It is after 3 at night, and I just finished my binge-watch of the Korean Drama Lovely Runner, and I have thoughts. A lot of them! So many thoughts that I ended up writing this review in two parts: a spoiler-free review of Lovely Runner and this deep dive where I talk about the missed opportunities, character analysis, and more! If you enjoy a healthy discussion on Korean dramas, you are in the right place.
Lovely Runner: Story Analysis
Lovely Runner is without a doubt one of the most popular k-drama of 2024. TIME even named it the best Korean Drama of this year so far...which... yeah...let's talk about it.
Let me first start by saying that true to the title of the drama, Lovely Runner, is one of the loveliest Korean dramas that has come out this year and I had a good time watching this one. It had all the elements that makes a drama a big hit with the audience - great actors, a cute romance, a mystery that keeps you guessing, and a good amount of angst to make the drama not boring.
A huge part of the success of Lovely Runner can be credited to the very cute and lovely couples who goes through a lot in the drama and we can't help but root for them to have a good life. While the second half of the drama sometimes felt draggy, the first half of the drama was flawlessly done and executed.
The first couple of episodes of Lovely Runner were so good and exciting that I had to force myself to stop tuning in every week so I could treat myself to a whole day binge-watch of the drama. Perhaps it was because I watched most of the drama in one sitting that I had quite a few points that I wanted to talk about.
If you are wondering if you should watch Lovely Runner or not? Read my spoiler-free review on what I liked and what could have been better.
Krati Joshi
1. The Disability Representation
The first episode of the drama was quite amazing as it solely focused on the struggles of the main leads. While Im Sol is in a wheelchair, she is struggling to find a job or feeling like she has to be dependent on others, she is still doing it all with a huge smile on her face. Seon Jae is at the top of the world, but struggling to live another day. We can't help but root for them.
Not to mention the rarity of the leads with disabilities. But unfortunately, the drama did not follow through with the arc they laid at the beginning of the drama and ended up becoming a typical serial killer romance drama.
Honestly, no matter how hard I try, I don't recall Im Sol being in a wheelchair at all after the first episode. Maybe they may have shown her in the wheelchair one or two more times, but that's it! She got saved in the past and can now walk. Something that was such a life-shattering event for her, so much so that she even contemplated suicide, was not even something she cared about when she could walk again.
Just imagine how good a representation it would have been if, instead of getting saved, she had realised that her disability does not define her and went on to live the most amazing life with Seon Jae. We could have watched her directing movies and doing everything she ever wanted to do.
Yes, it wouldn't have been a perfect ending, but life isn't perfect, and this representation could have made a big difference. I am sure it would have meant a lot to many viewers.
2. Bad Take on Depression
Likewise, they didn't even bring up a single explanation for Seon Jae's death in the first episode. Everything was mentioned vaguely - someone opening the main door, medicines he was taking, and a random fight with his best friend. Other than these, we are offered no explanation as to why he was depressed, why he wanted to retire, and why he had an estranged relationship with his band members.
Seon Jae's death - "the moment" that triggers the entire story was nothing but a random incident in the drama. Instead, it ended up becoming something like a video game where Im Sol is just doing hit and try to make sure Seon Jae doesn't die in the end. Call me crazy, but even if the random serial killer murdered Seon Jae the first time. There should still have been discussions around his mental health struggles, beyond "If you ever struggle, talk to me, Seon Jae."
This is such a terrible stance for the drama to take, especially considering just how many idols and actors struggle with depression due to the toxic Korean entertainment industry and how many have taken drastic measures because of it. It is truly sad that Lovely Runner didn't take the opportunity they had to portray mental illness in a way that could have started a conversation...Especially considering just how popular the drama has become.
3. Serial Killer as Plot Device
For some reason, Korean Dramas have become obsessed with the serial killer trope in the past couple of years. I know we love a good murder mystery, but this isn't it. First of all, there was no reason to add a serial killer in Lovely Runner. This serial killer was even more pointless than the side characters in this drama (I talk about them in my spoiler-free review).
I bet no one even remembers his name in the drama.
We do not know his motivation, we do not understand his obsession, we are not even given a single moment to understand him as a character. He is like a prop that the writers bring out when they need to separate Seon Jae and Im Sol. Just like a boogieman, he is hiding around the corner, smiling creepily, waiting for the opportunity to just kill Im Sol or Seon Jae. I am pretty sure he didn't have one proper dialogue scene in the drama.
If they had removed him completely, everything in the drama would have still worked - including Seon Jae's death. And the drama would have become instantly better.
4. Irrelevant Plot
If I started discussing plot points and plot holes in each episode, we would stay here for a long time. So here is a list of pointless plots in the drama:
- Stalker fangirl: They added a stalker and made it such a big mystery at the beginning, only for it to be utterly useless. She even gets attacked by the serial killer, but this also becomes a big plot hole because she survived...? We are supposed to believe that this man is obsessed with Im Sol because she survived, only for the fangirl to survive and never be mentioned again.
- Every comedy skit they did between the parents in the past: Lovely Runner had Jung Young Joo and Kim Won Hae - two of the most iconic actors playing the roles of Im Sol's mother and Seon Jae's father. And their only use in the drama was to do cheap comedy with them.
- The Constant Repeat of Timeline: Maybe if Sol had not conveniently gone back to the future, the time when the accident happened, this would have been a better drama. The plot stopped being as engaging as the first half from that point onwards because it was as if watching the same story over again to reach a different end. It was very convenient and, therefore, not a strong plot point. (I cover this more in-depth at the end.)
Lovely Runner: Character Analysis
P.S: If you want to see me gushing about these actors, please read my spoiler-free lovely runner review.
Im Sol
Im Sol is optimistic, happy, high energy, cute, and very liked character. We see her being so depressed that she did not wish to live another day. But then Seon Jae encourages her to keep living. To Im Sol, Seon Jae becomes her life's anchor and the reason to keep living. So when he dies, Im Sol's reason to keep living is also shaken.
Her character's only motivation in the drama is to make sure that Seon Jae doesn't die and to avoid her own accident. However, writers of Lovely Runner fail to understand that Im Sol's identity goes beyond her love for Seon Jae. Im Sol has a loving family, a supportive best friend, and a dream of becoming a director.
Past and Future Im Sol
Im Sol is a 30 something woman who has gone hell and back. She has not only suffered - she has also seen her mother's struggle, her grandmother's dementia, her best friends' loneliness, and her brother's broken dreams. But here she is in the past behaving like an immature school girl (with a memory and experience of a thirty year old) and not giving these important people in her life even a time of her day.
She doesn't realise her mom is sick or doesn't spend quality time with her grandmother. We never see encouraging her brother, we never see her spending time with her best friend... I don't even know why they are best friends since they don't know anything going on in each others lives. We can argue her immaturity was because of her disability and that she had lived a sheltered life, but that frankly doesn't sit right with me for many reasons.
There was also a huge disconnect between Im Sol of the past and Im Sol of the future. It was as if both of them are not the same people.
Think about it: Even if you are a completely different person now than your past-self, would you say you have completely shifted identity? Im Sol of the past feels like a different person altogether - probably for the plot to ensure Seon Jae and her remain stranger in the past.
Not to mention that it does not make sense if the future is changing because of the past actions Im Sol is taking, then how come Im Sol of the past keeps forgetting everything that happened? Make it make sense.
Seon Jae
Seon Jae has definitely made his entry in the boyfriend club and we all are obsessed about it (as we should). He was just too cute crushing on Im Sol and following her around. He fell for her the moment he saw her for the first time in the rain. All his little action towards her - even when she was oblivious to him were super cute and giggle inducing. We love a loser boyfriend.
Beyond his relationship with Im Sol, I really liked that they focused on his career (can't say that about any other character in the drama). Seon Jae wanted to be swimmer and was on the path to Olympics but he couldn't because of an injury. But once this swimming career arc was over, the writers pretended that his career didn't matter at all. In a much later episode Im Sol tells him that he loves singing and he just went along with his idol career. It would have been much better if Seon Jae figured out his own dreams instead of someone else just telling him that? They just took away the full circle moment from him just because they wanted to show how Im Sol changed his life.
To be honest, Seon Jae was just a plot prop throughout the drama. The writer created the entire world around him. If they wanted to move a plot forward, they would send Im Sol back to future to see if Seon Jae survived (he didn't) then she goes back in time and tries again. Rinse and repeat until the end result is Seon Jae being alive.
It was very ridiculous. Like he had no agency in his own life and destiny. Our cutie Won Hae keeps dying in almost all dramas and movies he do and I feel like in Lovely Runner he might have broken some sort of dying record, haha.
All this to say, even Harry Potter got one chance to rise from the dead by his own choice – and he was literally a wizard, living in a magical world.
They never flush-out Seon Jae's character and I feel very sad about it. He only had three people through the drama besides Im Sol – his father (who was mostly utilised as comic relief), his best friend (who was there so Seon Jae can later become an idol), and his manager (who I don't even want to count). They never bring up his mother and how her death impacted him, they never bring up the reason behind his group members fighting with him, and they never bring up why he was struggling with depression. We were just left to imagine it all.
Seon Jae never felt real. He a perfect fantasy template - like a prop who was only there to fulfil the Im Sol's 'fall in love with idol' fantasy.
Krati Joshi
I am still debating which time-travel was more illogical: The over-explained The King: Eternal Monarch or the "vibes-only" logic of Lovely Runner. Let’s be real - there is zero internal consistency here unless you are willing to perform Olympic-level mental gymnastics to fill in the plot holes.
Krati Joshi
The most frustrating part is how Im Sol treated time with a complete lack of reverence. Instead of growing through her consequences or learning from her mistakes, she treats the timeline like a video game save-point. Every time things go south, she just hits the "reset" button - four times! And not once we had character developments in these four timelines.
The show can’t seem to decide what its own rules are:
- If it’s a Multiverse: Then Seon Jae is dead in three different realities.
- If it’s a Single Timeline: (Which is what the writers tried to explain), then the butterfly effect should have fundamentally changed who these people are. Every change in the past should have rippled through 15 years of history.
Instead, we get a "fix-it" story that feels unearned. She is no longer disabled, he is no longer depressed, and the trauma of the past is simply erased. In the final leap, Sol ensures they never even meet, yet we are expected to believe Seon Jae recovers a lifetime of trauma and devotion just by reading a movie script? The writers hand-wave the climax with 'the soul remembers,' ignoring the absolute horror of a man suddenly realizing he has died three times. Ultimately, it felt less like a high-stakes fantasy and more like a tunnel-visioned quest to save the hero at any cost - even if that cost was the logic of the story itself.
Conclusion
Honestly, there’s still so much to unpack in Lovely Runner - the side characters, the layers of time travel, all the tiny emotional details we didn’t even touch. But I will stop here before this turns into a thesis.
At the end of the day, it’s an entertaining drama with lovable characters, good actors, and a beautiful OST. If you are looking for more drama recommendations (or more slightly sleep-deprived deep dives like this one), check out my other posts and consider subscribing so you don’t miss the next spiral.
