Wu 1×02 Review: Episode 2

Niran needs Pete’s help to remove the yao in the gambling den. More players are being added to the board.

This week’s episode opens with a flashback featuring a younger Niran. We learn a little bit about him in these scenes – not much, but enough to get a picture of what his life has been like. He was seemingly raised by his grandfather, does not appear to have had many friends, and greatly dislikes gambling. The gambling issue may have deeper connotations; we are shown a snippet of a scene where a young Niran is pressured into playing cards with real money, and I can only assume that he was somehow cheated, which is why he dislikes the practice.

Throughout the episode, we are continuously shown how lonely both Niran and Pete are. Their lives strongly parallel each other. Both men appear to not have parents; as previously mentioned, it looks like Niran was raised by his grandfather, and Pete mentions an uncle but no parents. Both men have a sister, though Niran’s is older and Pete’s is younger, and they both seem to be estranged from said sister. Neither seems to have any friends; while Pete appeared to be friendly with his fellow delivery drivers in last week’s episode, they went off to gamble as a group while he went to the poker table by himself. And both live alone.

There is clearly more going on beneath the surface in both relationships. Niran and Fei (Godji Tachakorn) are civil enough with each other, but have disagreed on how best to utilize their powers. Fei has allied herself with, presumably, the Prime Minister, whereas Niran hires out his services (sometimes to, as it turns out, less than reputable people). They both obviously don’t like the other’s choice.

But it’s Pete’s relationship with Ploy (Acare Chompoopuntip) that I am most intrigued by. For whatever reason, they lost their house, which Pete is now attempting to buy back using the money Niran is paying him. We saw in the first episode that he was still staying in the house, even though he no longer owns it, while she has clearly moved out. When he tries to convince her to move back in, she warns him not to act up. That conversation, coupled with the tense score and the way he reacted to the rowdy kids behind him, leads me to believe that there may be something off about his behavior, perhaps for a while. Especially since we learned that it’s not a yao he’s tied to – it’s a full-on demon.

The demon inside Pete is a known entity – Niran called him the Six-Armed Macaque – and one that Niran does not want to meddle with. (I love how the history of the demon was in the same art style as the opening credits.) Pete understandably wants the demon out of him, but Niran compares it to trying to remove a bomb from his stomach; it could end up killing both of them, so it’s best to leave it be. Now, I suspect that Niran is going to end up changing his tune the closer he and Pete become, but as it stands right now, Pete is not in immediate danger, and Niran has too much self-preservation to risk it.

This episode’s monster of the week is, as I said earlier, the yao inside the gambling den. Niran offers Pete a million baht to tempt the yao out of hiding. He even offers to do a ritual on Pete to increase his luck, which hilariously does not really end up working. When Pete finally manages to draw out the yao, Niran rushes to complete the ritual.

The ritual scene was supremely well done. They don’t translate what Niran is chanting, but you don’t need to understand the words to get the urgency of the situation. I love how they highlighted that by showing him surrounded by mirrors. Everything felt very claustrophobic and tense.

Meanwhile, Pete’s opponent at the table, who loses a substantial amount of money, gets possessed by the yao and comes out swinging. I figured, based on how bad Pete’s luck was, that his opponent was cheating. But it was nice to have that confirmed, when he attacks Pete and accuses him of cheating. What follows is another fabulous scene of Nani kicking butt, which I am always in favor of. But also, this is the second week in a row he has been able to hold his own against possessed individuals, and I’m curious if there’s something supernatural to that.

With the yao trapped inside a casino chip, Niran delivers it to his clients. His clients, as we learn, are underlings of Li Pou (Krist Perawat), who is in turn an underling of Bao Cheng, the head of a powerful mafia family. Multiple news reports peppered throughout the episode show us that Bao Cheng has been linked with the Prime Minister, and the news is spurring anti-corruption protests in the country. For good reason, it turns out, as Bao Cheng screams that he funded the Prime Minister’s campaign only to be dropped with no payoff.

Li Pou seems to know his stuff; he recognizes that the yao in the chip is powerful and understands the correlation between the yao being trapped and the gambling den immediately being raided. However, Bao Cheng is not at all concerned with this information, which makes me wonder why he has Li Pou in his employ in the first place. I can’t imagine someone with Li Pou’s power will be content with that kind of treatment for long.

I also suspect that he is behind whatever is going on with the Prime Minster – Fei suggests to Niran that whatever is happening is not natural. This is, I believe, the overarching plot of the series. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from all of the supernatural series I’ve watched, it’s that demons love sowing chaos. Stirring up political unrest is a good way to do that.

The standout of episode 2 is, as with episode 1, the dynamic between Pete and Niran. I am one hundred percent here for these two. I love that Pete is a bit more smiley while Niran is serious. I love that Pete genuinely has faith in Niran, to Niran’s surprise. (Based on the flashback, I think perhaps Niran does have much faith in his own abilities.) And I love that Niran has more concern for Pete’s well-being than he does. (During the reaction to episode 1, Nani talked about how Pete doesn’t really value his own life.) I love the way they bickered when Pete showed up late to their meeting. And I love the warmth in that final, post-credits scene, where they’re eating together – which is a nice contrast to the dingy, sad scenes earlier in the episode where they were both shown eating alone.

I cannot wait to see how their relationship develops, what happens with the demon, and what all of this may or may not have to do with whatever is going on with the Prime Minister.

Author: Jamie Sugah

Jamie has a BA in English with a focus in creative writing from The Ohio State University. She self-published her first novel, The Perils of Long Hair on a Windy Day, which is available through Amazon. She is currently an archivist and lives in New York City with her demon ninja vampire cat. She covers television, books, movies, anime, and conventions in the NYC area.

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