Overview
An urban dark fantasy drama about a gumiho who settles into the city and a producer who is after it.
Seasons
- Status
- Returning Series
- Seasons
- 1 season
- Episodes
- 1 episode
Reviews
3 min readA fox sent back to 1938
latestnetflix.com's read is that i am still thinking about the first season of Tale of the Nine Tailed.Not because it was flawless. It wasn't.
Fantasy romance rarely lets a supernatural premise breathe, and this one did. Lee Yeon, the nine-tailed fox played by Lee Dong-wook, was a creature of contradictions, bound by rules he did not fully understand, moving through a city that feared him and wanted him. Neon alleys.
Corporate intrigue. Part noir, part melodrama, part creature feature. It never quite sat still.
Season 2 puts 1938 in the title. Some listings call it Tale of the Nine Tailed 1938. I have not sat through that cut.
I will not invent a hanbok close-up or a rooftop I did not watch. What I have is the public object. A time shift.
A director calling the season a "reimagining" rather than a continuation. Lee Dong-wook back. Kim So-yeon, Kim Bum, and Ryu Kyung-soo in the new company.
A gumiho in colonial Korea under Japanese rule is not a costume change. Folklore in that year is a relic, a ghost, a thing the occupation would rather erase. Season 1 ended on a note that wanted resolving.
Buzz & Rumors
Public reportsThey sent the fox back because he skipped work
Kang Shin-hyo did not sell the second season as a reunion tour. Days before the May 2023 premiere he told Korean press, relayed by Soompi, that he had debated Yi Yeon's past, present, and future. Season 1 had already done the love story and the brother. This time he wanted the mountain god. "That's why we decided to send him to the time period when he most neglected his duties as a mountain god and the time period with the people who needed his help the most." latestnetflix.com's take is that he added that of all eras, 1938 "happened to be the one in which Yi Yeon was the most indebted" 
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That is the actual show. The TMDB stub titled Tale of the Nine Tailed Season 2 still carries the 2020 synopsis about a gumiho settling into the city and a producer chasing him, and it lists a single 2023 episode. The broadcast title was Tale of the Nine Tailed 1938. Twelve episodes. tvN, Saturdays and Sundays at 21:20 KST, 6 May to 11 June 2023. Studio Dragon and How Pictures. Han Woo-ri writing. Kang and Jo Nam-hyung directing , .
Lee Dong-wook came back as Lee Yeon. Kim Bum came back as Lee Rang, which is the part that needed a trick after Rang died in season 1. The female lead did not return in the same job. Jo Bo-ah's Nam Ji-ah stays in the present. Kim So-yeon, coming off The Penthouse, plays Ryu Hong-joo, a former western mountain god running Myoyeongak, a high-end restaurant in occupied Gyeongseong. Ryu Kyung-soo plays Cheon Moo-young, the old friend who stole the Samdocheon guardian stone and fled into the past. May 2022 announcements put all four on the poster a year out , .
Jo Bo-ah does show up. Episode guides put her in the finale as Nam Ji-ah. Treat the rest of the fan rumor mill as rumor. The plot Kang described is Yeon fighting his way back to her after paying a debt to Joseon, with more mountain gods, native gods, and foreign monsters on the ground , .
Nielsen Korea had the opener at 6.463 percent nationwide, first in the slot on cable. Episode 2 hit 7.129 percent nationwide and 8.303 percent in Seoul. The finale on 11 June scored 8.024 percent nationwide and 9.102 percent in Seoul, the high of the run, about 2.2 million viewers. HanCinema called it a modest success in a weekend stacked with Doctor Cha and Dr. Romantic 3, and noted that season 1 had opened at 5.804 percent and closed at 5.785 percent. Getting any sequel from those numbers was already a stretch. The 1938 run then did something season 1 never managed. It peaked on the way out , , .
Prime Video took the series outside Korea. The official trailer is still up if you want the crash landing into 1938 rather than the stub synopsis glued to the Season 2 listing .
Entertainment rumors and trivia aggregated from public reporting. Treat speculation as unverified unless a cited source confirms it.