Queenmaker opens to the strands of a familiar narrative tune: horrible people getting away with horrible things. Thanks to entertainment zeitgeists like HBO's Succession, watching individuals scrape the bottom of the morality barrel and come up empty has never been hotter watercooler talk. Queenmaker initially seems cut from the same cloth: Hwang Do-hee (played by industry legend Kim Hee-ae) is a PR fixer for the Eunseong Group, a corporate conglomerate overseen by a massively rich family who aims for even more riches. This makes Queenmaker's introduction go down easy; such familiarity is deceptively relaxing. Then the first episode's ending hits, quite literally: a body falls from above, crashing onto Do-hee's car, and the series reveals its ruthless true hand. Queenmaker is a revenge tale and a hopeful fantasy in one, no bones about it.
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What Is the K-Drama ‘Queenmaker’ About?
Queenmaker offers a different perspective to a now-commonplace cliché. As the show begins,leading lady Do-hee is as cool-headed and calculating as they come. Her designer Jimmy Choo heels click a warning against the floor even as those shoes symbolize the daily pain she silently endures. Her job cleaning up messes and sweeping scandalous behavior under the rug harkens back to the good old days of Olivia Pope and Scandal, except this fixer works for an equivalent of the Roys. In an on-the-nose move straight from a billionaire's playbook, Do-hee makes a potential PR nightmare disappear by dressing Eunseong's managing director (Kim Sae-byuk) in snazzy clothes. Who cares how badly an abusive boss harmed her employees when her purse is pretty?
Do-hee buries her morals as deeply as she hides the corporation's dirty laundry. Eunseong certainly doesn't deserve such lavish devotion, but chairwoman Son Young-sim (Seo Yi-sook) plucked Do-hee out of obscurity and mentored her for over a decade. And the reward for Do-hee's loyalty to this repugnant family, an allegiance that came at the expense of her own familiar relationships? Her employers still call her a "mutt." The implicit message is explicit: if you're born to money and not one of us, you're worthless. Do-hee will never be good enough no matter how much metaphorical and literal blood she spills. If Succession,Breaking Bad, and The Sopranos popularized antiheroes, then Queenmaker is about those who facilitate the antiheroes' success.
All the deliciously duplicitous power plays and shocking twists of a political revenge thriller come into play once Baek Jae-min (Ryu Soo-young), chairwoman Son's son-in-law and a Seoul mayoral candidate, commits a horrific crime Do-hee refuses to ignore. She leaves Eunseong in the dirt and vows to bring them down in a viciously cutthroat vendetta that doubles as Do-hee's quest for redemption.
Admittedly, Do-hee's moral heel turn feels a little too convenient — after at least a decade of ruining innocent people's lives, why is this incident the straw that breaks the mistreated employee's back? Nevertheless, it's undeniably heartening to watch a ferociously competent middle-aged woman pursue justice for Han I-seul (Han Chae-kyung), a young woman who was abused, raped, and sent to her death by a powerful man. Baek's victim can't be resurrected, but Do-hee will do everything in her power to see justice served. She will scheme, manipulate, bite, claw, and scream to protect other women. Suddenly, Queenmaker becomes a tale of atonement and a political fantasy where pure good triumphs over evil.
A Hopeful Revenge Thriller? Yes, That Exists!
Many traditional Korean revenge stories are rooted in systematic oppression and the inherent failings of certain socioeconomic structures. The Glory, for example, a recent Netflix powerhouse, has protagonist Moon Dong-eun (Song Hye-kyo) turn to savage vengeance after law enforcement and the education system fail to protect her from abuse. Where The Glory is more granular, Queenmaker takes a wider view and concerns itself with the many ways capitalism fails the working class. Employees are taken advantage of, low-income mothers make desperate choices to provide for their children, and tyrannical men consume victims without pause (even the women who think they're playing the political game on an egalitarian footing).
Queenmaker doesn't demonstrate a trace of subtly when it comes to good versus bad. The villains are repulsive, and the heroes are incorruptible. That means Queenmaker isn't as gnarly or morally challenging as The Glory, but it relishes in classic melodrama. Secrets are learned, dirt is unearthed, people hold heated strategy sessions and pull underhanded moves. In that regard, the twists and turns never stop. One might laugh at how easily opposing political parties sway the court of public opinion before remembering that social media exists.
The feel-good part comes into play with Moon So-ri's Oh Kyung-sook, Do-hee's co-lead and a human rights lawyer colloquially dubbed "the rhino of justice." As her nickname implies, Kyung-sook is rough around the edges. She wasn't raised to wield a camera like a weapon. She doesn't sport the sleek, sophisticated look expected of aspiring politicians. Kyung-sook's goal is to make the world a better place by protecting the most vulnerable, and she burns with enough sincerity to light a wildfire. She's the dream politician precisely because she isn't a politician: that impossible figure that succeeds by breaking the rules of a rigged game. “We women protect each other as sisters and make the world a better place," So-ri vows to her friends, campaign team, and pink-clad Women's Alliance groups. In a less idealist K-Drama, So-ri would be one of the exclusionary so-called "feminists" who break glass ceilings just to increase their own power. Instead, So-ri is the impending queen, and every woman championing her is a queenmaker.
‘Queenmaker’ Is a Study in Ruthless Optimism
Most of this would feel like lip service without Queenmaker's grounding performances. At 56 years old, Kim Hee-ae already had a feast of awards and massive hits under her belt before co-leading a Netflix-produced K-Drama. Moon Se-ri, 48, boasts a catalog-long list of awards. Their powerhouse performances, especially Kim's, are earth-shattering. They carry Queenmaker on their backs, proving the world desperately needs more stories led by women over 50. Heck, even the primary villain is a matriarch with two daughters fighting for company inheritance rights.
Queenmaker quickly proves it isn't as morally questionable as its first appearance indicates. Its mission differs from The Glory: this series wants hope to triumph. Some days it's difficult to avoid cringing at such brazenly pure optimism; other days, it's the kind of narrative fuel that keeps our spirits primed for battle. A brash, openly emotional, headstrong woman sweeping an election is a fantasy masquerading inside the narrative skin of something honest. Thusly, Queenmaker is ruthless and indulgent at once — and there's a place for these types of stories. Imagine how different our world might be if empathetic people called the shots. The paradox of knowing how unlikely that future is while still fighting for its existence is where Queenmaker rests. Maybe that messy, tangled knot is the series' deepest realism.
