My Youth: Fans are already digging the Vincenzo reunion in the new K-drama

The new K-drama My Youth is landing with more than just pastel posters and healing vibes. It's unfolding as a reunion for four actors who once electrified audiences in Vincenzo. Song Joong-ki, Jo Han-chul, Yoon Byung-hee and Kwon Seung-woo all turn up here, reshaped by new roles yet still carrying the weight of their shared past.

For fans of Vincenzo who remember Babel Tower and the oddball Jipuragi law office, spotting these faces again has turned My Youth into an unexpected (and vry welcome) trip down memory lane.

From mafia consigliere to florist and first love

Song Joong-ki’s Sun Woo-hae could not be further from the consigliere who once burned entire conglomerates to the ground in Vincenzo. Once a beloved child actor, Woo-hae now runs a flower shop and scribbles his thoughts as a novelist.

He seems settled, even fragile, until Sung Je-yeon, played by Chun Woo-hee, returns after more than a decade. Their reunion glows with unfinished longing, reminding viewers that the hardest conversations are the ones left unsaid for years.

What makes this performance land is the dissonance. Joong-ki was Vincenzo Cassano, sharp suits and cold fury, yet here in My Youth he offers soft spoken vulnerability. The same gaze that once threatened enemies now trembles at an old flame’s touch. It's this inversion that makes My Youth magnetic. It shows how one actor can carry menace in one role and hesitation in another, and fans savor the chance to see him bend so completely in the opposite direction.

Jo Han-chul’s messy father figure

Jo Han-chul’s turn as Sun Woo-chan is the bruised heart of My Youth. Official descriptions called him a carefree romantic poet, but the reality on screen is way uglier. Woo-chan is a man who walks away from his son, leaves his daughter (a small child!) Nuri in Woo-hae’s care, and finds stability by returning to Kim Pil-doo, the wealthy woman who once loved him.

In Vincenzo he was Han Seung-hyuk, the duplicitous lawyer whose incompetence often made viewers laugh even as he schemed. In My Youth, laughter curdles into fury. Every scene with Woo-chan is a reminder of how irresponsibility shapes a family’s wounds.

Han-chul delivers the character with just enough warmth to make audiences ache rather than dismiss him entirely, and that complexity has fueled debate across recaps and reviews. This is not a role of comic relief anymore, it's the damage of abandonment framed with a smile that only deepens the sting.

The wider Vincenzo reunion

The reunion stretches beyond the two most visible names. Yoon Byung-hee, unforgettable in Vincenzo as Nam Joo-sung, the clumsy but loyal paralegal, resurfaces in My Youth as Lee Geon-noh, Woo-hae’s childhood friend and longtime neighbor. His presence grounds the story with familiarity, an echo of the dependable loyalty he once embodied in Jipuragi’s office.

Kwon Seung-woo, who played a monk at Geumga Plaza in Vincenzo, now appears in My Youth. Together with Song Joong-ki and Jo Han-chul, they form a quartet of Vincenzo alumni woven into a story that, on paper, has nothing to do with the mafia or gold stashes.

Yet fans notice instantly. The casting choices turn My Youth into more than a healing romance, they make it a soft reunion show where every familiar face sparks recognition.

Fans react to the reunion

Online reactions have been quick and playful. The term “mini Vincenzo reunion” spread almost as soon as the first episode aired. Screenshots of Yoon Byung-hee and Jo Han-chul together circulated with captions marveling at how the chaos of Vincenzo had been replaced by the gentler tones of My Youth. One post summed up the mood with a laugh:

Another highlighted how improbable it felt to see four names from the old cast reunited under a completely different banner:

The mood is equal parts nostalgia and amusement. Viewers recognize the echoes of mafia power plays in the smallest family quarrels or in Woo-hae’s strained patience. The actors do not need scripted winks to Vincenzo. Their very presence carries the memory.

Vincenzo vs. My Youth, blood vs. bouquets

The distance between the two dramas couldn't be more striking. Vincenzo thrived on its violent satire, mafia theatrics, and an almost operatic sense of revenge. My Youth is built on silences, heartbreak, and the ache of trying to love again after years of disappointment.

Yet because of the casting, the two works sit in dialogue. Jo Han-chul’s bumbling lawyer becomes, in memory, the selfish father who ditches his children. Yoon Byung-hee’s nervous paralegal morphs into a steady friend with roots in the protagonist’s childhood. Even Kwon Seung-woo, once chanting prayers in Geumga Plaza, now lightens the mood in Woo-hae’s world.

The result is a layered viewing experience. Every moment in My Youth carries the shadow of Vincenzo, not because the shows share universes, but because the actors share history.

Bouquets where bullets once bloomed

My Youth may be framed as a soft romance about rediscovering first love, but for many it plays like an ensemble reunion with all the gravitas of remembered violence.

Song Joong-ki sheds his mafia steel for tenderness, Jo Han-chul provokes anger as a father who chooses flight over duty, Yoon Byung-hee draws warmth in a role that reminds audiences of the loyalty he once embodied, and Kwon Seung-woo lends brightness that recalls his monk at Geumga Plaza.

What makes it powerful is the tension between memory and reinvention. Audiences cannot watch My Youth without recalling Vincenzo. The posters may be pastel, the dialogue soft, but every familiar face carries shadows of Babel Tower and Jipuragi’s office.

It turns a healing romance into something denser, a meditation on how actors bring their histories into every new role, how reunions do not need to be scripted to resonate, and how memory can shift the meaning of a scene before a single line is spoken.

My Youth blooms where Vincenzo once burned, not as a replacement but as an echo that reshapes itself. The fire of revenge has given way to the fragility of memory, yet the shadows of the past linger in every gesture, every pause, every uneasy smile.

What was once gunfire and betrayal becomes hesitation and longing, but the ache does not vanish, it changes form. Flowers now fill the frame, yet their beauty carries thorns, reminders of battles already fought.

The actors who once stood side by side in chaos now meet again in different rooms, fighting a war made of love deferred, wounds inherited, and the relentless weight of time.