K-Drama Review: Genie, Make A Wish (2025)
In 2024, I spent what felt like half the year rewatching Lovely Runner over and over again.
And now, in 2025, the Netflix series Genie, Make a Wish has officially become my drama of the year.
Since it’s a Netflix series, I binge-watched the whole thing in a single day.
If it had been released like a TV drama — two episodes a week — I probably would’ve spent another six months just looping it nonstop.
It premiered on October 3, and I’ve already watched it four times.
No, wait — five times, maybe.
The reactions to this drama have been wildly divided, even in Korea.
But I loved everything — from the goofy comedy scenes in the first episode to the tearful finale.
It’s insane… it’s just so good… 😭😭😭
Born a psychopath, little Ka-young always wanted to dissect things and kill them. Her family, terrified of their youngest daughter, left her with her grandmother and emigrated abroad — almost as if abandoning her there.
Thanks to her grandmother and the neighbors — who taught that “tiny devil” the rules about what was allowed and what wasn’t — Ka-young grew into someone who kept to rules and routines. She couldn’t emotionally grasp why killing was wrong, but it was a “rule” she had promised her grandmother to follow.
Then one day she met a genie — a spirit who couldn’t be killed no matter how hard she tried, not even human. Finally, the perfect target to try to kill!
That’s how the show begins — full of comedy and chaos — but as it goes on, the story deepens.
From episode 11 onward, I watched it clutching a box of tissues, crying my eyes out.
If the early episodes aren’t your thing, please, just start from episode 11.
It’s so good, and so heartbreaking 😭
Suzy is absolutely gorgeous, and Kim Woo-bin looks incredible with that long, collarbone-length hair from his past-life scenes.
Apparently it’s a wig, but how does it look that good on him?
The first time I saw it, the ending made me go, “Wait — what? It ends like that?”
But after rewatching it a few times, I started to think this was actually better than a sad ending.
I just can’t handle tragic endings 😭
Ka-young said she would make one final, selfish wish — a wish for herself.
But that wish carried a deeper meaning — her wish to finally understand the hearts of the people she had loved, and her wish for Genie to live free, unbound by the lamp.
It was, by nature, a selfish wish — yet it couldn’t truly be selfish,
because she gave up her own life for him.
It reminded me so much of the feeling I had back in 2016, when I cried my eyes out watching Guardian: The Lonely and Great God.
Maybe I just can’t help but love Kim Eun-sook’s stories.
The flying CGI in Genie, Make a Wish was a bit weird and kind of funny —
but the story was so good that I ended up loving everything anyway.
Well… except when I rewatch it, I do fast-forward through some of those flying scenes.
If a genie really appeared before me and offered three wishes,
what would I ask for?
Hmm… maybe, “Please give me lots of gold bars”? Gold’s pretty expensive these days, you know.
And you do know they have to be clean, right?
Like, fully documented, all taxes paid — I trust you’d handle that properly. It’s the modern world, after all!
Oh, and nobody should know I have them. Seriously.
You’re not going to give me the gold and then kill me the next day, right?
Maybe my second wish should be to live a long life.
But wait — you’re not going to make me immortal or something, are you?
Hold on, I need to think this through.
If I never make my last wish, would you stay and talk with me until the day I die?
How does that sound?
Ara C.
Ara C.
