The episode opens in the quiet town of Haeseong, where Eun Chae-ni receives devastating news, she’s terminally ill. At only 27 years old, she suddenly finds herself facing the possibility that her life could end before she ever gets to experience the world she’s dreamed about. Instead of quietly accepting her fate, Chae-ni immediately becomes desperate to escape the small town that feels like it’s trapping her.
Her first target is her grandmother, Kim Jeon-bok, who controls the family money. Chae-ni begs her to help fund a trip abroad so she can spend whatever time she has left actually living. But Jeon-bok refuses without hesitation, treating the idea like childish nonsense rather than a dying wish. The tension between them instantly sets the emotional tone for Chae-ni’s storyline. She’s angry, frustrated, and terrified, but she hides most of it behind sarcasm and reckless behavior.
Around the same time, the drama introduces Lee Un-jeong, a timid-looking civil servant who seems painfully ordinary at first glance. His introduction is unexpectedly funny because it happens right after he witnesses Chae-ni stealing a child’s ice cream in public. His coworker immediately labels her as some unstable weirdo and warns him to avoid her altogether.
That awkward first impression becomes even funnier later because Un-jeong quickly starts suspecting Chae-ni of being a serial killer.
But before the episode gets there, things take a strange turn at a local dumping yard. A rag picker named Kim Bong-pal accidentally falls into a disgusting puddle of black slime while searching through trash late at night. The sequence suddenly shifts into horror territory as the slime literally melts his ear off before he collapses unconscious.
The drama never fully explains what the substance is, but it’s immediately obvious this dumping yard is tied to something dangerous.
Days later, Bong-pal is officially reported missing. One of his friends visits City Hall asking for help, but the workers there dismiss him almost immediately. The only person who shows even the slightest interest is Un-jeong, although even he doesn’t fully understand what’s happening yet.
At the same office, an older man named Son Gyeon-un shows up once again to complain about the dumping yard. Apparently, he has been filing reports for a long time because he believes people are disappearing there. The employees are exhausted by his constant complaints, so Un-jeong gets pushed into handling him instead.
Their interaction is tense from the start. Un-jeong explains that the city cannot interfere because the dumping yard is private property, but Gyeon-un refuses to accept that answer. He insists something dangerous is happening there and even warns that similar disappearances happened in Haeseong twenty years ago.
That single line completely changes the atmosphere of the episode.
Suddenly, the mystery feels much bigger than one missing scavenger.
Things get even stranger when members of a suspicious religious cult abduct the old man later that day. The scene comes out of nowhere and instantly adds another layer of mystery to the story. At this point, the drama already has missing people, secret experiments, supernatural slime, and now cult activity all happening simultaneously.
Meanwhile, Chae-ni continues obsessing over escaping Haeseong. After failing to convince her grandmother again, she visits her longtime friend Kang Ro-bin to borrow money. Unfortunately, Ro-bin is struggling too. He recently spent all his savings fixing the leaking roof in his apartment because his landlord refused to deal with it.
Even though everyone around her is broke, Chae-ni refuses to give up. She starts secretly preparing to run away on her own and heads to a hardware store to buy supplies. Coincidentally, Un-jeong is shopping there too, and the two immediately become suspicious of each other after noticing the strange contents of their carts.
The entire sequence feels like two paranoid weirdos silently profiling each other.
Outside the store, Chae-ni struggles with her heavy suitcase and decides to borrow an abandoned shopping cart nearby, which actually belonged to the missing Bong-pal. Un-jeong follows her outside and, after remembering Gyeon-un’s warning about missing people, convinces himself she might be involved in murder somehow.
In one of the funniest scenes of the episode, he forcibly grabs her suitcase to inspect it, fully expecting to discover body parts inside.
Instead, the suitcase bursts open and spills nothing but clothes all over the street.
The embarrassment on Un-jeong’s face afterward honestly made him instantly more likable. He awkwardly helps her pack everything back up before giving her his business card so she can contact him later about compensation for the damage.
Back at home, Gyeon-un’s personal life is revealed to be just as miserable as everyone else’s in this town. His wife constantly criticizes him and blames the dumping yard for damaging their flower business. Even his daughter ignores him because she’s embarrassed by the slippers he wears.
Eventually, Gyeon-un and Ro-bin end up bonding over their shared financial problems when they meet at Ro-bin’s apartment. That’s when Chae-ni suddenly appears with a proposal that sounds ridiculous but somehow makes perfect sense for her character.
She wants them to fake her kidnapping.
Her plan is simple: they record a ransom video, scare her grandmother into paying money, and then Chae-ni can finally travel abroad before she dies. It’s reckless and absurd, but it also fits the desperation she’s been carrying since the beginning of the episode.
The three of them film the fake kidnapping video together, but before they can even finish their plan, everything spirals completely out of control.
While tied to a chair during filming, Chae-ni suddenly dies.
The scene is genuinely shocking because the drama doesn’t build up to it with dramatic music or emotional speeches. One second she’s talking, and the next she’s gone. Gyeon-un and Ro-bin panic almost immediately, realizing they now look like actual kidnappers and murderers.
Instead of calling the police, they make the worst possible decision imaginable.
Gyeon-un convinces Ro-bin that they need to dump Chae-ni’s body at the same mysterious dumping yard connected to the disappearances.
At the exact same time, Jeon-bok begins worrying after losing contact with Chae-ni and asks former cop Gu Jun-mo to find her. Even though his role is still small for now, the drama clearly hints that he’ll become important later.
Things escalate quickly once Gyeon-un and Ro-bin arrive at the dumping yard with Chae-ni’s body hidden inside a wheelbarrow. Of course, Un-jeong appears there too and immediately becomes suspicious again.
The entire confrontation turns into absolute chaos.
As Un-jeong tries to inspect the wheelbarrow, Gyeon-un and Ro-bin accidentally shove it forward, sending Chae-ni’s corpse rolling directly into the same black slime Bong-pal encountered earlier.
Both men desperately try to block Un-jeong’s view while screaming and panicking. During the struggle, they both fall into the slime themselves while Un-jeong somehow stays completely clean.
And then things somehow become even crazier.
Chae-ni’s body disappears.
At this point, Un-jeong finally decides the situation is insane enough to call the police. But before the officers can arrest anyone, they discover Chae-ni standing alive behind them as if nothing happened.
The expressions on everyone’s faces during this reveal were honestly priceless.
The episode ends with one final twist through a flashback showing that Un-jeong secretly possesses supernatural powers. Earlier, when Chae-ni’s suitcase exploded open, he unconsciously used his abilities to shield her from sharp objects inside the bag.
That final scene completely reframes his character and strongly hints that he may somehow be connected to the mysterious Wunderkid Project he’s been secretly investigating.
Episode 1 Review
Episode 1 feels messy in the best possible way. The WONDERfools throws comedy, horror, mystery, sci-fi, and small-town drama together into one giant pile, but somehow the chaos stays entertaining instead of exhausting.
What surprised me most was how quickly the episode established emotional motivation for almost every major character. Chae-ni’s desperation doesn’t feel exaggerated because the drama constantly reminds us she’s running out of time. Even her ridiculous fake kidnapping plan makes emotional sense once you understand how trapped she feels.
Park Eun-bin absolutely carries the emotional side of the episode. Her goth-inspired styling and chaotic energy make Chae-ni stand out immediately, but there’s also a sadness underneath her impulsive behavior that keeps the character grounded.
Meanwhile, Cha Eun-woo’s Un-jeong might end up being the biggest mystery of the series. On the surface, he acts like an awkward government employee who constantly finds himself in uncomfortable situations, but the episode keeps hinting there’s something much darker happening underneath. His obsession with the Wunderkid Project, combined with his hidden powers, makes me think he may have survived some kind of experiment years ago.
The supernatural slime itself is also fascinating because the drama intentionally avoids explaining too much too early. Instead of giving immediate answers, the episode leans into confusion and paranoia. Add in the creepy religious cult kidnapping witnesses around town, and suddenly the story feels much larger than a simple superpower mystery.
Next: The WONDERfools Episode 2
Drama Details:
- Title: The WONDERfools
- Native Title: 원더풀스
- Also Known As: Deo B Tim , Deo Wondeo Pulseu , The B Team , The Wonder Fools , The Wonderful , Wondeopulseu , Wonderfuls , 더 B팀 , 더 원더 풀스
- Director: Yoo In Shik
- Screenwriter: Heo Da Jung
- Genres: Action, Adventure, Comedy, Fantasy
- Episodes: 8
- Casts: Park Eun-bin, Cha Eun-woo, Kim Hae-sook, Choi Dae-hoon, Im Sung-jae, Son Hyun-joo
- Aired: May 15, 2026
