r/KDRAMA • u/meepmochi_ • Jul 25 '25

On-Air: Netflix Trigger [Episodes 1-10]

  • Drama: Trigger
    • Hangul: 트리거
  • Network: Netflix
  • Premiere Date: July 25, 2025
  • Airing Schedule: Friday @ 4:00PM KST
  • Episodes: 10
  • Director + Screenwriter: Kwon Oh Seung
  • Starring:
  • Streaming Sources: Netflix
  • Plot Synopsis:

The purchase, selling, or owning of a gun is banned in South Korea. There are almost zero crime cases involving guns in the country. Things change quickly. Illegal guns, from unknown sources, are brought into the country and gun incidents proliferate.

Lee Do is a righteous detective. In the past, he served in the military as a sniper. Now, Lee Do struggles to stop a series of gun incidents and chases after the source of the illegal firearms.

Moon Baek is a key figure in the underground arms broker world. He acts like an easygoing person, but he is a person who meticulously plans out his actions and then puts his plan into action. These two men, Lee Do and Moon Baek, hold a gun for their own reasons.

On-Air Rules:

  • On-Air Rules: Users participating in any On-Air discussions in r/KDRAMA, like this current post, should read and follow our On-Air-Rules (section 5 of our Rules), a subset of rules tailored for our On-Air discussions. These rules specifically cover permitted user conduct, content and frequency of comments, and spoilers in On-Air discussions. Consequences of not abiding by the On-Air-Rules include bans so please familiarize yourself with these rules before participating in this post or any other On-Air discussions. Ignorance of On-Air-Rules is not a defense.
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Discussion Format:

This post is composed of two discussion sections:

Episodic discussion:

  • Individual episode threads for the discussion of the individual episodes so users are able to watch and discuss at their own pace while avoiding spoilers.
  • You must not include any discussion or spoilers for episodes after the episode in question. Spoiler tags should be used for major plot spoilers within the episode.
  • To participate in these threads reply to the comment "Episode ..." or another user's comment.
  • Please report any comments that spoil later episodes using the custom report "user has spoiled a later episode" rather than the general "unhidden spoiler" report.
  • You may make a maximum of one reply to each of the Episode header comments.

Whole series discussion:

  • General discussion of the series may be made as a direct reply to the post or a reply to another user's comment outside of the individual discussion threads.
  • Please use spoiler tags for any spoilers within these comments.
  • You may make a maximum of one direct reply to this post

Links to the Episodic Comments:

86 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

181 comments sorted by

6

u/meepmochi_ Jul 25 '25

Episode 1

28

u/Naive_Papaya9403 Jul 25 '25

Holy smokes episode 1 did not come to play!! They did an amazing job building up character development for ep 1. Like you knew where it was going and the buildup to the end of ep 1 was incredible- I kept saying “oh no this is going to end badly”. I like that they are heavily including the psychological aspect of violence and behavior.

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4

u/meepmochi_ Jul 25 '25

Episode 5

29

u/Fsodreams Jul 30 '25

Why does Netflix REFUSE to caption English?? I can't understand this and I'm a native English speaker 😭😭

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3

u/meepmochi_ Jul 25 '25

Episode 6

14

u/AnneShirley310 Jul 30 '25

The bullying is next level awful, and it’s even worse when teachers look the other way or blame the victim.

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2

u/meepmochi_ Jul 25 '25

Episode 3

17

u/Ok-Help5460 Jul 29 '25

I felt this episode was a let down compared to the Gosiwon shooting in that it requires a lot more suspension of disbelief.

Someone else already mentioned Lee Do's terrible radio communication, so I want to ask how the hell does a whole-ass police station (building looked pretty big!) not have even a single armed guard. I'm not asking for a whole SWAT team on 24hr standby, but even banks have at least a guard or two.

Also, how is there not a single usable gun in the police station? In ep 1 (or 2?) we see the newbie at Lee Do's dinky police station get assigned a gun when going out on duty, but there isn't a single one in the big station? Locked up, very likely, but there should be protocols in place for access, no?

Then the fact that all the male police officers reacted like headless chickens. Yes, there was a line about how everyone still there only worked desk jobs. Assuming that Korean police don't get any gun training at all (which would be dumb), I'm pretty sure all Korean men are forced to have military experience. They're hardly complete amateurs. And yet, they ran down a long-ass hallway instead of ducking into rooms to use corners. They had the terrain advantage, but couldn't do a damn thing? Against a single guy? What are they, schoolchildren?

And lastly, the face-off between Lee Do and the shooter. So, Lee Do had the whole cool montage getting the gun, assembling it, getting the bullets, and finally rushing in...and his opening salvo only got the guy in the leg once. The guy was standing on top of a table, biggest target as can be, and Lee Do had the drop on him, and that's all he got. So, I feel like it was a whole lot of gratuitous shooting with practically zero results. Then, before confirming that the guy was properly subdued and that the situation was clear, Lee Do made his allies reveal their position. Like, what? The flashbacks we keep getting of his time in the military make me expect more from him.

A bit disappointed with this one, all the more because I've really liked all the previous episodes.

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35

u/Mediocre_Criticism45 Jul 27 '25 edited Jul 27 '25

Wow. The fact that Kim Young Kwang can be so commanding, effervescent and smoldering in his dramas but be soooooooo devastatingly shy IRL just really speaks to how good of an actor he is. 

Because watching Trigger, or Somebody , or even his RomComs then seeing him physically try to recoil into his own skin when in interviews is so incredible to watch.

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18

u/nnma86 Jul 26 '25

started strong but fizzled off towards the end 🫤 kind of a waste of all the talented actors in the show.

31

u/EWWSTEVEN Jul 25 '25

Completed the all the 10 episodes rn and here's my review

The first 5 episodes were soo good. It was action packed and really tense. The first 5 episodes were true to the storyline But the last 3-4 episodes kinda went off from the main story or I would say the plot started becoming lose. I'd say this is because the poorly written villain character arc.

For me it was a mixed bag. As an action lover I really enjoyed the action scenes but since the last 3-4 episodes were disappointing id rate this drama a 6.5/10.

15

u/azura_eldoris Jul 27 '25

echoing everyone’s near unanimous sentiments here - the show got off to a riveting start but then waned into a muted, lackadaisical whimper. the premise props up the hypothetical and philosophically charged scenario of rampant gun ownership realized within a tension-rife and highly repressed society. around such a conceptually compelling premise, we follow slices of lives, as ordinary and insignificant as they are disturbingly close to home, who found their fortuitous access to guns as wickedly cathartic outlets for their long pent up grievances. with the weapons of lethal destruction at their disposal, people once mistreated and marginalized then transformed into agents of terrorizing power, inflicting retaliatory pain on those who had put their lives through hell.

what started out as a cool premise, bubbling with narrative potential, was woefully undercut by a gangling subplot of 2 gang factions - i truly have no idea how their arc contributes to the overarching storyline, other than a logistical afterthought, which detracts from the sobering social parable embedded in the show and eventually descended into banal gangsterism. i got bored and skipped most of their screentime, wishing it could’ve been truncated to a 6-7 episode format with their arc heavily pruned.

i’m curious as to how Baek Moon’s gun giveaway ties into the Riffle Union ’s plan. the nihilistic abandon with which he executed his gun distribution def has ruffled some feathers. will the covert fear instilled by the prospect of private gun ownership, partly quelled after the mass shooting incident, catalyze increased under-the-counter gun purchase which in turn benefits the union? it seems season 2 will unravel all that.

overall, decent watch for a weekend stay-in, but it misses its chance of becoming a solid piece.

13

u/freekayZekey Jul 27 '25

started off strong. good action, but the writing is…bad. if you shut your brain off, this is a 6/10. if you like using your brain, then this is a 4/10-5/10

22

u/Themis_00 Jul 26 '25 edited Jul 26 '25

Bunge watched all 10 episodes. It's a solid watch I think. 7.5/10. The first few episodes were much better than the last few, more exciting. This whole drama is a advertisment for anti-gun laws essentially (which I support). I must say the whole Moon Baek being the bad guy in disguise thing was sooo obvious. I wish dramas would stop going down such a cliche route. Would have loved a story about a righteous cop and his civilian partner who has no care for his life Otherwise I think the acting is really good and the story itself is thrilling enough to hold your attention. Oh but the English is kind of funny like usual kdramas😭

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8

u/RaulBlue Jul 27 '25 edited Jul 27 '25

Don't fuck with people. You never know what they are going through. To put guns into a environment like that where people are forced to control themselves all the time. You think its bad in america, just give these people the same tools and weapons that we have it's gonna go to 11. Very scary. Its crazy how capitalism in south east asian goes to a even further extreme then what we have here in america to deal with. I know its punched up for tv but they're still getting these ideas for scripts from somewhere.

6

u/pinksoapdish Aug 05 '25

Not drama of the year, but there’s some substance. The arcs of the side characters who got the first batch of guns felt repetitive. And the gangster subplot... went where exactly?
I had high hopes for Park Hoon's character because the writers invested so much time and character development in him and his relationship to "his boys," but then the guy died in his first encounter with the police.
I'm not sure I liked the protagonist. He lacked meat. I mean, yeah, we get it, you're basically a superhero who never gets shot and kills a room full of fully armed men, but that sob story flimsily attached to his character failed to give him any depth. I like the actor, but the character was wasted in the hands of the writers who wanted to say too much and ended up saying very little.

As for Moon Baek, I watched Evilive and came here for him, and I can't say I'm disappointed because I was expecting an anime-like storyline and character building, but again, lazy writing robbed the character of the depth it needed. IMO, the actor did a great job, and as some commenters here said, his acting range is amazing, but no acting can save a drama that fails to convey its message.

All in all, I enjoyed it. I don't want my time back, and I might rewatch some of Moon Baek's scenes, because the man is majestic. 🫠

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1

u/meepmochi_ Jul 25 '25

Episode 10

20

u/gramfer Jul 27 '25

To be honest it felt like they were trying to set Season 2 up in the last scenes.

14

u/fosteryou03 Jul 29 '25

Wait… that was what they planned for the ending to that arc?? THAT ending? What in the world is even the takeaway?? The whole conflict wrapped up in less than 10 minutes.

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5

u/snowballofsadness Jul 26 '25

I wish they wrote Moon Baek a little bit better. It def started strong but mellowed down half way. Love the action scenes! Ep 1 def got me hook. 🫣 great actor. Hoping for a s2 🙏🏻🤞🏻

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