WARNING: This article contains SPOILERS for Gyeongseong Creature Part 2.
Summary
- Lady Maeda, the main villain in Gyeongseong Creature, is revealed to have no remorse over her actions and uses the hospital experiment as a way to deal with her enemies.
- Lady Maeda’s ultimate goal may have been to have her own private army, consolidating her power in Gyeongseong regardless of the war’s outcome.
- Lady Maeda survives the explosion in the finale, possibly due to having the Najin inside her bloodstream or being saved by Kato, and is now living under his supervision.
Lady Maeda, Claudia Kim’s character in Gyeongseong Creature, was revealed to be the main villain behind it all. Although Gyeongseong Creature featured some of the tropes of the monster genre, the series focused more on the human drama than on the creature. The monster and the people who were infected were never the show’s scariest antagonists, as the darkest moments in the series involved the human Gyeongseong Creature characters doing despicable things. This includes Lady Maeda, who seemed to have no remorse over her actions and did not care about all the pain she caused directly and indirectly as the brains of the operation.
Gyeongseong Creature season 1’s ending saw the church exploding when Maeda and all of her allies were inside, which seemed to be the end of her story. However, not only did Claudia Kim’s character survive, but there are still a lot of mysteries about her to be solved. Whether Gyeongseong Creature season 2 will happen remains to be seen, but there are way too many loose endings and cliffhangers for the show to end after just one season. That said, even though much of Lady Maeda’s backstory remains a mystery, Gyeongseong Creature Part 2 provided a few important answers regarding her plans, motives, and origins.
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Lady Maeda Was The Benefactor Of The Hospital In Gyeongseong Creature
Lady Maeda comes from a wealthy Japanese family, and she has been living in Korea since her husband, Police Commissioner Ishikawa, moved there. Gyeongseong Creature Part 2 revealed that Lady Maeda and Commissioner Ishikawa’s marriage was a political arrangement from the start. Ishikawa needed to have a wife and kids to consolidate his status, just like Maeda needed a husband to move to Gyeongseong and establish her life there. They never really liked each other, although Ishikawa underestimated his wife and never realized she had become far more influential within the city than him. Lady Maeda’s money was keeping the Ongseong Hospital and its entire operation going.
The connection between Lady Maeda and the hospital was revealed at the end of Part 1 when the chief scientist reached out to her with the results of their experiments. However, not only did Maeda provide the Ongseong Hospital and its scientists with the money they needed to conduct the experiments, but she was also using their operation as a way to deal with her enemies. For example, Lady Maeda orchestrated so that Myeong-ja, her husband’s mistress, would become one of the test subjects for Kato’s experiments. Gyeongseong Creature Part 2 also implies that Maeda is the one who got Chae-ok’s mother captured.
Why Lady Maeda’s Ultimate Goal In Gyeongseong Creature Is
It is unclear what Lady Maeda’s ultimate goal is, as her actions can be tied to a lot of different reasons. Firstly, as a member of a powerful and rich Japanese family, Lady Maeda may have been part of a larger effort to develop technology for the country to use during the war – which is also why the military was taking part in the hospital’s experiments. Although Kaito was more interested in the scientific and religious implications of creating a monster, the rest of the military wanted to make those test subjects into weapons that would change the course of the war.
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That said, Lady Maeda seems to be too complex of a character for her goals to be so simplistic. She has used the hospital operation for her own gains, namely when she got Myeong-ja sent there after learning her husband was having an affair, and that the woman was now expecting a baby. Lady Maeda’s ultimate plan might have been to have her own private army of soldiers, scientists, and weapons, thus consolidating her power in Gyeongseong regardless of the outcome of the war. However, her “death” and the end of the Japanese rule over Korea in the aftermath of the war changes everything.
How Lady Maeda Is Connected To Chae-Ok’s Mother
Gyeongseong Creature episode 10’s opening sequence, which took place before the main events of the show, revealed that Lady Maeda knew Chae-ok’s mother. At the end of the season, Lady Maeda confirms she is the reason why Seong-min, also referred to as Seishin, was captured and sent to the hospital. According to Lady Maeda, Seishin took someone from her. It is unclear who that person is, and how exactly Lady Maeda is tied to the Chae-ok’s mother. Regardless, Gyeongseong Creature’s villain accused Chae-ok of doing the same thing her mother once did, which is why she wanted to kill Chae-ok.
Considering Chae-ok was referring to Tae-sang when she accused Chae-ok of stealing someone from her, the villain and Seishin may have been involved in some sort of love triangle. This would make the timeline of the show more complicated, though, as Seishin had a happy family for years before she was kidnapped. Perhaps a younger version of Maeda was once in love with Chae-ok’s father, thus explaining why she hated Seishin. There is still a lot to be learned about these two characters and their shared history, which Gyeongseong Creature season 2 will hopefully explore. Lady Maeda being much older than she looks also cannot be ruled out.
Lady Maeda Survives The Explosion In Gyeongseong Creature’s Finale
Lady Maeda did not die in Gyeongseong Creature season 1’s finale, as seen at the very end of the episode. Although her survival can be simply explained by plot armor, there are a couple of story-related reasons that can explain why the villain did not die in the explosion. Lady Maeda may have had the Najin inside her bloodstream from the start but somehow managed to control it better than any other subject. Another option is that Kato, with all of his medical and scientific knowledge, came to her rescue and prevented Maeda from dying after the explosion. Regardless, she is now injured and living under Kato’s supervision.
Kato might also have infected Lady Maeda with the Najin to save her, which would mirror what happened to Chae-ok – both characters will have died and returned at the expense of becoming monsters. Lady Maeda’s survival was big enough of a sequel hook for Gyeongseong Creature season 2, yet the post-credits scene set in modern-day Seoul complicates everything. Park Seo-joon plays a character referred to as “Ho-jae,” who may or not be Tae-sang. If Gyeongseong Creature season 2 is set in the present, the show will have to address more than 60 years’ worth of events, many of which may be tied to whatever Kato and Maeda orchestrated after 1945.
Gyeongseong Creature is streaming on Netflix.
