In the new Korean thriller, “Trigger” (Original title: Teurigeo, TV Series 2025), conspiracies and gun mania meld to create a potent cocktail of danger, twists, and secrets. The scale and stakes are massive, as individuals struggle to ensure their safety and purpose while the world threatens to blow up. However, the show’s critique of unchecked firearms access lands flat, weighed down by confusion and chaos. The writing turns bloated and incapable of engaging with the ramifications stirred. It’s all about a dramatic choice. Does hardship license you to take aggression as recourse, or does peace still seem viable?
Trigger (Teurigeo, TV Series 2025) Recap:
Episode 1:
Korea is imagined as a nation of violence in the darkly dystopian series. There’s amorality that’s run deep and vicious and unsparing. The mood of South Korea has been exacerbated irreparably, with a skyrocketing count of suicides, depression instances, gun and domestic violence. Jeong-tae struggles with mental illness but receives little or no medication and care. He skids into reckless tendencies, cooped in a bubble of isolation. Then, there’s Officer Lee Do and his partner, Officer Jeong-u, setting about to clear the country of morass.
Episode 2
It’s mostly Lee Do scrambling to put the pieces together in connection with Jeong-tae’s killing spree at the apartment. Subplots emerge, and other players come to the fore. Won-seong, a sex offender, embarks on a personal mission. There’s the bullied Gyu-jin and Jeon-man, who works against his boss on the latter’s denial of a request. Tension escalates. Lee Do goes through Won-seong’s apartment and runs into Moon Baek. Is the man really who he professes to be?
Episode 3
A full-blown action sequence forms the bulk of the episode. Won-seok wants to exact revenge on the police officers for curtailing his life. That’s what drives his ruthless mission. To challenge him, negate his purpose, Lee Do and Moon Baek prop up. The two team up to defeat him and put a definitive stop to his ambitions. The action effortlessly moves from car sieges to shootouts. Lee Do relies on CCTV footage to get a grip on Won-seok’s movements. Moon-baek ties up U-tae and heads to locate Won-seok, but the latter seems to disappear. Lee Do manages to shoot Won-seok while trying to rescue the police officers.
Episode 4
After the takedown, Lee Do is suspended for a couple of months. His backstory falls into place. He is a veteran of high-conflict zones. His training and experience keep him in full gusto. Lee Do ends up crossing paths with Mrs Oh, who too had taken some of the ammo. But Jeong-man’s hoodlums also land at Mrs Oh’s. Naturally, there’s a confrontation between Lee Do and Jeong-man’s gang.
Episode 5
It’s this episode, coming at the midway mark, that pops the decisive twist in the series. As Lee Do and Moon Baek trauma bond over the losses they have endured and grown up amidst, it’s revealed Moon Baek has been the baddie all along. He’s the one who engineered the fake gun distribution to turn his dream of a violently new world true. He has set the ball rolling with several lethal subplots. Can his grand plan be halted or foiled now?
Episode 6
This episode has dynamism and does try to pack in all the emotional high notes that should have been present previously. There’s an attempt here to ratchet up the intensity of tragedy, make the danger feel palpable and unavoidable. Baek’s true nature becomes all the more apparent as his coldness and capacity for cruelty hit the roof. Baek trains Gyu-jin and Yeong-dong on a rundown of handling guns. Both are visibly impressed and awed. They are too smitten with their new, deadly toys. A massacre happens at a school, and students are locked up with no escape. Baek watches in glee from the sidelines while Lee Do and Gyu-in clash in gunfire. Lee Do succeeds at least in disarming Yeong-dong.
Episode 7
Lee Do annihilates the menace of Gyu-jin, but the latter leaves behind too bloody a trail from which it’s not easy to recover. Lee Do also begins to be sceptical of Moon Baek. Meanwhile, the police are used by Seok-ho for the takedown of Jeong-man. However, it is Jeon-man who emerges triumphant.
Episode 8
Seok-Ho and Mr Kim end up killing each other. Jeong-man still dominates. The police attempt to mount raids, but the streets are already full of gun-toting goons unleashing absolute pandemonium. Meanwhile, the contrivances pile heavy and convenient with the National Security Council revealing the CIA findings. That’s how Moon Baek’s real identity is unmasked. The police think they might have a hold of Baek, but he trumps them yet again. Baek shares an address where a shooting is about to erupt.
Episode 9
The shooter turns out to be Sergeant Jo, who is bereaved over his dead daughter and determined to go on a rampage. Lee Do tries to reason Jo out of his bloodthirsty grief. The sergeant does drop his gun, but Baek storms in and shoots him dead. Lee Do is spared. Baek broadcasts on national television, assuming full responsibility for all the gun carnage. He insists he will supply free guns to everyone, provoking a surge of anticipation and euphoria. He has definitely unlocked a mass thirst for violence and retribution.
Trigger (Teurigeo, TV Series 2025) Ending Explained:
Episode 10 – Does Moon Baek’s gun regime end?
There is a big swell of demand for guns that sweeps Korea. So, there are all sorts of underground associations. It all leads up to a gun legalisation rally. Moon Baek has a truck driven to the spot and announces it is full of guns. Chaos ensues. Lee Do locates Moon during the intense rush but opts not to open fire. That’d be the obverse of the message he wants to send out to society. However, Moon Baek has already shot himself. He can’t stand Lee, who has all the reasons to spite society and take to aggression, yet he chooses peace as the only recourse. What switches the mood of the crowd is the image of Lee Do saving a boy amidst a shower of bullets. The crowd’s sentiments towards ammo control flip.
Moon Baek might not be around anymore, but he has already reared an army of people with similar vested interests to carry forth his mission. There’s Jake and a blond woman who seem primed to take over Baek’s underground networks. Lee remains in police work, devoted to safeguarding the common interest. He does have a long road ahead.
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