A weary police officer, fed up with Seoul’s rising violent crime rate, makes a decision that would get most internal affairs departments foaming at the mouth: he recruits three criminals—the country’s most feared mobster, a prodigious serial killer, and a hired assassin with impeccable aim—to hunt down other criminals. He dangles a prize they should have walked away from. Naturally, they don’t. Naturally, they will regret that.
The Story
On paper, Bad Guys isn’t trying to reinvent the genre. The premise leans into a familiar fascination: terrible people revealing slivers of humanity in between their more questionable life choices. It works because people want to believe their worst moments have a noble footnote attached—preferably one that casts them as tragic saviors instead of impulsive disasters.
“Cop: Are you still convinced you are innocent?
Serial Killer: I am hopeful.”
That line summarizes the tone perfectly. The series avoids the glossy redemption arc that usually accompanies stories like this. No one suddenly becomes a saint. No one pays for their crimes through a cleansing rainstorm. These men remain dangerous, morally compromised, and entirely themselves. The show simply reminds you that being monstrous doesn’t erase the quieter, messier parts of their identity. Their humanity doesn’t cancel their sins; it coexists with them in uncomfortable, believable ways.
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That’s the brilliance of the writing. Character development isn’t treated as moral repair work. It’s treated as illumination—the kind that lets you understand why someone is broken without asking you to absolve them for it.
“Serial Killer: I want to know who I am. I want to know if I can save people.
Mobster: Don’t. You might not like it.”
Symbolism
Director Kim Jung-min communicates a surprising amount through symbolism, and almost all of it leans on irony—quiet, intentional, and subtle enough that you only catch it if you’re paying attention.
Take their “sanctuary”: a chapel. After their temporary release, this is where they’re ordered to assemble. A holy place, technically. A place of refuge, theoretically. Yet it becomes the most dangerous setting in the series. Freedom traps them more tightly than prison ever did, and every wall that should protect them instead brings them closer to the people and memories capable of destroying whatever is left of them.
Even their wardrobe plays along. Their clothes blend into every background, insisting they are ordinary—even when they very clearly aren’t. Their team leader verbalizes this point to Yoo Mi-young, reminding her that these infamous killers are, inconveniently, still human.
And then there’s the prize they were promised. A new life, packaged neatly as a reward for their “service.” The irony is that the service requires them to keep surrendering pieces of that life. They’re lured forward by the idea of salvation without realizing the entire arrangement is another form of entrapment. If you understand each man’s particular brand of morality—ragged as it may be—you’ll see the quiet cruelty baked into the deal.
Dialogues
One of the easiest traps for screenwriters is inconsistent dialogue—characters suddenly sounding like they borrowed someone else’s education, background, or personality. Writer Han Jung-hoon avoids that with impressive discipline.
The serial killer, for instance, barely speaks. When he does, it’s with the precision of someone who thinks faster than he feels. The mobster swings between bravado and accidental honesty. The team leader is clipped, measured, and exacting—fitting for a man whose biggest secret is buried in that very control.
“Serial Killer: Kill me if all you need is someone to hate.
Let me live if you want the truth.”
There’s poetry here, but it’s the kind that fits the character’s worldview rather than the writer’s ego.
Unexplored Territory
The serial killer initially reads as the most intriguing character—a MENSA prodigy who engineered perfect crimes. A character like that sets certain expectations: intricate strategy, intellectual manipulation, or at least a satisfying moment where genius meets plot.
He doesn’t get those moments.
When the story shifts toward uncovering the overarching mastermind, he contributes far less than his setup promises. The show gives him all the bullets but never hands him the gun. And yes, someone might argue it was meant to be unexpected. It was. Just not in the way that works.
Serial Killer: Give me a reason not to kill you.
Cop: *smiles*
The Villain
The series stumbles hardest in its choice of final villain. Instead of pushing the existing characters into darker moral territory, the script introduces someone new—as if worried that giving the antagonistic role to one of the core characters would contaminate them beyond repair.
The result is a villain who feels engineered to absorb every ounce of audience hatred. His backstory starts coherent, then veers into behavior that abandons logic altogether. No philosophical bent. No emotional throughline. Just a collection of actions meant to remind you he is Very Bad.
It’s a sign of narrative hesitation—a fear of letting flawed characters become responsible for something unforgivable.
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The Potential Was There, The Never Wasn’t
I began the series hoping it would inch toward the kind of character writing that made Breaking Bad untouchable: moral ambiguity sharpened to the point where “good” and “evil” lose meaning. That bar may be unfair—few shows can reach it—but Bad Guys had the ingredients for something close. Irony was its central language. Every character carried enough internal conflict to justify an unexpected turn.
But as the story progressed, the writing drifted. It never fully committed to the darker, more intricate psychological territory it hinted at. The potential was there; the nerve wasn’t.
The series ultimately chose clarity over chaos, clean answers over unsettling ones. And in a story built on monsters with human shadows, that choice kept the show from becoming the beast it could have been.
