K-Pop Demon-Hunters: Take 2
Sooo... K-Pop Demon Hunters is my little brother's favorite movie ever, and now, having rewatched it yet again (not complaining, it's so good), a sequel storyline has popped into my head, more or less fully formed.
If anyone's interested in reading through a movie summary, here you go! Let me know what you think and I welcome questions or suggestions on the iffy parts, since I haven't really developed this much at all.
Basically, Rumi and Jinu have become kind of symbols in the demon world among the demons that were formerly human, that there might be hope to escape Gwi Ma. They become this paragon of the idea that even though the demons did terrible things in the past, they might be able to choose to be better in the future and get their humanity back. The problem, of course, is that, just as with Jinu, Gwi Ma has a ton of power over them and can summon them back into the demon world if he suspects they’re rebelling. So now there’s a handful of cautiously rebellious demons led by one of the former Saja boys (I’m thinking Baby since he seemed to have the most personality/free thought of the Saja drones) who are trying to find a way to break Gwi Ma’s hold over them and are spending as much time in the human world as possible.
Eventually, HUNTR/X, back to business as usual aside from the sword that likes to make sarcastic commentary but is also surprisingly perceptive and sympathetic, finds one of these rebel demons and, given the experiences of the last movie, decides to at least give them a chance when they say they want to break free of Gwi Ma. The rebel Saja boy then explains to the hunters and the ghost of Jinu that there are legends of another demon who rebelled against Gwi Ma. Supposedly, this demon found a way to bind himself to the human world to avoid being called back to Gwi Ma; however, Gwi Ma managed to trick him and imprisoned him in the human world somewhere to prevent him from teaching any other demons how to bind themselves to the human world. Rebel Saja begs the girls for help in finding this demon, and after a long discussion about worries, issues of trust, and the lessons of the last movie, the girls agree.
I believe this search takes them to the US for a couple of fun plot reasons. Firstly, Zoe has her father living in the US and her mother in Korea, so this would be a great opportunity to explore some of Zoe’s character and past as a child of divorce and a child of two cultures. I think an arc about her and her father coming to an understanding of her decision to live with her mother (presumably given that she is now a K-pop idol), and Zoe having some issues and acceptance with her American identity as well, would be super cool. Also, Bobby and Zoe’s father go from enemies (Bobby doesn’t like that he’s upsetting one of the girls, and Zoe’s dad is maybe just a bit jealous of Bobby’s relationship with Zoe) to besties in 5k. They team up to keep the girls fed, supported, and protected from the gawking world.
Secondly, I want to give Mira a love interest, and the guy I have in mind is a high-powered, wild-card American lawyer who is aggressively passive-aggressive and weilds words like weapons. He eventually teaches Mira how to shoot (since personal handguns are illegal in Korea) and is generally impressed by her combat ability. They’re both a little bit aggressive, closed-off, and hot-tempered; however, he likes to eviscerate people with words, and Mira’s more comfortable just straight-up hitting folks. They get on like a house on fire, and that’s everyone else’s problem as Mira deals with the relationship issues her family left her with and determines not to be ashamed of being in love or vulnerable. Just like her friends, he loves her for her wildness and refusal to fit into everyone’s box and instead focus on being herself, and it’s very affirming and healing for her. At some point, she saves his butt from demons, and later on, he gets to yell at her family for her, and it’s epic, character development, and healthy relationships all around.
Anyway, eventually, the girls, Jinu, and the rebel demons find this mysterious prison. For some reason, Mira and Zoe have to stay outside (maybe they have to hold off demons following them, or only demons can enter the prison), but the point being, it’s just Rumi and the demons, and sword!Jinu, who find the demon prisoner with crazy scars all up and down his arms, frozen in time. Upon being unfrozen, he looks up to see himself surrounded by demons and freaks out, grabbing Rumi and pinning her to the floor, demanding, “Where is she? What did you do to her?!”
The other demons jump in to pull him off of her, and the demon fights free of them, backing into a corner as he stares wildly at all of them. “Celene,” her mutters, “I have to find Celene,” then teleports away.
“Well, that’s a plot twist,” comments sword!Jinu, having noticed the demon’s purple hair that no one else seemed to mark.
Rumi comes rushing out to wherever Zoe and Mira are and is like, “We freed him, but he’s gone crazy and is going after Celene!” And so the girls, who have been very pointedly not talking to Celene this entire movie, race off to save her from the crazy demon man.
They arrive to find them mid-battle to the death, screaming at each other, both injured and bleeding.
“You tricked her! You killed her!” Celene screams, and the demon roars back, “I was tricked! You were supposed to keep her safe!” And Celen tries to stab while hysterically accusing, “You expect me to believe that?!” and the demon growls back, “You’re the hunter, if anyone should have been able to save her, it was you!” and this goes back and forth for a while, getting increasingly hysterical, angry, and stabby, before the girls intervene.
Mira and Zoe grab Celene and hold her back while Rumi pins the demon. “Who is he?” she demands of Celene, “Obviously, you know this demon. Tell me who he is.”
Celene stares at the two of them, Rumi pinning the scarred, purple-haired demon to the ground, both of them looking at her with furious eyes and glowing patterns. “No,” she says.
“Uh, nuh-uh,” Mira cuts in, “This is not a situation where you get to say no. Who is he?”
Celene grits her teeth and finally grinds out, “He’s your father.”
Shock and sword!Jinu in the background, shaking his head.
Mira and Zoe manhandle Celene away to give Rumi some time with her long-lost demon dad, and the whole story comes out.
Somehow, Rumi’s mom and dad met and fell in love (meet-cute to be filled in, enemies to lovers fast-burn). Seeing in Rumi’s mother the hope of a future where he could be more than a prisoner of his greatest mistakes and a slave to Gwi Ma, Rumi’s father figured out a way to use her hunter song to create bindings to tie around his arms to hold him in the human world. However, the bindings of a hunter’s songs were torturous to his demon body; thus, the scarring all up and down his arms, and Rumi’s mother, unable to bear seeing him in so much pain, said that there had to be a better way. Eventually, as he got weaker, she released the bindings, worried that her magic would kill him, resulting in him being dragged back to the demon world.
“We had a plan,” Rumi’s father told her, “A secret place to meet, but Gwi Ma knew. He had me followed and then imprisoned me in the human world, sending demons to lie in wait for your mother. I didn’t even know about you.”
Meanwhile, Zoey and Rumi drag the rest of the story out of Celene.
She wasn’t aware of the relationship for a while, only knowing that her best friend had been spending a lot of time away. She suspected that she was dating someone, but had thought nothing of it. And then one night, Rumi’s mother had come to her door, desperate, afraid, and angry. She was pregnant, and she needed somewhere to stay; she refused to tell Celene who or where the father was, and Celene was furious with whoever this mysterious man was that he had left her friend alone in such a state. Of course, she took her in and supported her, but then, once the baby was born, the whole story came out.
“She insisted on going to find him, this demon that had stolen her affection and abandoned her!” Celene raged. “She left me with her daughter, with Rumi, and vanished in the night. By the time I realized she was gone, it was too late. We found her body where he and his ambushers had left it.”
Mira and Zoey leave her mourning her friend and return to their own, where they compare notes with Rumi and Jinu and put the whole story together. There are a lot of emotions and discussions, and explanations to Rumi’s father, and then someone finally realizes the more plot-relevant revelations; the bindings don’t work, they hurt, and eventually kill the bound demon, so they need to find another way to save the rebel demons from Gwi Ma.
From there, the story is a bit fuzzy, except that Gwi Ma eventually figures out that not only is Rumi’s father now free, but that he is, in fact, Rumi’s father and a symbol of hope to the rebel demons, and kidnaps him. This results in a rescue mission into the demon world while Rumi’s father faces off against Gwi Ma’s attempts to torture and break him. In the demon world, all the humans suffer from having to face their greatest faults and fears; however, given our girls’ growth in the last movie and continued growth over their character arcs in this one, they band together and push back the pain and shame. Celene, on the other hand, finds that “our faults and fears must never be seen” is not that helpful of a mantra when they are, in fact, seen, and she suffers a bit while the final battle happens, working through her own grief and shame that she never came to terms with.
I think that ultimately, together with Rumi’s father, the heroes manage to find a way to break Gwi Ma’s control over rebellious demons, likely through a sort of “rebirth” idea in which they determine not to be the person they were before and to instead do better with their futures and the hunters and the rebel demons escape back to the human world along with a Celene who just had to face the worst of herself and has a lot to think about. Follow it all up with some catharsis, some apologies, maybe a kiss for Mira, and some father-daughter bonding time for Rumi and Zoe and their respective dads, maybe a bit of humor as the former demons try to settle into life as modern humans, and end it all on a soft, happy note.