Head Over Heels episode 10 review: A mother’s death, a traitor’s mercy, and a woman who never deserved to be saved

Head Over Heels episode 10 opens wounds that were never meant to heal. Some ghosts linger, some ghosts stay, and this chapter understands why. It ends with an act of mercy that costs a life, as the leader of the shamans reaches out to save Yeom-hwa, the apprentice she raised like a daughter, the woman she believed could still be saved. Yeom-hwa remains unchanged. The one who gave her everything dies for her, and the mercy offered is discarded without transformation.

Moments of softness flicker through the grief. Former bullies step in to stop a beating. An awkward ring is delivered to the wrong hands. Fleeting tension and teenage affection soften the edges. But Head Over Heels closes this hour with gravity. Mercy weighs heavier than vengeance when no one chooses to rise with it.

The weight of a name

There’s a moment early in the episode when Seong-ah calls out to Bong-su by name, and for a second, the spirit flickers. It’s no longer a possession. It becomes a conversation, brief and painful, between the boy who once was and the boy who’s still inside. That name becomes an anchor, a weapon, a tether, a plea. And Head Over Heels uses it to shatter the illusion that anything in this haunting is clean or simple.

Bong-su isn’t a monster. He’s a scar. A boy swallowed by guilt, anger, and abandonment, left to rot in a world that never tried to understand him. And now, wearing Gyeon-woo’s face, he lashes out with everything he never got to say. The violence cuts deep, but the sadness underneath reaches further. When he cries, it’s not just the ghost crying. It’s the child who was never held, the soul who was never heard.

What Seong-ah does in that moment comes from grief. She knows she can’t rescue what’s already sinking, but she still calls him back by the name no one else remembers. For a breath, he stops. And Head Over Heels holds on to that silence like a heartbeat.

The worst kind of loyalty

What makes Yeom-hwa unbearable isn’t the evil she commits, but the loyalty she inspires. Even after everything, the head shaman still tries to protect her. Not because Yeom-hwa deserves it, not because she’s changed, but because letting go would mean admitting that all the years of guidance, care, and belief were wasted. That’s the quiet horror pulsing under this episode. A woman who spent her life trying to save someone ends up dying for her, and the one she dies for walks away untouched.

Head Over Heels doesn’t paint this as noble. It paints it as devastating. Yeom-hwa isn’t conflicted. She isn’t tortured. She receives a final act of love and uses it as fuel to keep going in the same direction. The betrayal isn’t in what the head shaman does. It’s in what Yeom-hwa chooses after being given one last chance to turn around.

It’s hard to watch because there’s no catharsis. No reckoning. Only the realization that some people aren’t broken. They’re sharp. And when you try to hold them, you bleed.

The foolishness of offerings

The ring scene is unbearable. Not because it’s romantic, not because it’s touching, but because it’s wrong. Watching that boy hand over something so loaded, so symbolic, to Yeom-hwa of all people feels like the narrative equivalent of sticking a flower into a blade. It doesn’t soften anything. It just makes the blade look crueler.

Head Over Heels has always played with gestures—names spoken aloud, bodies standing in the way of violence. But this time, the gesture is hollow. It’s an offering made in blindness, a kindness directed at someone who long stopped recognizing what kindness even looks like. Yeom-hwa doesn’t react with surprise. She reacts like someone who’s already decided that every hand extended toward her is just another weapon she can turn back around.

There’s no meaning in this offering. No sense, no strategy, no emotional payoff. Just another decision made by someone who wanted to help and chose the worst possible person to help. And Head Over Heels lets that moment sit, cruel and deliberate, because some mistakes echo louder than any curse.

What remains in the wake in Head Over Heels

Only two episodes remain, and Head Over Heels has already buried more than it’s saved. What’s left now is not a clean path forward but a map stained with grief, fury, and choices that can’t be undone. The death of the head shaman doesn’t mark a turning point. It’s a line drawn in salt. Yeom-hwa will not change. Gyeon-woo may never return. And Seong-ah, for all her power, still stands alone.

There’s something quietly devastating in how the episode ends, not with a climax, but with an absence. The people who should be here are gone. The ones who remain keep choosing the worst versions of themselves. And the world around them, already heavy with ghosts, seems ready to collapse under the weight of one more.

Head Over Heels holds its silences close. It doesn’t ask for faith. It demands endurance. And what comes next may not be healing. It may be survival.

Trending

Rating with a touch of flair: A cursed ring, a wasted death, and a girl whispering a name into the dark. Episode 10 of Head Over Heels earns 4.5 out of 5 restless spirits, weighed down not by the dead, but by the living who refuse to see what they’ve become.

×

Was this article helpful?

Thank You for feedback