And we’re back to recap all the insane and best moments from The Penthouse: War in Life! I finished the first season three weeks ago, and let me tell you, this has been one of the most anxiety-inducing shows I’ve ever watched in my entire life. I’d say it was even more stressful than Sky Castle because I could literally feel my heart race in every minute of the last few episodes.
With that said, let’s get to the list of the top moments from The Penthouse. In this part, we are going through the last 13 episodes of season one.
And in case you missed it, you can view Part 1 of this listicle series HERE. And make sure to subscribe to our newsletter so you’ll know when the last part of this series comes out!
This moment was probably the first time we saw Oh Young-hee stand her ground against the evil rich people from Hera Palace. She was kidnapped by Attorney Lee when she won the auction for the Myeongdong land that Joo Dan-tae had been eyeing, and they were going to take her land by force if they needed to!
Thankfully, Ha Yoon-chul came just in time to rescue her. And when Dan-tae tried to give the doctor a beating, it was Yoon-hee who ended up saving his ass when she revealed that she had been recording the audio of her entire kidnapping as it was happening.
Cheon Seo-jin and her squad were not going to allow Oh Yoon-hee to reside in Hera Palace no matter what it took. In one of many plots to take her down, they got in touch her mother-in-law who had a lot of scandalous things to say against her. To the residents’ surprise, the mother-in-law would hold some sort of protest inside the palace with big signs telling everyone why Yoon-hee was such a bad daughter.
But all it needed for Yoon-hee to stop the whole thing was to be honest and explain her actions. By the end, she had all the watching residents — the ladies behind the plot included — sympathizing with her.
The previous episode ended with a huge cliffhanger when Yoon-chul discovered that his wife and Joo Dan-tae were having an affair. And then, we heard a gunshot!
In one of the more disappointing (but predictable) fakeouts in the show’s history, we learned that shooting one or both of them was just what he wanted to do in his head. But true to his cowardly self, he just picked up the shotgun he saw in Dan-tae’s villa and didn’t do anything. We’re putting it in our list of The Penthouse‘s best moments because even if it was a bit of a letdown, it’s one moment that no one will ever forget.
Seo-jin was in for a terrifying surprise when she received a bouquet of flowers from “a mysterious man” whom she had assumed to be Joo Dan-tae. But when she opened the gift that was sent with it, Seo-jin realized that it wasn’t a gesture of love… it was a threat! Inside the box was the ruby ring that she was wearing the night Min Seol-A died.
Little did she know that it was actually Shim Su-ryeon who was behind the scary gift.
I’m cheating by lumping the entire party for Logan Lee in the list of The Penthouse‘s best moments. But I mean there were a lot of things that happened and I couldn’t just pick one: Su-ryeon making sure to wear the scarf that Dan-tae had picked out for Seo-jin, Yoon-chul crashing the party to beat up Dan-tae, and Seo-jin revealing to the entire Hera Club that Su-ryeon was not the biological mother of her children.
The crazy night culminated in a surprise from Logan himself when he set up an attention-grabbing sign in the Hera Palace fountain which (rightfully) claimed that Min Seol-a actually died there.
For a while there, our favorite love-to-hate mean girl looked like she was going to end Ro-na’s dream of winning the Cheong-a Arts Festival trophy for good. While all the adults were getting traumatized in Logan’s party, the kids of Hera Palace decided to play a prank on Ro-na downstairs because Eun-byeol thought that her dad, Yoon-chul, cheated on her mother with Oh Yoon-hee.
The prank would end in a nightmare for Ro-na when Eun-byeol made her sign a contract where she had to do everything the latter told her to. If she didn’t, then the whole world would know about Yoon-hee being a supposed mistress. This threat was enough for Ro-na to send her quitting letter to Seo-jin, and for her relationship with her mother to be temporarily ruined.
One of The Penthouse‘s best moments was the time we realized how ruthless Cheon Seo-jin truly was. Oh Yoon-hee tried to take a shot at her when she pulled off a stunt that allowed Seo-jin’s father to discover that she was having an affair with Joo Dan-tae.
While we thought that the father would get angry at Seo-jin, he turned Yoon-hee’s plan against her by merely dismissing the whole thing.
It was all for show though because, Seo-jin’s father wasn’t going to let the next Cheong-a director be someone who was in an unfaithful marriage. Seo-jin decided to confront him in the pouring rain, and in the middle of her tirade, her father would get a heart attack and fall down the stairs.
Instead of helping him out, she would just run away from the scene knowing that his death would mean her ascension into the role as Cheong-a Director.
The season’s central mystery wrapped up in surprising fashion when it was revealed that Oh Yoon-hee was the person who killed Min Seol-a by pushing her off the 47th floor. When she was about to meet Su-ryeon in the balcony where the drunken murder happened, her memories of the night came flooding back to her. It didn’t help that Su-ryeon would also confide in her that she was actually Seol-a’s mother.
I didn’t realize how big a thing this was until I finished the first season because I honestly thought that Yoon-hee was just misremembering that night, and that the show was just throwing us a curveball. But nope, there has been no indication so far that somebody else had killed Seol-a.
When Bae Ro-na had grown a backbone and decided to come back to Cheong-a, Eun-byeol was obviously not pleased. She came to snatch the hair off Ro-na’s head until Seok-hoon broke things up to protect his girl.
And then he dropped the bombshell that he had been keeping for some time: his father was sleeping with Eun-byeol’s mother… and the last time we checked, both of them were married! This set off Eun-byeol (again) who felt majorly betrayed by her own blood.
This was a scene that made me want to vomit… but I couldn’t look away. Yoon-hee was desperate to stop Su-ryeon from finding Seol-a’s real killer, and that meant making a deal with the devil: Joo Dan-tae. But just to make sure that their partnership was made official, they sealed it with a kiss.
The cringe factor for me came from the fact that Yoon-hee was betraying Su-ryeon, as well as the fact that every woman in the show seemed to want to get inside Dan-tae’s pants. For a moment there, it seemed like they were legitimately going to be an item since Seo-jin and Dan-tae had been fighting. But the devil himself had some plans of his own that did not involve Yoon-hee as a romantic partner.
Su-ryeon would finally unmask herself as the mastermind behind all the bad things happening to the Hera Club members in an explosive manner… literally. With the help of Logan Lee, they would lure the adults to a “dinner” while the kids were sent to the community hall for a “special performance” from Grace Jo. Obviously, it was just a ploy to make them suffer and confess all the terrible things they did to Seol-a.
All the adults were locked in a bus like how Seol-a was tortured in Episode 2, but this one was surrounded by flames and had a ticking time bomb inside as their kids watched them desperately screaming for their lives. In the end, all the parents had to crawl through mud to get out, while the children had to write what they did to Min Seol-a on paper.
They actually did it! This jam-packed episode that also featured one of The Penthouse‘s best moments when Ha Eun-byeol tried to take her own life, but this one took the cake. The only logical conclusion to this season was having the elegant and intelligent Shim Su-ryeon be murdered in her own home.
After unmasking herself in the previous episode, she stayed with Logan Lee in his hotel room. But her maternal love would eventually be her own downfall when the maid called to tell her that Joo Dan-tae was hitting her children. This lured her out of hiding and into the wolves’ den.
As she stood in Dan-tae’s study, she was stabbed multiple times with a knife where Yoon-hee was left to discover the body.
After all the back-and-forth, it was Joo Dan-tae and Cheon Seo-jin who actually ended up winning the battle inside Hera Palace. Dan-tae was revealed to be the real person who killed his wife… shocker. And by doing this, it actually allowed him to get rid of another problem: Oh Yoon-hee.
He wasn’t actually falling for her all this time, but he simply used her as a scapegoat who could take the fall for Su-ryeon’s murder. Dan-tae set it up so that Yoon-hee would look like a stalker who was trying to take over his wife’s life. Unfortunately, all things pointed against her and she was going to be sent to prison… until Logan Lee stepped in to take her away.
All the while, Dan-tae and Seo-jin were sitting pretty in their penthouse as if nothing had happened.
And that concludes the second part of this listicle series on The Penthouse‘s best moments! Part 3 comes out when I finish the second season. In the meantime, let me know your thoughts on our list and the first season of this crazy k-drama in the comments.
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We all know how much The Penthouse: War in Life is similar to Sky Castle, so you might want to check out our list of k-dramas that have similar elements to these shows here. Don’t miss out on anything by following us @ZoomersCornerPH on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
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