The Manipulated Episode 9-10 Review
Director: Park Shin-woo and Kim Chang-ju
Date Created: 2025-11-27 15:13
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The Manipulated Episode 9-10 Review: Fabricated City is finally teasing some of the secrets we’ve all been looking forward to, including one about Yohan’s past. The battle between Taejoong and Yohan is heating up, with Eun-bi becoming more actively involved and curious. Featuring Ji Chang-wook, Doh Kyung-soo (EXO’s D.O.), Lee Kwang-soo, Jo Yoon-hee and Kim Jong-soo; it is adapted from the film 조작도시 and directed by Park Shin-woo and Kim Chang-ju.
The Manipulated Episode 9 Recap
Episode 9 of The Manipulated stars with Yohan makes a risky move to try and end everything once and for all, by revealing Do-gyeong’s Instagram account to the public and starting a chain reaction. In the meantime, Mr Yang and Hwang go to Busan to talk to Taejoong’s old friends, who all steadfastly stand by him. Taejoong phones Yang from the Busan bus terminal, insinuating there is another mastermind behind the case pinned on him. This is enough to cause Hwang to break free and pursue this new lead.
Meanwhile, Do-gyeong is hosting a luxurious party on board a ship without knowing that the world is collapsing around him. Mr Noh becomes nervous when Taejoong disappears, and with Eunbi, they trace his phone to Busan. And then, quietly, Yohan sat at his parents’ memorial. Family members give polite condolences, but he rejects their pity — until his nanny shows up and he drops his defences. But the recollection that follows is anything but tender: The nanny had previously slaughtered his entire extended family, disguising the mass murder as victims of a house fire. She is actually his real mother, but Yohan never got to know this secret.
And in a chilling confession, the nanny reveals how Yohan once poured mercury in his aunt’s eyes, leaving her blind and displaying the violent instability he showed even as a child.
At the ship party, Taejoong breaks into the festivities to confront Do-gyeong. Do-gyeong tries to hold him back for a moment, but all hell breaks loose when Hwang and Yang show up in search of Taejoong—and Eunbi- and Mr Noh bursts onto the scene immediately after to whisk him away. The group flees to Eunbi’s friend Han-byeol’s (Moon Sua) home in Busan. Under this tenuous refuge, Eunbi begins to realise her feelings for Taejoong are changing – from a loving brother-to-sister bond to something more solid.
Elsewhere, Do-gyeong finally comes to the realisation that Yohan has been playing him all along. In vengeance or despair, he arranges a cryptic Instagram story to go live at 9 p.m. As the episode ends, Taejoong loads a rifle, leading into what is sure to be a game-changing confrontation.
The Manipulated Episode 10 Recap
Yohan, in Episode 10 of The Manipulated, finds himself involved with an elder woman — Do-gyeong’s mother — to get close to her influential husband, a congressman. Though she believes Yohan is just one of her son’s generic friends, he quietly pitches the congressman a lucrative security deal for Do-gyeong. Rather than at least be amused by the offer, Congressman insults Yohan, calling him a lowly errand boy—and that’s some heavy shade thrown in Yohan’s face that he won’t soon forget.
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Unsurprisingly, the congressman makes a deadly error by dispatching gunmen to take him. Yohan makes quick work of them with a katana in hand, neither breaking a sweat nor showing any signs of weakness as he continues to prove why one of the show’s most intriguing villains.
Elsewhere, the truth about Yong-sik’s tragic past comes to light. While drunk, he thoughtlessly recognises his culpability in accidentally starting a fire (which cost his wife her life) by dropping a cigarette. And he was guilty, his inaction making him a murderer. Yohan tries to figure out why Taejoong and Yong-sik seem so loyal to each other without any clear quid-pro-quo reason. To him, the notion of people creating connections that gain nothing from self-interest is inconceivable — and yet his own mother operates under a sense of devotion he can’t explain either.
The conflict is heightened when Eunbi goes out to purchase cigarettes and accidentally meets Hwang again in a grocery store. She is hoping to conceal who she is, but a view of her tattoo jogs his recollection from an earlier case. What transpires next is a high-speed chase, in which Eunbi’s quick biking reflexes allow her to get back home on time to keep Taejoong from being caught by the cops. Yong-sik leads Hwang on the wrong path in order to shield Taejoong, even when he is feeling the heat.
But danger comes home, too — Yohan makes his way to Han-byeol’s house and attacks her. Eunbi shows up and finds her friend is knocked out cold; she immediately attacks Yohan, but she’s powerless. He’s not doing it for sadistic pleasure and Yong-sik, but because he wants answers — specifically what Taejoong could have possibly done to merit such loyalty. Unsatisfied and with no answers, he leaves them alive — for now.
Meanwhile, Do-gyeong’s cryptic social media post is seen by Taejoong, and he immediately makes his way to the designated spot on the yacht. Do-gyeong attempts to cower behind his men, but Taejoong has a jury-rigged nail gun and one by one, he takes the gang out. When he reaches the last of them, a combatant with red strips in his hair, however, Taejoong hesitates to deliver the killing blow and lets him go free.
He goes after Do-gyeong instead, jumping from a balcony to land on the roof of his sports car. And off we go into this classic-style high-speed chase: motorcycles zipping down tunnels, bullets flying, and that gravity-defying wall run from Episode 1 finally coming out of semi-retirement. Taejoong even jumps into a minivan that men are firing guns out of, and wrests control of the vehicle while fighting.
When Do-gyeong thinks he’s got it made, an enormous cargo truck rams his car. Taejoong pulls his dying enemy out of the wreckage and demands a confession, but Do-gyeong remains silent about his truth, leaving with secrets intact.
Yohan phones Dogyeong and outs himself to Taejoong. He accepts responsibility for staging Taejoong’s breakout during the “prisoner race” and makes him a deal: come work for me, and he’ll get Taejoong’s name cleared and make him wealthy. Taejoong turns down the offer immediately because no matter how much money DC can throw his way to change history, heʼs not going to forget what Yohan has done– and that includes killing Taejoong’s brother.
The episode also ends with Yohan killing Do-gyeong’s father and giving a last, chilling monologue about his life story—how he killed his adoptive parents at sixteen, then had an escaped convict take the fall. Making that discovery, Yohan hints toward his next move: Going after Yong-sik and Eunbi in the most dramatic battles yet.
The Manipulated Episode 9-10 Review
The Manipulated’s episodes 9 and 10 feel like someone threw adrenaline, trauma bonding, and psychological warfare into a blender and turned the speed all the way up. The result? Two monstrously chaotic episodes, which is the best kind of chaos — that you’re stressed and impressed by, oh but also kind of low-key having a blast because everything’s swirling down the drain but somehow still wildly entertaining.
The Manipulated kdrama Ep 9 serves us an electric pure thriller. Taejoong strolls into Do-gyeong’s yacht party like a storm with unresolved business, and Eunbi finally gets her badass moment (we’ve all been waiting!), and Yohan is chilling like he’s gathering human frailties to put in a science experiment. The emotional tension snaps and crackles everywhere: betrayals hiding in plain sight, secrets detonating in backstory flashbacks, the feeling that every character is two seconds away from making a terrible choice. Over-the-top, it’s unhinged, and it’s exactly the flavour this show needed as it hurtles toward the finale.
The Manipulated kdrama Ep 10 makes a turn of the metaphorical wheel, yet continues to bring forth the insanity. The classic bike chase re-emerges (a treat from Episode 1), the congressman makes the mistake of insulting the world’s most laid-back sociopath, and Yohan dispenses with its hit squad with katana-waving composure. Then we launch into one of the craziest action sequences in the series — Taejoong jumping aboard a moving gangster car, running up tunnel walls as if he’s gravity’s special nemesis and picking revenge over personal safety with such doggedness that you want to holler at the screen. It’s brutal, stylish, and yet somehow still emotional enough to hurt.
And underneath all that chaos? The show shows something unexpectedly tender — loyalty. Eunbi putting it all on the line, Yong-sik saving Taejoong even as he shouldn’t, and Taejoong just about hanging onto the belief that maybe someone somewhere still believes in him. Meanwhile, Yohan looks at these connections like they’re a puzzle he can’t wait to figure out. To a villain who could kill without flinching, the one thing he cannot wrap his head around is why people help one another for nothing. And that makes him scarier yet.
By the end of Episode 10 of The Manipulated, though, the drama throws its largest emotional grenade yet. Backstory tanks in like a cold bucket of horror, Taejoong slams his “work for me” offer down with the energy of a man who would rather fight the universe, and we’re left sitting here because the cards have all fallen into place for this endgame — and it looks brutal.
And honestly? We are waiting. With fear. With excitement. And I have no clue how in the world anyone in this make-a-mess-of-a-triangle Taejoong–Yohan–Eunbi is going to survive what’s coming in The Manipulated finale.
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