not be attracted to her? Still unsure of himself, he asks if it’s all right for someone like him to have feelings for her, and she nods an emphatic yes. (So. Many. Squees!)
Enough time passes for Sun to fix the beloved family plate Ha-ran had entrusted to her. Along with the plate, Sun includes an inspirational note, reminding Ha-ran that miracles are earned through perseverance. Ha-ran’s take away from the letter is that she should not give up on fixing Chan’s broken tablet, and after buying another tablet of the same model off a stranger from the internet, Ha-ran is able to find a repair guy skilled enough to transfer Chan’s data.
As Ha-ran reads through the delicately illustrated version of Chan’s story, she’s moved to tears. Chan’s drawings and narration reveal just how close he came to ending his own life and that Ha-ran inadvertently saved him and gave him a new perspective. She coaxed him out of the shadows and into a world of color, where he found joy in his art again. Eventually, he walks her through the day of the explosion, his subsequent coma, and the disjointed memory of her that he clung to and obsessed over until the fireworks restored most of his memories. After he realized that he was just a stranger to Ha-ran, he had a momentary existential crisis before eventually finding it in himself to stop living like the dead and be the person she’d originally inspired him to be.
When he met her again in Seoul, he initially wanted to avoid her and any possibility that she’d discover their shared past, but it had pained him to see her living in isolation. And so, against his better judgement, he’d inserted himself in her life to help her heal in the same way she’d aided him seven years ago. Ha-ran reflects on their time in Seoul, and in hindsight she sees the gamut of emotions he’d described. His initial hesitation. His determination to coax her out of her winter. His desire to tell her the truth, and his inability to find the moment to show her the tablet. Annnnd…just like that, Ha-ran feels like crap for not listening to him.
More time passes, and it’s now been a year since the atelier collaborated with Chan’s team and traveled to Gyeongju together. Ha-ran still hasn’t found Chan, but that all changes when she stumbles upon the social media profile of an artist who signs his sketches with a very familiar iridescent cloud. Knowing she’s found Chan’s account, Ha-ran tracks him down through the location of his last post, and their reunion mirrors their first meeting at Nana Atelier a year ago as Ha-ran’s pen rolls towards Chan’s foot. He looks up, and there’s Ha-ran. “I found you,” she says before pulling him into an embrace.
Ha-ran apologizes for not listening to him but, more importantly, she tells him that he’s not responsible for the explosion. Come to find out, Soo-jin lied to Chan when she told him that he was the cause of the explosion. She lied in order to protect Hyeok-chan’s memory, but after learning Chan has a piece of shrapnel in his head that affects his memories, Soo-jin was guilted into telling Ha-ran the truth.
On the day of the explosion, it wasn’t Chan that punched Hyeok-chan; it was the other way around. Hyeok-chan was annoyed that his plans to break up with Ha-ran were ruined by Chan’s continued communications with her. He shoved Chan to the ground, but the bottle of chemicals that fell to the floor with Chan wasn’t the cause of the explosion. Instead, after Soo-jin called Hyeok-chan out for his hypocritical behavior and advised him to properly break up with Ha-ran so they could be together, he lit his lighter in frustration — and at the exact moment he knocked over a separate bottle, igniting a fire, and causing the lab to go boom.
In addition to revealing to Chan that he wasn’t the cause of the explosion, Ha-ran also explains that he — not Hyeok-chan — was the one who had made her want to get on a plane and rush to Boston. The one she loves — back then and now — is Chan. His memories come rushing back, he passes out, and when he wakes up, he’s in the hospital. The shrapnel in his brain shifted, but it luckily moved to an operable position and was removed. (Well, that was mighty convenient.) With his memories fully recovered, Chan finally tells Ha-ran what he’d been preparing to tell her all along: I love you. (Now kiss!)
And with that, our story slowly wraps up with a wedding — not Chan and Ha-ran’s, but the writers definitely wanted us to think so at first. Instead, Na-na and Man-jae tie the knot. Genius is the cutest ring bearer ever, and the rest of our couples are in attendance. Although this would seem like the ending scene for our story, we get one final goodbye with each of our other pairings.
Ha-dam has been accepted to med school, and Yoo-gyum is playing for the minor leagues. Together, they’ve matured enough as a couple to realize that they don’t need to be married in order to feel secure in their relationships. While our maknae couple wasn’t my favorite pairing — especially during the miscommunication and false cheating allegations era — they were somehow the most solid couple of the bunch. Perhaps it stems largely from their infectious youthful optimism, but even when their relationship was at their rockiest, they still had chemistry.
Sadly, Ha-young and Tae-suk’s relationship never quite lived up to my anticipated level of fanservice. Will I be thinking about Tae-suk’s little hop over the police barricade for weeks? Yes. But am I also disappointed that their relationship hasn’t progressed much since he confessed his feelings? Also yes. At the very least, give me a scene where Jeremy stumbles upon them in the storage closet and is appropriately scandalized to see the uncharacteristic love-sick puppy look on Tae-suk’s face as he gazes at Ha-young as he’s about to kiss her. Alas, I will have to settle for Tae-suk’s new, relaxed bangs and the sweet way he says Ha-young’s given name when he finally works up the courage to drop the formalities.
And finally, our story closes with our OTP. They’re camping on a beach, and making a game out of sketching each other. However, when Chan shares his drawing of Ha-ran, he reveals that he actually drew himself proposing to her. (Okay, that was super smooth and romantic.) He gets down on one knee and pops the question. The proposal is followed by more scenes of them dating and happily enjoying life together until our story ends with a scene from seven years ago.
At some point during their communications, Ha-ran had messaged Chan (as Hyeok-chan), and the conversation is one that hasn’t previously been shown to the audience in flashbacks. Ha-ran mentioned that she’s heard the seasons of life come and go in no particular order, and she worried that winter would enter her life unexpectedly. Chan had typed up a response, assuring her that, even if winter came, a spring breeze would someday blow away the painful season. He never sent the message to her — likely because he was avoiding being overly personal with Hyeok-chan’s girlfriend — but in his final sentence, he wished for every season of her life to be radiant. (Annnnnd roll credits.)
Now that the drama has wrapped, I’m conflicted about how to rate it. I can’t say I loved it from start to finish, but I also can’t ignore that something — something beyond simply recapping each episode — kept drawing me back week after week. The twist in Episode 2 was compelling enough to hook me, but as Chan’s hidden memories gradually surfaced, the pacing became sluggish and the payoff felt underwhelming. Too much weight was placed on that single month of communication between Chan and Ha-ran, and in the end, the writers seemed to take the easy route by turning Hyeok-chan into a cheating, careless fool — the kind of person who would bring a cigarette lighter into a lab full of flammable chemicals.
To make Chan and Ha-ran’s connection during the Great Laptop Switch feel meaningful — and to sell the idea that their romance has weathered multiple seasons — the writers had to chip away at Hyeok-chan’s likability and emotional significance in Ha-ran’s life. Unfortunately, that choice also diminished the weight of Ha-ran’s prolonged grief, rendering it superfluous. She spent seven years in deep depression. While some of that pain can be attributed to unresolved trauma from her parents’ deaths, the central cause of her emotional “winter” was the loss of a boyfriend who ultimately turned out to be a cheating scumbag — one she only seemed to truly connect with during the brief period when Chan was impersonating him.
But, hey, who cares that she spent the majority of her twenties mourning the death of someone undeserving of so much as a fart in his general direction, right? The guy who was her penpal and true love has been alive all along, and he came into her life like a spring breeze to help blow her winter away. So, yeah, it’s all good. Nothing to see here — just an overused metaphor built on a weak-ass foundation.
Given my above-mentioned issues with the core plot, it really is a miracle that I didn’t rant my way through my recaps of In Your Radiant Season, but this drama was truly saved by the other characters and relationships in this story. I’ve already gone on at length about how the secondary romances — especially Ha-young and Tae-suk — were more compelling than the OTP, but the real heart of this drama was the bond between Ha-ran, Ha-young, and Ha-dam. We watched them argue, reconcile, work together, and grieve. We saw them process their parents’ deaths and then come together again to face their grandmother’s illness. The women carried this drama. In fact, the story might have been stronger if Chan had taken a step back, allowing Ha-ran’s healing to unfold through deeper, more meaningful moments with the family who had been by her side all along.
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