Cora

I binge-watched the entire series in one go, from yesterday evening until now. Chuseok is here, I have to wake up early, and my sleep schedule is completely destroyed. I kept watching anyway, not because it was consistently good, but because it was easy to consume and irritatingly watchable.

When it ended, I did not come away thinking it was a success. What I felt instead was frustration, because the writer is clearly still talented and full of ideas, yet this project feels rushed, sloppy, and poorly controlled. At multiple points I genuinely wondered whether the writing was done under pressure, because the lack of refinement is impossible to ignore. The direction does it no favors, and knowing that the director dropped out midway explains the uneven pacing, abrupt tonal shifts, and scenes that feel stitched together without care.

Structurally, the story is almost shamelessly derivative of Goblin. Strip away the Arabian Nights skin and replace the genie with a goblin, and the narrative skeleton barely changes. Immortal being, cursed existence, emotionally damaged woman, fate-bound romance, inevitable separation and reunion. It is not homage and it is not reinterpretation. It is recycling. If the writer insists on returning to fantasy romance, this template needs to be abandoned completely, because it has nothing left to offer.

The show’s most damaging flaw is its obsession with excess. It crams angels, demons, genies, shapeshifters, gods, immortals, and half-explained cosmologies into a single narrative without committing to any of them. Instead of feeling expansive, the world feels incoherent. Interesting concepts are introduced and then immediately neglected. Sade and Irem, for example, could have sustained an entire subplot through their shapeshifting alone, but they are reduced to background noise in a story that refuses to prioritize.

The internal logic of wishes is a disaster. Sometimes a wish rewrites reality so completely that entire lives disappear, yet other characters conveniently retain memories when the plot needs emotional leverage. There is no consistency, no clear rule set, and no attempt to hide the arbitrariness. The lamp, which should function as a sacred or dangerous space, is treated like a public lounge. Any supernatural being, or anyone adjacent to one, can enter without resistance. This obliterates tension and makes the mythology feel cheap.

Khalid’s storyline is a particularly egregious misfire. His arc with Shadi feels like it was imported from an entirely different drama and stapled on. Every scene involving him drains momentum and contributes nothing of value. When he finally exits the story, it is a relief.

Visually, the drama is polished to the point of excess. The cinematography is undeniably beautiful, but it often feels like the show is hiding behind aesthetics to compensate for weak storytelling. Dubai glows, villages shimmer, cherry blossoms are framed like visual poetry, and yet none of it adds substance. The early flying scenes are especially bad, with aggressive cross-cutting, ridiculous zooms into space and back, and an OST that refuses to calm down for even a second. The music direction in general is intrusive and tone-deaf, constantly telling how to feel instead of letting scenes earn it.

Ironically, the much-mocked Kim Eun-sook-style banter works better than the spectacle. The problem is not her dialogue, but the desperate attempt to modernize it with Marvel and Disney energy. The writing functions best when it is allowed to flow naturally. Every attempt to look trendy only exposes how dated the sensibility actually is.

That datedness is most obvious in the Min Ji and grandmother bait. The female-female coding is not integrated into the story in any meaningful way. It exists purely to signal relevance, and because the intention is so transparent, it ends up feeling hollow and manipulative rather than progressive.

The structure is bloated beyond reason. Kayoung’s first wish alone, framed as five rounds with a best-of-three setup, is already excessive. On top of that, the story insists on juggling multiple wish-makers, past lives, angelic conflict, immortal politics, family trauma, neighborhood drama, and philosophical commentary on human desire. Nothing is given room to breathe. Cutting half of the side wish-makers and focusing on a single central conflict would have dramatically improved the series.

Episode three is the point where the show finally locks into something watchable. The “If I do it, it’s different” line lands hard, not because it is subtle or profound, but because it is a blunt collision of Kim Eun-sook’s writing habits and Kim Woo-bin’s screen presence. From that moment on, the series becomes tolerable, occasionally even engaging.

The chemistry between Kim Woo-bin and Bae Suzy works better than expected, especially in their past-life versions, but the romance itself remains underdeveloped. Ka-young’s emotional detachment consistently undercuts intimacy, and the humor built around her flat affect feels forced more often than not. There is less romance than the premise promises, not because it is absent, but because the show keeps prioritizing abstract themes about wishes over emotional progression.

The kiss scene is well executed and does some damage control, but it cannot compensate for the broader lack of romantic build-up. The compatibility is there, the writing just refuses to commit to it.

Ki Kayoung as a character is one of the few ideas that actually lands. Watching a character labeled a psychopath who nonetheless follows rules through learned behavior makes her more coherent and, frankly, more moral than most of the humans around her. In a world where no one even bothers with hypocrisy anymore, that contrast is effective, whether intentional or not.

The latter half of the series is noticeably stronger when it narrows its focus. Episodes centered on Genie and Ka-young, particularly those dealing with their past lives, are cleaner and more emotionally grounded. Whenever the narrative shifts back to immortal politics and angelic disputes, the momentum collapses. The resolution of these threads in the finale is weak and unsatisfying. The constant jumping between timelines is confusing rather than clever, and the Arabic narrative elements beyond Genie himself feel excessive and poorly integrated. Many capable supporting actors are simply wasted.

Kim Mi-kyung delivers exactly what she always does, which is solid, reliable emotional grounding. Ahn Eun-jin as young Pan Geum is excellent and arguably more compelling than the main character at times. Her warmth carries the role, even though the prolonged deception subplot overstays its welcome.

The finale delivers a happy ending for Ka-young and Genie, but it feels rushed and unearned. The series needed to clearly show how Ka-young died, how she became Genie, and why Iblis returned to her due to his misjudgment. Instead, everything is compressed into a final stretch that feels messy rather than emotional.

In the end, this is not a good drama. It is overambitious, derivative, poorly structured, and frequently incoherent. I will probably rewatch it, if only because after the ending, I found myself wanting to go back and see where it all started, flaws and all.