Taxi Driver Season 3 Episode 1-2 Review
Director: Kang Bo-seung
Date Created: 2025-11-23 02:58
4.5
Taxi Driver Season 3 Episode 1-2 Review: The much-anticipated 모범택시 시즌3 gets back into action with its brand-new season, where the beloved team of Rainbow Taxi embarks on their most international and dangerous mission yet. The series sees the return of Lee Je-hoon in his iconic role of the relentless vigilante Kim Do-gi, and fans of the series will be thrilled to see the reunion with some of the familiar faces, such as Kim Eui-sung as foundation director Jang Seong-cheol, Pyo Ye-jin as the tech genius Ahn Go-eun, Jang Hyuk-jin as engineer Choi Gyeong-gu, and Bae Yoo-ram as Park Jin-aeon.
Under the guidance of a writer, Oh Sang-ho, and director Kang Bo-seung, Season 3 gets an auspicious beginning, tautly weaving an arc full of human trafficking, online scams, and international crime networks. While retaining much of its signature vigilante tone, the show is quick to raise stakes well beyond the more familiar borders of South Korea and takes viewers straight into the Japanese criminal underbelly. The cast easily slips into their roles, while some striking action sequences raise the bar for what is a very compelling set of premiere episodes.
Taxi Driver Season 3 Episode 1 Recap
Episode 1 of Taxi Driver Season 3 starts with a call for help. Iso, a schoolgirl in her uniform, manages to make contact with Jang Seong-cheol, but the telephone call cuts abruptly as she is dragged away by unidentified kidnappers. Her desperate call raises an alarm within the Rainbow Taxi team, who immediately start tracing her movements.
Jang Seong-cheol looks into the phone booth from which Iso had called and finds out she is a diligent student who has saved money for her grandmother’s medical treatment. But something clearly pushed her into a hazardous situation. To find out what it was, Kim Do-gi goes undercover, slipping into Iso’s school while posing as her homeroom teacher.
School seems like nothing more than an oppressive regime until one day, Do-gi hears that Iso has disappeared under mysterious circumstances, and there’s a rumour she went camping. As he looks for Iso, Do-gi meets Ye-ji, Iso’s good friend, who seems reluctant to tell the disturbing truth. Both girls were lured into an online gambling game, actually a camouflage for a predatory loan scam. Both girls got caught with debt they would never be able to pay back, and Iso, having only her grandmother to consider family, was forced to go to Japan to “work off” the debt.
With this painful realisation, the team of Rainbow Taxi embarks on further, more profound investigation: Go-eun infiltrates the same online game to trace its origin and falls into the very trap the girls had fallen into. She was abducted and trafficked to Japan when she could not repay the artificially inflated loan. The moment the team realises she has been taken, they follow her trail across borders.
Consequently, upon his arrival in Japan, Do-gi manages to save Go-eun just before she gets further pulled into the operation. Together, they find a gruesome setup-a building full of passports and photos of trafficked women. Continuing to investigate, they come upon an underground fighting ring directly connected with a man named Matsuda Keita, the ringleader of this trafficking network. Do-gi boldly challenges and defeats the ring’s champion, thus starting his undercover entry into the organisation by the end of the Taxi Driver Season 3 Episode 1.
Taxi Driver Season 3 Episode 2 Recap
Taxi Driver Season 3 Episode 2 opens on a really dark note; it shows Matsuda brutally killing a woman. Her body is soon discovered with multiple wounds, along with intentionally removed fingerprints and footprints to make sure that the woman is never identified. Authorities soon figure out that she could be a missing woman from Hong Kong who disappeared two years ago.
Meanwhile, Matsuda’s men go through footage of Do-gi from his underground fight and are impressed with his skills and audacity. As Do-gi leaves the fighting arena, he suddenly finds himself surrounded by local police and an Interpol agent. A tense moment occurs until Jang Seong-cheol’s influence diffuses it. Privately, Interpol shares that the loan scam, gambling game, and trafficking ring all point to Matsuda. They also fill them in that the fighter that Do-gi defeated was, in fact, an undercover agent. Desperate for anyone capable enough to infiltrate Matsuda’s circle, they ask for Do-gi to work with them. He declines, opting for the Rainbow Taxi team’s plan.
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Matsuda personally invites Do-gi then and offers him compensation for the shoes of his men that were destroyed. Things turn violent, however, when Matsuda asks Do-gi to cut off his finger as an act of apology. Do-gi instead launches a vicious counterattack. Their battle is cut short by a police raid, with Matsuda finding himself on the run with Do-gi. Matsuda is impressed with the young man’s bravery and continues to try to recruit him while they are running away.
Meanwhile, Go-eun manages to hack into Matsuda’s server system and finds data traces, but she can’t trace either Iso or the other missing girls. The team identifies that Do-gi needs to get deeper, and they plan a mock operation: Do-gi stays in contact with Matsuda, who keeps testing him, even offering a trafficked woman for checking his loyalty. That confirms the women are kept hostage and pushes the team to speed up their operation.
In no time, Do-gi gets an assignment from the Matsuda group: to provide security for an underground auction where women are trafficked. He infiltrates the event as the Rainbow Taxi team positions itself outside the venue. The moment the auction is about to begin, the team storms the site, freeing all the present women, but Iso is not one of them.
The team executes a perilous deception in return for Matsuda’s absolute trust. Seong-cheol acts as though he is the one who had attacked Matsuda’s operation earlier. Do-gi fakes a stabbing using a retractable knife in a grave manoeuvre and convinces Matsuda’s men that he is on their side. Utterly deceived, Matsuda accepts Do-gi into a brotherhood ritual. It is then that the Rainbow Taxi team, aided by former gang members in charge of the area, conducts an ambush.
At the end of Episode 2 of Taxi Driver Season 3, Do-gi drags Matsuda away amidst the chaos towards the hidden base where the girls were imprisoned. The final encounter finally happens: Matsuda pulls a gun on Do-gi, but before he could shoot, the Interpol officer shoots him down. The remaining victims, including Iso, are rescued.
The team then returned home with some of the confiscated funds of Matsuda as compensation for their efforts. In Korea, Do-gi tracks down domestic collaborators in the trafficking ring and delivers his own brand of justice. The final scene closes with Iso’s emotional reunion with Ye-ji, bringing the first case of Taxi Driver Season 3 kdrama to a close with heart.
Taxi Driver Season 3 Episode 1-2 Review
The return of the Rainbow Taxi team feels like slipping back into a world where justice moves quicker than bureaucracy, and Episodes 1 and 2 of Taxi Driver Season 3 use that momentum to deliver a premiere that’s both pulse-pounding and unexpectedly heartfelt. The undercover missions, always the source of pure comedy, had a new depth as Kim Do-gi shifted through personas with ease, each disguise a mask to obscure the emotional weight he carried, but managed to spark laughter at the bleakest moments. The Japan arc breathes fresh life into the series, taking what’s familiar in vigilante beats and setting it as a sprawling, high-stakes hunt that never loses its human centre.
What really binds these episodes together is the willingness to hold a mirror up to global realities. The series moves past stylised action to paint this sobering portrayal of trafficking, deception, and quiet system collapse that’s meant to protect the vulnerable. Watching Iso’s story unfold is uncomfortable, as it should be-a reminder that exploitation thrives in those shadows where nobody is watching. Yet, amidst the fear and desperation, the Rainbow Taxi team becomes that glimmer of hope the real world so often refuses. Their interventions are swift, purposeful, and unrestrained by the red tape that usually lets monsters walk free.
Still, amidst the heavy themes, the series manages to find space for warmth and even levity somewhere amidst it all. That’s in the familiar banter among the team, quick-witted problem-solving, and that unexpected humour, most of all in scenes where Do-gi swoops in dramatically only to realise Go-eun has already handled half the danger. All this brings a certain balance, keeping the episodes at a brisk, endlessly engaging pace. Chemistry feels richer than ever: found-family dynamics forged through danger, loyalty, and that unspoken understanding, with each mission possibly being their last.
Taxi Driver Season 3 kdrama ep 2 ending culminates in a satisfying rescue that is equal parts emotionally intense, ultimately leading to Iso’s safe return and a quiet embrace between two friends who thought they would never see each other again. It’s really this juxtaposition between relentless action and tender humanity that makes Taxi Driver addictive. But just as the dust starts to settle, the show plants the seeds of the next storm: a hint that ahead lies enemies even more sinister than those just overcome.
Season 3 steps into its opening arc with confidence, intensity, and a sharpened sense of purpose. The first couple of episodes promise a darker, bolder, and far more layered season, and as the credits rolled, I found myself already counting the days until the next confrontation.
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