Genie, Make a Wish is the latest original fantasy rom-com from Kim Eun-sook, the screenwriter behind some of Korea’s most enduring romances, including Guardian: The Great and Lonely God and Mr. Sunshine. This time, she’s cranking the dials on all of her favorite tropes to a hundred … thousand. Never before has a Kim Eun-sook script packed in this many jokes — or this much bloodshed — through the millennium of love between Iblis (Kim Woo-bin) and Ki Ka-young (Suzy). The result is a bold, multi-genre tale that refuses to fit into the usual K-drama categories.

The story follows Iblis, a mischievous Satanic genie who was banished to hell after refusing to coexist with humans. Before accepting his punishment, however, Iblis struck a deal with God: he would prove humanity’s unworthiness by tempting mortals with three wishes. Every corrupted wish would damn their souls. God agreed, but added one catch: If Iblis ever found a truly selfless human, he would face a fate worse than hell and vanish forever.

For centuries, Iblis’s theory held true. Every one of his lamp’s masters eventually revealed their greed. That is, until a dying enslaved girl from Goryeo used all three of her wishes entirely for others, and in doing so sealed Iblis’s fate. God locked Iblis inside his lamp, where he remained for 983 years.

Fast-forward nearly 1,000 years later: Iblis meets Ki Ka-young, a brilliant but psychopathic car mechanic who can’t feel guilt but has worked to build a normal life through the strict rules drilled into her by her grandmother and townspeople. She is the reincarnation of the Goryeo girl — but now, with both of their memories partially wiped, Iblis hopes she’s also finally corruptible. 

What happens to the five villagers who are granted wishes?

Ka-young may be a psychopath, but, as Genie, Make a Wish writer Kim Eun-sook says, “It takes a village to raise a child, and Chengpung Village is exactly that village.” Growing up surrounded by her grandmother and neighbors, she learned that love exists despite the fact that she cannot feel it. So when Iblis sneers that all humans are rotten, Ka-young takes offense. To prove her point that humans are naturally good, she makes her first wish: Iblis must grant wishes to the next five people he meets. If most of the villagers use their wishes for personal gain, she will concede and let Iblis kill her. But if the majority prove selfless, she wins — and Iblis will be killed. 

Wisher #1: Kang Im-seon (Park Bo-kyung), a supermarket cashier. After 30 years in the same job, she uses her first two wishes for job promotions. When she’s fired for her entitled attitude and destroys her relationship with her daughter, she uses her last wish to make the Genie forget that he granted her the two prior wishes. The wish doesn’t work on the all-powerful genie, and she becomes an alcoholic after greed ruins her life. Selfish.

Wisher #2: Gu Bo-gyeong (Kang Chae-young), Ka-young’s old classmate. Once the school bully, now a bitter bank teller. She uses two wishes to steal Ka-young’s fortune for herself but after ruining her career and her dignity, she’s convinced to spend her last wish on saving Ka-young’s life. Unselfish.

Wisher #3: Ppoppi, a stray dog. He wishes to turn into a handsome middle-aged man who happens to look like Daniel Henney (and is indeed played by Henney himself). He enjoys the novelty of the experience at first but ultimately asks to return to his original dog form so he can say goodbye to the boy who loves him. Unselfish.

Wisher #4: Eom Sang-tae (Jo Joon), the son of a local restaurant owner. A misogynistic, sadistic murderer who squanders his wishes protecting his alibi and tries to kill again. Selfish.

Wisher #5: Struggling YouTuber Ko Young-hyeon (Kim Moo-joon). Desperate for views, he nearly wastes all the wishes on fame, but at the last minute he chooses to save his father-in-law. Unselfish.

Three out of five prove selfless. Against the odds, Ka-young wins. People may be flawed, but they are capable of goodness.

Who are the Genie, Make a Wish celebrity cameos?

In Episode 4, Korean American actor Daniel Henney (My Lovely Sam Soon, The Wheel of Time) makes a surprise appearance as Ppoppi, a dog who asks Iblis to turn him into a handsome middle-aged man who resembles … Daniel Henney. Human-Ppoppi’s assistant and driver is played by a brooding Kim Ji-hun, known for his roles in 2013’s Goddess of Marriage and 2022’s Money Heist: Korea - Joint Economic Area. In Episode 8, we meet Jinniya, a woman genie and Iblis’s ex-lover — played by none other than Song Hye-kyo. Jinniya knows all of Iblis and his brothers’ stories, including the 20 years that God sealed from Iblis’ memory and the story of Shadi and Khalid. When Iblis and Ka-young visit Dubai, she’s the one who confirms their suspicions about their past lives. This role marks Song’s first-ever cameo, and her third time appearing in a Kim Eun-sook series after Descendants of the Sun and The Glory. 

What happens to Ejllael, Halmoni/Pan-geum, and Irem?

Ejllael, the Angel of Death (Noh Sang-hyun), appears to be God’s perfect soldier, but he is secretly consumed by his jealousy of Iblis. He counts down the days until Ka-young proves Iblis wrong with her altruism so he can finally eliminate his rival forever. But that’s not how this story ultimately ends …

Pan-geum/Halmoni (Kim Me-kyung) is Ka-young’s grandmother, and the only person who gave her unconditional love after her parents abandoned her. Ka-young’s second wish restores Pan-geum’s youth, and she briefly lives as Lee Mi-ju (Ahn Eun-jin). Writer Kim notes of the big reveal, “It was a risk to have two actors play one character, but Ahn Eun-jin beautifully carried on the great work that Kim Me-kyung had begun, perfecting the endearing and adorable Pan-geum in her twenties.” For a time, she revels in her second life — but her fate remains. In the end, she sacrifices herself to protect best friends Ka-young and Min-ji (Lee Zoo-young).

Irem (Woo Hyun-jin) is Ejllael’s secretary, a divine white owl who outwardly obeys him but quietly follows her own sense of justice, even when it means defiance. When Iblis is erased from Ka-young’s memory after her final wish is fulfilled, Irem restores it as an act of repentance for meddling with their love story over the years. Afterwards, he is returned to her original form: a plume of silent white smoke.

What’s the true story behind Ka-young and Iblis’ relationship?

When Iblis and Ka-young meet in the present day, he insists he has been imprisoned for exactly 983 years. What he doesn’t know is that there are 20 years missing from his memory, erased by God to torment him. Ka-young, meanwhile, experiences only flickers of déjà vu, and has no memory of Iblis nor her past lives.

The truth emerges when Iblis dances with Ka-young for the first time and it triggers his memory of Ka-young’s previous incarnation as the “Goryeo girl,” and remembers that she didn’t die after making the third wish. After her friend Hunbish, also enslaved, died (well, as far as she knew — Iblis granted him immortality, but more on that later) she survived and grew into a woman who would later become his love, or his “habibti,” until he was forced to watch her die at the hands of a man he granted wishes to. Her final wish as a child had been that she and the genie would share the burden of suffering. God answered cruelly: true suffering meant falling in love and witnessing the death of the one you loved.

When she died and nobody else helped him save her, he became convinced that humans were heartless and corrupt. Iblis then begged God to let him see her again. God granted the wish from Iblis, but erased his memory to bind him instead to her reincarnation. And so, centuries later, he and the Goryeo girl — now Ka-young — remain tethered by that third wish, and their impending suffering is once again fated. 

When their past life is revealed, it becomes clear to Iblis that Ka-young was never his tormentor, but rather his soulmate. Suzy tells Tudum that, in contrast to acting with “no expression” as the psychopathic Ka-young, she wanted to “express [Goryeo girl] as a warm and pure human ... who just gives and gives [to] others. Since usually I acted with no expression [playing Ka-young], when I acted the past life scenes it was fun. Because then I could move my face, really move my expressions.”

Who is the neighbor’s child revealed to be?

Not long after Iblis enters Ka-young’s life, a new family moves into her village with a mysterious little boy at its center. He is eventually revealed to be Hunbish (Kim Ye-gyeom), the child Ka-young once wished to save in her past life as the Goryeo girl. Instead of just saving him, Iblis granted him immortality, which fostered a sense of greed. But as it turns out, he isn’t really Hunbish at all. A thousand years prior, Iblis’s brother, the genie Shadi, placed his ailing son Khalid’s soul into Hunbish’s undying body. Half-human but still immortal, Khalid spent centuries waiting for Iblis to awaken, plotting to use Ka-young’s last wish to seize the lamp for himself. He stops at nothing to get it, including killing his own father and Ka-young’s grandmother, who dies protecting Min-ji. (Sade — Iblis’ loyal servant played by Ko Kyu-phil — also dies while protecting Pan-geum and Min-ji from Khalid.) Iblis destroys the Flower of Eternal Life, which he planted himself the day that Khalid was granted eternal life, and Khalid finally dies.

How does Genie, Make a Wish end?

After Pan-geum’s death, Ka-young is desolate, and realizes that she cannot fully feel the depth of her loss. She calls for Iblis, but he hides from her, fearful that Ka-young purposefully use her last wish on something selfish to save him from the fate God promised him. When Iblis and Ka-young finally reunite, she makes her final wish: not for safety or wealth, but to feel the full depth of human emotion for just one day before she dies.

It is a selfish wish, thereby “validating” Iblis’s hypothesis about humanity and setting him free from his wager with God. Yet Iblis, unable to kill the only woman he’s ever loved, bows his head to her before granting her wish, thereby humbling himself to a human being and losing his bet with God. As Iblis is killed by Ejllael, Ka-young wanders the desert, overwhelmed by the weight of her grandmother’s sacrifice, her friend’s loyalty, and the love she can’t quite remember as Iblis erased her memory of him. After her memory of Iblis is restored by Irem, Ka-young dies from exposure and a broken heart. The couple’s parallel deaths fulfill the Goryeo girl’s third wish — that they would protect each other until the end. 

Suzy and Kim Woo-bin both found the final episodes deeply affecting. “When I read the script, I cried a lot while reading it,” Kim Woo-bin tells Tudum. “As I kept turning the pages, those emotions just built up. Then while filming with Ka-young, when I looked at her face [the ending] hit me so much harder than I had imagined.” Suzy noted that she was particularly moved by Ka-young’s final wish: “Honestly, I was personally hoping that Ka-young’s third wish would be that: to regain emotions, humanity … I wanted Ka-young to know [and feel] that she actually received such incredible unconditional love [in her life].”

Ka-young is reborn as a Jinniya for her thousand-year devotion to Iblis. Upon Pan-geum’s insistence — who refuses to go to heaven unless God does what she asks — Iblis is also reborn at the same time. They are reunited on Earth as two immortal genies, free to cause chaos alongside each other forever.