POV: I re-watched Twenty-Five Twenty-One after three years and here’s what it had me thinking!

Twenty-Five Twenty-One starring Kim Tae-Ri and Nam Joo-Hyuk gave us all the ‘K-trauma’ we never asked for. But after I dared to re-watch the series three years later, there’s a lot it left me with!

It was summer of 2022, I had just entered a fresh new writing job and it was fun yet really overwhelming for me! Here’s when Jung Ji-Hyun’s Twenty-Five Twenty-One became my escape from reality on weekends! What initially started as yet another reason to watch Nam Joo-Hyuk on-screen, it quickly became a story that had me gripped. The story revolves around Naa Hee-Do (Kim Tae-Ri), a high school student who dreams of being the best fencer in the world. One day, she meets her local newspaper boy Baek Ye-Jin (Nam Joo-Hyuk), a college student who had to drop out after his rich family went bankrupt due to the IMF crisis in Korea. Who was once the prince of his house, is now working three part time jobs to make ends meet and put his younger brother through school. When Baek Ye-Jin meets Naa Hee-Do, she is the only one who could make him forget about all his responsibilities, even if it was for a short moment. Whenever the two were together, they always made it a point to find happiness and more than anything, they became each other’s biggest support when it felt like the entire world was against them.

But it isn’t just Baek Ye-Jin and Naa Hee-Do’s plot line that kept me hooked. There was also Ko Yu-Rim, a fencing prodigy who won gold medals for her country at a rather young age. She was Naa Hee-Do’s idol. But the two had a journey of their own from being absolute rivals to absolute best friends. Meanwhile Moon Ji-Woong (Choi Hyun-Wook), a student at the same school as Ko Yu-Rim and Naa Hee-Do, aspires to be a musician someday. Even though he is the popular kid in school, he has a massive crush on Ko Yu-Rim. Ji Seung-Wan (Lee Ju-Myeong), his childhood best friend, is the head of the broadcast club in school and also the number one student academically. Now when all five of them are put together in the same group due to various circumstances, it brings out peak summer K-drama vibes, especially because it is set in the 90s/ early 2000s which is the era I grew up in. Hence the aesthetics of it all and the pop culture references hit too close to home!

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But while the series started as a wholesome story, it turned out to be an absolute heartbreak towards the end. Given how the viewership was through the roof at the time because of Baek Ye-Jin and Naa Hee-Do’s chemistry, none of us would have ever guessed that the two (SPOILER ALERT) would not end up together in the end! It took me three years of denial, looking for answers, crying and finally accepting that this is the end the makers have decided to give us. And waiting for another season was like waiting for it to snow in Mumbai, it ain’t happening honey! But recently, for some reason I found myself lured towards the show again. Was it because I was missing Nam Joo-Hyuk on-screen? Was I delusional to think that re-watching it would change the ending? Or did I just want a good heartfelt cry? Regardless of what the reason was, I binged the show like I was watching it for the very first time, but the only difference was that I was able to look at it with a much more mature lens and I might have just understood it for what it really was!

The art of letting go!

The point of the story never was to bring Naa Hee-Do and Baek Ye-Jin together. Since the beginning, the makers hinted at the fact that most of us have a passionate summer romance at least once in our lives but not at all summer romances make it through! Naa Hee-Do and Baek Ye-Jin became each other’s world and genuinely loved each other but they also loved their respective careers and neither of them would ever be the kind of partner who would ask the other to choose between career or love. As heartbreaking as it is, Twenty-Five Twenty-One showed me that sometimes two people who are soulmates aren’t always meant to be together. Not every love story is complete and that is more realistic than any other fairytale out there. 

Breaking up with honesty is the way to go!

Their breakup isn't sugar‑coated. It’s raw. They say things they regret immediately, Hee‑Do even collapses from the emotional toll. But in speaking their truths, they heal rather than stagnate. Hee‑Do saying, “This love isn’t supporting me anymore” captures the heartbreak of caring, loving, but no longer nourishing each other. Neither of them beat around the bush, when Baek Ye-Jin comes back to Korea after a year, they felt it in their bones that this is over the minute they saw each other. But while they mourned their relationship, they also had to have difficult conversations in order to move forward in life.

Everyone deserves closure!

The diary and apology letter gave them both graceful exits, rooted in gratitude rather than bitterness. Hee‑Do reads her diary, and Ye‑Jin finds his unsent apology and they imagine a kinder goodbye. This gesture highlights that letting go doesn’t erase memories, it honors growth.

Looking back at the good times!

The iconic scene where Baek Ye-Jin congratulates Naa Hee-Do for her wedding on National TV will always remain rent free in my head. You can see pain in their eyes but also a smile on their faces for the good times they shared. In the years that they both moved apart and built their own lives, not once have either of them hated on the other. They both still supported each other but from a different table. Every time their names were mentioned in a group conversation, the two had nothing but respect for each other and that says a lot about what a healthy break up can look like as compared to the hundreds of toxic relationships we’re used to seeing on-screen.

Twenty-Five Twenty-One might not have given me the ending that I wanted, but in hindsight, it gave me a lot of food for thought that I didn’t know I needed! I know that the knack for re-watching something heartbreaking makes me fall in the 1% of the population. But maybe those are the kind of stories we need to re-watch because of the life lessons that they leave us with!

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