Tangled Timelines
2010
“The moment the child becomes a time traveller, the prophecy will be fulfilled. The moment of fate has not yet come”. As O-Won shuts the Book Of Prophecy, episode 5 of Alice sees the first part of this prophetic fate come to light. Jin-Gyeom breathes heavily and awakens in 2010. The Time Card seems to be the reason for this sudden jump back. Realising he’s at the University, Jin-Gyeom races into the lecture hall desperate to find his Professor. Only, when he turns up Tae-Yi is nowhere to be seen. Instead, she’s actually a student sitting in the classroom. As he takes her outside, Jin-Gyeom questions Tae-Yi about her life. When she mentions a red lunar moon though, he suddenly realises what the year is and races to the phone booth. As he does, he rings through to his Mum and hears her voice again. Jin-Gyeom scrambles back home to try and find Tae-Yi… who happens to be at the school confronting Jin-Gyeom about what happened. When he acts dumbfounded, she seems to realise what’s going on. She looks him in the eyes and tells her son to come if anything strange happens going forward.
2020
Tae-Yi leads her class, teaching about parallel worlds. Only, she’s distracted and keeps looking at her phone. When she eventually dismisses the class, she sends a message to Jin-Gyeom asking him to ring. Hilariously, he’s listed as “Perverted detective” in his phone. She’s not the only one who isn’t able to get through to him. Do-Yeon comes rushing to the University and questions Tae-Yi about what’s happening. As she mentions the accident, Tae-Yi starts to realize that Jin-Gyeom may be in trouble.
Blood Lunar Eclipse
Back in 2010, Jin-Gyeom heads home again and sees himself – a younger version of course – sitting with Tae-Yi at the dinner table. As she mentions heading out to get supplies, he realises what year it is. He notices Professor Seok in the wings and chases after him down the street. As he does, the Professor tells him that Tae-Yi is in danger. As he holds him up, a scream from afar sees Jin-Gyeom know for sure it’s not actually the Professor responsible. When he heads home, he finds his Mother bloodied and shot on the floor. She asks for the time card and as he hands it over, mentions how he’s not supposed to be there. “Stay out of this fight,” She says and sends him away, just as the younger Jin-Gyeom heads in to say goodbye to his Mother one more time.
2020 Again
Jin-Gyeom awakens in 2020 and finds Tae-Yi just as before giving her lecture. Silently, he heads in and hugs her. She joins him back at his house, where he catches a glimpse of her neck and notices there’s no mark there this time. Now it seems apparent to that she’s not his Mother – or at least not this early in the timeline. It’s here Jin-Gyeom realises he’s actually been gone a week. As we heard from the Alice operatives before, time works differently for time travellers. As he comes to understand this too, his nose starts bleeding and he falls to the floor, convulsing.
Alice Headquarters
Min-Hyuk learns that another wormhole has opened and also that Jin-Gyeom was the one responsible for this. As he didn’t go through the “departure gate”, he’s almost certainly going to be hurt. With that in mind, the group decide to kidnap him and bring the traveller back to Alice headquarters.
O-Won
Jin-Gyeom heads in to visit O-Won who’s not the least bit surprised to see him. Only this time he has a different tact and asks the Professor about what happened that fateful night with his mother. O-Won feigns ignorance and brushes off Jin-Gyeom’s questions as a sign of mental health. Defeated, Jin-Gyeom decides to try and find his Father instead. Getting nowhere with Hyeon-Seok, he turns to some investigative work with the locals around the area. One of them saw his Mother talking on a payphone and visibly shaken over what was being said. That evening, Tae-Yi comes to visit him and talks about her memories of the past including her Mother abandoning her at an orphanage. After making her a coffee, they sit together and Jin-Gyeom hands over the time card. Only, when he does the lights go out and he has no signal on the phone. Knowing exactly what this means, Jin-Gyeom brandishes his gun and prepares for the worst. Only, when Hye-Soo winds up shot and injured, Min-Hyuk is forced to abandon what they’re doing and head back to base. The only remnant of their time there is a blood spatter, which Jin-Gyeom winds up noticing in the hallway when he checks.
A Masked Assailant
It’s immediately clear someone is working with Jin-Gyeom. That someone happens to be O-Won who remains fixated on the idea that Jin-Gyeom must discover his identity and purpose on his own without interference. That purpose leads Jin-Gyeom to prison where it turns out his Mother went to visit inmate Lee Se-Hoon a month before she died. Jin-Gyeom heads in himself and sits opposite this murderer. As he starts laughing, Se-Hoon mentions the “Book Of Prophecy” and how anyone who comes before it either dies or ends up like him. As he looks at Jin-Gyeom, he mentions how the book details the end of time travel.
The Episode Review
Phew there is a lot to unravel in this episode! Not only do we get to see Jin-Gyeom time travel, we also learn more about how this works. With it obvious that O-Won is connected to all of this, the question now remains how. And perhaps more importantly what part he has to play in all this. In terms of parental lineage I think Alice is going to go full on “Dark” with us and start twisting the family timelines. I think Tae-Yi is Tae-Yi’s own Mother. She was left at an orphanage when she was 5 and we’ve seen Jin-Gyeom jump back through time so it’s not outside the realm of possibility that he’ll become romantically involved with a younger Tae-Yi. He’s convinced that Tae-Yi is a different woman to his own Mother so the writers may be crazy enough to pull this twist out and surprise us. Regardless of what they do though, Alice continues to impress and delivers another enthralling slice of drama. This sci-fi thriller is really starting to heat up and if this continues, we may be looking at one of the better Korean dramas this year. For now though, this is definitely one of the better episodes of the season so far.
