Dear X (2025)

A Dark, Addictive Drama

This show will either grab you immediately or completely turn you off—there’s no middle ground. Dark, intense, and morally complex, it’s not for everyone, but if you enjoy character-driven dramas with twists and emotional depth, it’s worth watching.

But what for me makes this drama stand out is Kim Yoo-jung as Baek Ah-jin. She brings so much depth to a character who is flawed, vulnerable, and fiercely ambitious. You can’t help but be drawn to her, even though almost everything she does is questionable. Ah-jin is definitely not a “good” person — she can be selfish, manipulative, and willing to do whatever it takes to succeed. But under her tough exterior, you can see her insecurities and the trauma she’s carrying from her past. Her choices may hurt people, but they often make sense when you understand her drive and survival instincts. Watching her, I was constantly torn between rooting for her, sympathizing with her, and questioning her actions — which made the show frustrating and compelling at the same time.

It’s a big change from the roles we usually see Kim Yoo-jung in, and she pulls it off effortlessly. I honestly think this role was a career risk, but she handles it with confidence, making it feel like a turning point. Taking on such a complex, morally gray character could have gone wrong, but instead it really shows how bold and versatile she’s become.

We also can’t forget the two male leads, Kim Young-dae as Yoon Jun-seo and Kim Do-hoon as Kim Jae-oh. Without them, the story wouldn’t be the same. Honestly, they almost feel like her loyal minions, she tells them to jump, and they ask how high. They would do anything for her. They would literally die for her.

Visually, Dear X looks amazing, and the OST is just as memorable. The music really brings out the emotions in each scene, making the highs more intense and the dramatic moments hit harder.

The ending wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t quite what I expected. I had hoped Ah-jin would face at least some consequences for her actions, but even so, the journey is what makes this drama so compelling.

If you like character-driven dramas with morally complex characters and incredible acting . Dear X is definitely worth watching.

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Too Much Misery, Not Enough Brilliance

There are many illogical aspects in the story from the very beginning. The author describes the female lead as a villain ever since she was a small child, yet she does nothing that truly deserves such a label. We do not even know why her mother is considered evil, aside from the fact that she brutally beats her young daughter for no reason. In an environment like that, it is only natural for anyone to lose their sanity, and the female lead cannot be blamed for seeking help from others or using them, as the story tries to portray her in an even worse light than she deserves.

I am not saying that her attempts to use tricks and schemes against those who try to harm her are completely innocent actions, but they are nowhere near enough to call her truly villainous. Yes, she exploits people, but in many cases she is a victim first. Unfortunately, many of her plans are not intelligent at all for someone who is supposed to be a master schemer, cunning, and skilled at manipulating others. Her plans often involve her personally taking part and putting herself in danger, which disappointed me greatly.

When she was at school, the events were somewhat enjoyable, but after her father’s case, things became extremely frustrating in my opinion. Her plan was reckless and very foolish. On top of that, instead of escaping to another country where her past could not catch up with her, she becomes an actress under a company with a strong reputation, supposedly capable of protecting her. This makes no sense. No company would accept an artist with existing problems because it would fear for its reputation. It is far more realistic that the company would abandon her at the first harmful rumor.

Most of the people who became her victims actually deserved what happened to them; what they suffered was a result of their own bad actions. The female lead cannot be blamed 100% for everything, even though she sometimes played a role in the outcome. It felt as though the author was deliberately trying to turn everything against her. At a certain point, whether the viewer sympathizes with her or not, no one would enjoy her tragic state that lacks intelligence, cunning, or well-thought-out plans.

I especially hated the final arc, and her psycho husband even more than the female lead herself. Honestly, I would have preferred it if the female lead were truly the mastermind—clever, devious, and manipulating everyone from behind the scenes—even if her ending were not a happy one, like Moriarty. Instead, all I saw was a female lead who remained a victim throughout her entire life.

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Consider the allegory

Before I clued into the strong allegorical symbolism in the last few episodes, my enjoyment declined throughout. The FL’s performance was worth the watch. When I realized, oh my god they just had the writer drive them off a cliff at the end LOL…it became much more insteresting to me. I now want to rewatch it to find the other symbolism. I’ll update my review later once a I’ve had a chance to do that. The other characters all represent an archetype of the K-Drama industry: actress, actor, writer, Sasaeng
obsessed fan, stalker, controlling financer/producer, media, etc.

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Articulated down to the bones

Dear X aims to show us a manipulative and sociopathic protagonist who, despite all the adversities she faces in life, always finds a way to excel and survive.The drama builds its narrative around Baek A-jin, a deliberately unlikeable protagonist whose arc rejects any promise of easy redemption. In theory, this is commendable. In practice, the script oscillates between the courage to observe and the temptation to over-explain. Dear X wants to be unsettling, but frequently softens the impact with excessive psychological justifications, as if fearing that the audience wouldn't tolerate the moral silence.The series adopts a temporal fragmentation intended to reflect the protagonist's broken psyche. However, this device isn't always used with dramatic rigor. At various points, the flashbacks function less as in-depth exploration and more as redundant reinforcement of an already established point: A-jin learned early on that affection is power. This insistence weakens the subtlety and creates a sense of didacticism disguised as complexity.Baek A-jin is the absolute axis of the work, but the text seems unable to decide whether to observe her or defend her. The result is a character who should be ambiguous, but who at times becomes excessively calculated by the script itself. The suffering is real, but carefully framed so as never to escape narrative control. There is a lack of risk. There is a lack of the possibility of her being truly inexplicable.In more mature psychological works, discomfort arises from what cannot be rationalized. Dear X, on the contrary, frequently rationalizes everything.The characters around A-jin exist mostly as symbolic functions, not as individuals. They are mirrors, triggers, or instruments of guilt. Few possess their own density. This impoverishes the conflict, as the world around the protagonist seems artificially organized to validate her trajectory, instead of confronting her in an unpredictable way.Visually, the drama is consistent with its proposal: cold, elegant, almost aseptic. The photography reflects the protagonist's emotional dissociation well, but this aesthetic becomes repetitive. The direction rarely breaks its own visual logic to create real shock or tension. Everything is too beautiful for a story that intends to talk about emotional degradation.Dear X wants to discuss misogyny, emotional exploitation, the cult of image, and the silent violence of fame. The themes are relevant, but the discourse sometimes slips into a comfortable critique, pointing out the system without ever allowing the viewer to feel complicit in it. The work denounces, but does not compromise.Dear X is an intellectually ambitious, aesthetically refined, and emotionally restrained drama for what it sets out to do. It observes pain with elegance, but rarely lets it escape the frame. It lacks brutality. It lacks the chaos that would make its protagonist truly disturbing.
I would also like to comment on the cast's performance; from the leads to the supporting cast, everyone shines brightly and is certainly the key element of the drama. You Jung embodies the role, she completely becomes Ah Jin and doesn't let us doubt her performance for a single moment. And once again, she reminds us why she is Korea's passion!


It's not a shallow work. But it's also not as deep as it believes itself to be.


It's a well-articulated psychological study, but excessively self-aware—more concerned with appearing complex than with being truly devastating.

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Money Hungry Producers of The Kdrama Industry

Firstly, I really enjoyed episode 11. From her being the one on the recieving end of someones manipulation, to jae ohs insane plan and sacrifice. I didn't think he'd go so far as to letting himself die. Then to her flipping the script on do hyuk. In episode 12 I knew what was coming as soon as I saw jun seos reaction as I had read the mydramalist summary before I had a gist of what would happen but man the satisfaction of her reaching the top and for everything to come crashing down like jenga blocks. Not to mention the documentary was so well done and fun to watch and then when shes running out on the street lost and alone, suddenly he appears jun seo. The car ride would be my second favority scene in the show after the award show, I was elated thinking this was likely the best ending that could happen, as I think jun seo is not also innocent since hes been allowing her actions so far he is also responsible to an extent. If you look back on my comments I had said, the ideal way for this story to end was the mutual destruction of all parties involved. Unfortunately it didn't happen, the greedy pigs couldn't just end the story well, noo. How could they make more profit if the story ends there guys? Man what a drag. Anyways, not interested in part 2 when they could easily have finished everything off there if those 2 died, the old man from the shop releases the footage on doohyuk, jun seos mother dies after falling down the stairs, sim seung or whatever her name is is already in a mental clinic. All would have been good and dandy

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Harsh

After watching eight episodes, I have decided to drop the drama Dear X. It is a very loud drama filled with negativity. I was expecting that the female lead’s character would eventually start doing good deeds, but not only was she arrogant, selfish, and psychopathic, she also killed someone in the eighth episode, which made her a murderer.

For me, it was impossible to accept such a character as the lead. I mean, the main character should be morally right at least at some point. For example, the character Ki Ga Yeong from the drama Genie, Make a Wish was also portrayed as a psychopath. However, as time passed and she stayed around good people, she gradually turned into a better person.

I expected the same kind of transformation in this character. Although the themes of both dramas are different, but both characters are psychopaths. One turns into a good person, while the other becomes even more cruel. I honestly don’t know what the ending of Dear X will be—whether she turns into a good person or not—but after she kills someone, it no longer matters to me.

Secondly, I felt bad for all the boys who helped her unconditionally and treated her well, yet she remained the same.
Overall, it was simply too much for me.

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Great character study of a complex FL! The men though....

Overall, this show is one of the most captivating watches...you WILL be invested one way or another! The FL is obviously a lone protagonist, which breaks the mold but lets us see her relationship with multiple characters at a deeper level. Definitely would recommend if you like character-heavy shows and a really dramatic storyline.

With 16 episode dramas, I would always lose interest towards the end, but for maybe the first time, I wish this was longer, at least 14 episodes since the ending felt rushed.

The Good:
Fantastic acting! Almost perfect Act I and Act II (episodes 1-8), with really great writing, pacing, characters. It was gonna rank in my top 5 kdramas! The show really explored the FL's motivations and pushed her to her emotional extremes all while letting us understand and even empathize with what she's been through and why she acts that way. I think its one of the most complex, multi-dimensional characters ever, and overall, the FL carried the whole show.

However...
Act III (epi 9-end) felt rushed...it was still captivating and didn't ruin the show at all, but I felt like the show had set itself up with high expectations of how it would all end. For me, it wasn't the most satisfying but I'm also not upset...another reason for you to watch for yourself!
And since we spent the entire show with the FL, the other characters feel one-dimensional, almost like caricatures to serve the plot. They were still effective and for some people, they connected the most with the rest of the cast. But since the FL was so complex, for me the contrast felt so stark. The writers probably did this on purpose to stay focused and not divert attention, I think this choice is up to personal interpretation.

Overall, its obviously super unique and everyone should at least check out the first episode and decide for themselves!

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Majorly disappointed

Ah-jin's backstory is devastating and it really makes for such a captivating story. I really rooted for her, despite all the horrible manipulation she's capable of. But then the plot took a real dive after episode 8 or so. So many plot points were thrown away after the mid-point (what happened to the agency CEO? And our classmate bully in the hospital?) And not to mention the finale. So ridiculous it's not funny. I really loved the villian husband that was a real match but Ah-jin but then there was no conclusion for their story. The character development lacked, and if there was, it was wasted by the end. Maybe they strayed away too far from the original webtoon.

The acting. I think Kim Yoo-jung shone best in this. The two male leads were a little wooden but that just might have been the fault of the writing.

There was so much potential, but this sadly did not deliver.

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MORALITY GOES TO DIE

OVERVIEW:

Long story short, Dear X is a wild, morally messy rollercoaster that dazzles and frustrates in equal measure.

Ah-jin is a magnetic, ruthless antihero shaped by trauma, manipulating everyone around her while the plot bends over backward to accommodate her every move. Jun-seo and Jae-oh are tragically underutilized, their sacrifices both heartbreaking and narratively convenient.

The series swings wildly between psychological drama, revenge thriller, and melodrama, with hallucinations, plot coincidences, and deus ex machina undermining tension.

Themes of fame, trauma, and power are provocative but unevenly executed. It’s audacious, addictive, and infuriating. In short, brilliant in concept, sloppy in execution.

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IN DETAIL (SPOILERS!):

Dear X is audacious, messy, infuriating, genius-adjacent and morally combustible all at once, like a luxury car driven headlong into an emotional canyon and somehow kept running long enough to scorch an entire season. It's the kind of show that makes you want to both stand up and throw things at the screen, because it gives you brilliant, combustible sparks and then squanders them in the most theatrical, convenient ways possible.

First, let's give credit where credit is due: the show knows how to make a character you simultaneously adore and want to strangle. Baek Ah-jin is one of the more intoxicating antiheroes in recent memory: born of trauma but quickly weaponized by it, she moves through the world with surgical cruelty and a weird, almost clinical charisma that reads as both survival tactic and pathological strategy. The writers are brave (or reckless) enough to let her be monstrous and magnetic in equal measure, to have her engineer humiliations, run loan-sharking schemes, orchestrate public demolitions of rivals, and still make the audience intermittently root for her. That tension, between empathy for a childhood shaped by abuse and repulsion at the adult who monetizes that trauma, is the show's strongest engine.

But brilliance and cruelty do not excuse fundamental storytelling malpractice, and that's where Dear X pivots from compelling to exasperating. The show relies on coincidence and deus ex machina as if they were production values: someone is always there to find a beanie in a toilet, a manager conveniently records a parking-lot altercation, a CEO is arrested at the perfect dramatic moment, a documentary drops mid-awards speech, and a mysterious billionaire cleans up every smear with the casual flick of a legal pen. This isn't suspense so much as plot logistics on steroids. Suspense is earned; consequences must be built. Instead, the plot often travels via the convenient device rather than by character necessity.

Police investigators are caricatures of corruption and corruption-of-convenience. Detectives accept bribes with flimsy internal-rescue arcs, evidence is found or deleted at warp speed, and legal procedures evaporate at a moment's notice to serve spectacle. If the show is trying to indict institutional failure - and sometimes it does, depicting entertainment industry blackmail, bribery, and the weaponization of media - then it undermines its own critique by having these institutions bend and yield exactly as the plot requires. Real corruption is messy and resistant; on screen, it is theatrically punctual. The result is that tension frequently dissolves into the next manipulative beat rather than settling into a believable pattern of escalation and fallout.

Then there’s the ethical problem of trauma-as-plot-device. Ah-jin’s childhood: her mother’s alcoholism, abuse, abandonment and the split-family dynamics, are wrenching, real, and could have been treated with surgical empathy. But the series repeatedly turns suffering into a bespoke toolkit for social manipulation: scars, stolen diaries, suicide-inducing setups, prescriptive hallucinations, and a staged Victorian-level of theatrics that occasionally feels exploitative rather than explanatory. There is a fine line between showing how trauma shapes a person and using trauma as an aesthetic instrument to justify villainy; Dear X often crosses it.

Ah-jin is fascinating because she refuses to be a one-note "trauma excuse," but the storytelling sometimes leans on her backstory as a magic wand that allows her to get away with ever darker behavior without convincing psychological groundwork. The hallucinations and mental breaks (her laughter in a 911 call, the recurring domestic flashbacks, the sudden memory lapses) are evocative at moments and cheap at others, because they are alternately used to humanize, exculpate, or increase suspense depending on what the script needs that episode. Make a choice: either commit to a rigorous psychological portrait with consistent rules, or lean fully into melodrama with the understanding that you're playing in a heightened reality. Straddling both creates tone whiplash.

Character dynamics are another area where the show oscillates between sharp observation and lazy shorthand. Jun-seo is heartbreak rendered in ink. His devotion to Ah-jin is tender, terrible, and ultimately self-annihilating, but the show never quite lands his internal reasoning beautifully enough to justify the final act. His transformation from steady, loving anchor to impulsive driver over a cliff is narratively poetic but emotionally undercut; the script expects us to accept that the man who discovers such monstrous complexity in the person he loves would choose an impossible, fatal rescue without more interrogative time. The result is a tragic gesture that was earned stylistically but not entirely at the granular emotional level.

Jae-oh is hands-down the best-written minor protagonist: loyal, morally anchored, and brave in a way that makes his death feel genuinely criminal from a storytelling standpoint. Killing him off to catalyze Ah-jin's rise and to manufacture footage that can be used as leverage is narratively cold-blooded, and the show does it without sufficient moral digestion. Jae-oh's death is used as evidence, leverage, and viewer manipulation rather than a sorrow whose ramifications are comprehensively explored. The show treats his sacrifice as both tactical and tragic, but never as a human life that should make the remaining characters' consciences noisier and more complex.

This is emblematic of a recurrent problem: characters are used as levers too often, sacrificed to prove points or to create flash-bang reveals, rather than allowed to break, heal, or grow in messy human ways.

The depiction of women is a mixed bag. On one hand, we get a gallery of powerful, flawed women: Mi-ri the CEO who weaponizes files, Le-na whose pettiness is sharpened into career sabotage, Kyung-suk whose warmth becomes collateral, Sung-hee the school nemesis turned pawn. On the other hand, much of this tapestry reads as catty, backstabbing folklore that feeds into tired stereotypes about female rivalry in patriarchal industries: women hurt women because they must. The series tries to rebalance this with nuanced suggestions: Mi-ri's greed is explicit, Ji-sun's opportunism is grotesque, but it fails at times to give non-Ah-jin female characters enough interior life beyond what they represent for Ah-jin's trajectory.

The men aren't immune from caricature either: Do-hyuk, the glossy billionaire villain, reads too easily as the "rich psychopath buys everything" trope; In-gang is the tragic soft man who exists to be ruined; the grandfather and various father-figures often serve as either abusers or victims without the messy shades between. The show’s commentary on fame and the entertainment industry rips with teeth: longstar’s shackles files, the CEO's expedient betrayal, the immediacy of online shaming... these are incisive. The way Ah-jin manipulates public perception by drugging the narrative, releasing controlled leaks, staging romances, speaks to a contemporary understanding of cancel culture, PR arms races, and how star-making infrastructures can both protect and destroy the people within them. But the critique never fully lands because the show then mirrors the same industry behavior it tries to condemn: it beats the audience with spectacle instead of giving us sustained investigative clarity.

The documentary bombshell released during Ah-jin's award acceptance is a genius televisual stroke. It is raw, humiliating, perfectly staged, but its impact evaporates too quickly because the series moves on to the next escalatory stunt rather than letting the consequences of that exact moment breathe: reputational damage, legal torpedoes, public introspection, fans' ambivalence, the internal dissolution of a company... these things deserve space, not a montage.

Tonally, the series is stuck between revenge thriller, melodramatic soap, and psychological horror. Sometimes the tension works, like Jung-ho's moral confusion, the slow discovery of family secrets, the cramped feel of Ah-jin's apartment early on, but at points the show seems to revel in its own unhingedness rather than in narrative logic. When the script needs a big emotional hit, it doubles down on the most extreme move: a suicide, a public humiliation, a murder videotape. That makes for addictive viewing but robs the story of nuanced weight.

If the writers wanted to ask "how much can a person be forgiven if their survival mechanisms become weapons?" they could have used Jae-oh and Jun-seo to create sustained moral friction. Instead, they accelerate tragedy until grief becomes a spectacle.

The handling of guilt and accountability is particularly infuriating because the show loves theatrical reversals but is less interested in consequences that feel just. Mi-ri's arrest for bribery and embezzlement is narratively satisfying (that fall was overdue) but it's staged so conveniently that it reads less like justice and more like a plot-turn checkbox.

The legal system is a prop rather than a terrain to be realistically navigated: police interviews are scripted skirmishes, internal affairs investigations are theatre, and prosecutors don't appear to be bound by typical evidentiary standards. If the series had intentionally created a heightened legal world, that could work, but the complaint is that it sometimes pretends to be realistic and then bails into melodrama, which undermines the stakes.

Thematically, Dear X tries to do a lot: it wants to be a critique of fame, a study of trauma, a portrait of weaponized femininity, and a noir revenge epic. It occasionally achieves this synthesis: Ah-jin's ascent (and the moral levers she uses to climb) is a fascinating study in modern sociopathy, but it also spreads itself thin, leaving a trail of rhetorical detritus: dangling motivations, underexplored secondary arcs, and a few too many "mystery men in black suits" who appear when the writing needs a villainous standing army.

The show's most maddening structural sin is how it keeps escalating violence and spectacle without giving viewers time to process. Each episode is effectively a pitch for "what if we go harsher?" culminating in major sacrificial deaths that the show uses as both tragic punctuation and narrative tinder. They hurt because they should, and they are also tactically convenient: one creates evidence, the other seals Ah-jin's isolation. The problem is that isolation is then turned into a glamorous arc: Ah-jin marries Do-hyuk, accepts awards, becomes global, all while carrying corpses in her luggage.

The moral calculus of the series that allows a protagonist who orders hits, manipulates lovers, and watches people die to win the throne of fame is provocative, but the writers rarely force the rest of the cast, and therefore the audience, to hold them accountable in ways that feel commensurate with the crimes.

Finally, let's talk about pacing and alternatives. The show would be far stronger if it did fewer things deeply rather than many things theatrically. Give Jun-seo more interior time so his final choice lands as inevitable rather than ornamental. Let Jae-oh's integrity echo for episodes, let other characters wrestle with the fact that his death was instrumental, not symbolic. Commit to a realistic legal pathway: corrupt cops should have plausible motives, investigations should bleed across arcs, and the documentary revelation should trigger a slower collapse of institutions.

Stop treating physical injury and psychiatric hospitalization as dramatic props; if the show wants to explore mental health, it must do so with a consistent vocabulary and consequences, not as an on-off switch to generate sympathy or suspicion. And if the creators want to keep Ah-jin as an antihero, then keep the audience morally busy: show the emotional cost on her allies, force her into real reckonings that are messy, and don't reward her with glamour until she has paid a price that feels earned or at least painfully ambiguous.

All that said, I wouldn't change the spine of Dear X because its audacity is its lifeblood. It's a spectacularly imperfect beast: visually striking, emotionally manipulative, and narratively greedy, but it has the guts to make you feel dirty-satisfied. It's the kind of series that prompts brilliant critique because it gives a lot to critique: strong lead performance potential, a central idea that is darkly resonant, and a willingness to push boundaries in ways most mainstream dramas won't.

What it needs is restraint, moral rigor, and the courage to let consequences breathe instead of always escalating the volume. Let characters live with their choices, make the institutional critique stick by playing by its own rules, and stop treating trauma like a convenient plot engine. Make it less like a series of calculated set pieces and more like a study in how power devours everyone in its orbit, including the supposed architect of that power.


Thanks for reading!

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A Dark and Thrilling Ride!

Dear X had me hooked from the start — the acting, the tension, and the way the story unfolded were all top-notch. Baek Ah-jin is one of the most fascinatingly twisted leads I’ve seen in a K-drama, and Kim Yoo Jung absolutely nailed it, and the rest of the cast really brought their characters to life. The drama felt intense, with the music and visuals adding so much to the atmosphere.

The only letdown for me was the ending. After such a strong buildup, the finale felt rushed and didn’t hit as hard as I hoped. It wasn’t bad, just not on the same level as the rest of the show.

Even so, I'd give it a 9.5 because the journey was amazing, and I’d still recommend it to anyone who loves dark, morally complex characters and gripping storytelling. Definitely one of the standout dramas of 2025.

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MASTERPIECE BUT THE WEBTOON IS IGNORED???!!

As a huge fan of the webtoon, I immediately noticed the numerous differences with the drama. First, the chronological order of events: the news report denigrating AJIN's actions, which appears at the very beginning of the series, actually comes at the very end in the webtoon. Some characters also lack development, and most importantly… the ending has been completely changed, to the point of using the beginning of the webtoon to conclude the drama. Not to mention the fiancé; he wasn't supposed to have that ending either.

Despite this major error for readers, the series manages to maintain constant tension, driven by remarkable acting. Honestly, the cast delivered an exceptional performance! Not to mention the visuals, the music, and the overall production quality.

It's an excellent drama, but I remain truly disappointed by an ending that doesn't respect the original work.

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