Azure Spring: Episodes 5-6 (Final)
by Dramaddictally
Azure Spring finishes up with more healing messages, as our leads learn to live life as it comes. And just when they think the truth will finally sink them, that’s when they find out what it takes to rise to the surface and float.
EPISODES 5-6
Last time, we were left wondering what Deok-hyun’s backstory is and how he came to kill a man. This time, as Anna goes through his room, we learn that he was involved in a shooting while in the army, which led to him serving three years in prison. We’ll get the details later, but before that’s revealed, Deok-hyun catches Anna in his room, admits he’s guilty, and then takes off with a duffel bag like he’s not coming back.
At the same time, Anna’s boyfriend/coach from Seoul shows up at her house, acting cocky and claiming to love her while giving her permission to swim again. Anna feels disappointed in herself for going with him, but the idea of swimming again is what gets her on her feet and back to the city.
However, we learn quickly that the boyfriend is still dating the other swimmer on his team and he’s come back to pluck up Anna and stage a comeback, so the two former youth rivals can compete. Not only that, he wants to date both of them simultaneously – as he tells his slimeball friend – since they’re both his type and he thinks he can get away with it.
But Anna is at swim practice when he makes this remark, and after she overhears it, she gets out of the pool, kicks him between the legs, and shoves him in the water. Then she also kicks his buddy in the same spot (this is the guy who sexually harassed her at work earlier) and tells the other swimmer to watch out for the coach. She’s done with swimming, she says, as she walks away and doesn’t look back.
This decision isn’t solely a reaction to her ex-coach’s comments, though. The themes this week are limits and letting go, and as we watch Anna in the pool, she’s thinking back on what Deok-hyun taught her about coming up for air. We see her digging up some seafood while diving but it’s taking too long. Deok-hyun pulls her to the surface and says she’ll die that way. “You need to let go and come back up. That’s how you survive.”
Anna thinks about her limits and if she can survive without swimming. It’s the thing she wanted most, but now it’s bringing her down. “I have to let things go and get above water,” she says, as she packs her bags to return to the countryside.
Meanwhile, Deok-hyun is at a hospital, visiting someone in a coma, and we finally see the flashback to what happened in the army. Deok-hyun was a sergeant, protecting his friend from being bullied by another officer. That officer had a gun. Deok-hyun started beating him up. And the gun went off and shot the friend he was trying to protect. And then, the bully/gunman jumps to his death — leaving Deok-hyun to feel guilty about “ruining two lives” instead of one. It’s his friend that’s been in the coma all this time.
From here, we see how much guilt and shame Deok-hyun is carrying around, and Anna takes it on herself to free him up the same way she’s been freed. The two run into each other again when they both go back to the village, and Anna tells him that she’s not curious to hear more about his past since she knows he’s not a bad guy.
And Deok-hyun is there to tell her she should swim again (not knowing she just gave it up willingly). But Anna now feels that her life can go on without swimming, and so, she asks Deok-hyun if she can teach him to swim competitively. He’s been under water a long time, and she wants him to be able to let go of his weights and survive, like she did.
Anna’s thought here is that when he was teaching her to dive, she had no time to think of anything else. It was a distraction, and she wants him to have that same peace of mind. So, she convinces him to participate in a swim competition with her, which will take place in the open sea.
Before they begin practice, she prepares a meal for him and he continues to look ashamed. He’s an ex-con, he says, so why would Anna be interested in him? He regrets his actions the day of the shooting, and replays it in his head, thinking of alternative ways it could have gone if he didn’t intervene. But Anna says that the bullying would have gotten worse and it would have ended the same for his friend. He did the right thing. It was an accident. It wasn’t his fault.
At this, Deok-hyun cries at the table where she’s set down the food and Anna takes his hand and sits close to comfort him. We see how much she’s grown, and just how much the choice to let go of swimming has given her room to be kind – to both him and herself. Once they get through this tough night, the two seem bonded, like close friends.
But one last conflict is afoot when Anna’s ex-coach arrives, angry about being dumped, and tells the islanders about Deok-hyun’s past. The townspeople march up to the house, appearing like a mob to confront Deok-hyun, who kneels in front of the chief and apologizes for not telling them.
The chief is actually an ally, though, lifting up Deok-hyun and saying he should have told them from the start – because it must have been tough enduring it alone. They’ve already researched what happened and they’re on his side, especially since they’ve gotten to know his character over the past three years, and they all think well of him. Deok-hyun is in tears at being accepted and treated so nicely, and Anna gets to see his heart unfreeze, as she’d hoped.
Due to a typhoon, the swim competition is canceled, but Anna wants to go out there and do it anyway when the weather clears. They’ve practiced a lot and trained really hard, so she, Deok-hyun, and their other two friends get in the water and make the best of it. “Life is unpredictable, like the weather at sea,” Anna says in voiceover, “so we just have to go with life, and let the waves carry us.”
In a final shot, Deok-hyun’s army buddy begins to wake from his coma, and we see the four friends on the beach, trying to stay young and happy by giving up their fight with the waves.
For a six-episode run, this wasn’t so bad. The message in these episodes came out strong and made the story more moving than earlier weeks. Anna had to let go of the thing she thought mattered most because, in the end, it was drowning her — even though she thought she needed it to stay alive. And Deok-hyun had to let go of his shame and guilt, as much as he identified with them, in order to be free to breathe as well. Original? No. Still a worthy message? Yes.
But I think the thing that worked best was the change in Anna’s character, which made watching her pull Deok-hyun out of his darkness more pleasing than when we saw him help Anna out of hers. The dynamic is warmer in these last episodes and, independent of the romance that may or may not develop between the characters, there’s a true sense of bonding and friendship after his secret is revealed and she’s kind to him. With no explicit romance, the message is more about healing and caring than it is about love, which hit harder for me.
So, while the story was cliché, the characters were cutouts, and the actors probably won’t win any awards, there’s still a warm little gem of a takeaway here to be aware of the things you think you need in order to survive – because they may be the very things keeping you under water.
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