NaraLookpeach

Not because I want abuse romanticised. Not because I think love should hurt. But because I'm interested in stories where damaged people collide, where morality isn't clean, and where everyone is forced to confront the consequences of who they've become.

Payback begins with exactly that promise.

Sun isn't an innocent protagonist caught in someone else's game. Before tragedy ever enters his life, he works as a debt collector for a loan shark, threatening desperate families for money. He already belongs to a brutal world where survival comes at someone else's expense. Then everything collapses. A debtor, pushed beyond his breaking point, kills Sun's younger brother in front of him. His mother dies soon afterwards. His boyfriend Bank disappears with all of his money.

For five years, he simply survives out of habit.

What makes him such a compelling protagonist is that he genuinely believes this is his punishment. If he hadn't chosen that life, his brother would still be alive. His guilt becomes the thing that keeps him moving, and Min Thanakorn plays that emotional numbness beautifully. Sun rarely allows himself to grieve because, deep down, he doesn't think he deserves to.

Years later, while working as a delivery driver, Sun accidentally overhears Bank — now living under the name Sunny as one of Thailand's biggest stars — casually admitting his own involvement in the events that led to Sky's death. Until then, Sun believed Bank had betrayed him and stolen his money. Suddenly he realises something far worse: Sunny didn't simply abandon him. He played a direct role in destroying his family.

That's the moment revenge is born.

Sun's revenge is deeply personal. He wants Sunny to lose everything the same way he did. Jay's revenge, however, is something entirely different. He wants to expose and destroy the corrupt system behind Dream Entertainment, a system built on exploitation, coercion and the abuse of power.

And unfortunately, this is where I think the series slowly loses the thread it had woven so carefully.

I kept waiting for the moment where Sun's personal revenge would naturally evolve into Jay's larger fight. Not because Sun suddenly stops caring about Sunny, but because he slowly begins to understand that Sunny isn't the beginning of this story. He's another product of the same machine.

Ironically, the ending already hints at exactly that version of the story.

I just wish the journey had taken us there more deliberately.

Personally, I would've loved to watch Sun dismantle Sunny's life piece by piece throughout the series. Not through violence, but through carefully calculated moves. Destroying his reputation. His public image. His career. Slowly forcing Sunny into a position where he'd finally have to confront the consequences of his own choices.

And then... give Sunny one episode. One chance to tell his side of the story.

Not because he deserves redemption.

Because he deserves perspective.

Payback begins by asking us to empathise with someone who carries enormous responsibility for the tragedy that destroyed his own life. I wanted that same complexity extended to Sunny. Not to forgive him, but to understand him.

Because I think that's where Sun's character arc truly wanted to go.

Not towards revenge.

Towards self-forgiveness.

The most powerful version of this story isn't one where Sun wins. It's one where he realises that revenge was never really about Sunny. It was a tool that kept him going, a reason to stay alive when he otherwise had no idea what he was still living for.

And perhaps that's why I wanted one more confrontation between Sun and Sunny. Something that forces Sun to hear the other side of what happened. Because Sunny did something terrible. But Sun also has to confront the fact that his own choices helped create the chain of events that led to his brother's death. None of that absolves Sunny. But it could have forced Sun to understand that he can't spend the rest of his life looking for one person to carry all of his guilt.

The series gestures toward this idea, particularly during Sun's psychological collapse and the devastating scene where he performs a suicide attempt for the camera, only to realise that despite everything, he doesn't actually want to die.

It's one of the strongest scenes in the entire show.

The same can be said for the corruption storyline.

The entertainment industry isn't simply used as a dramatic backdrop. The "Backer" system — powerful executives exploiting actors in exchange for career advancement — is presented as something deeply rotten, and the series deserves credit for refusing to make that corruption feel incidental. Payback deserves credit for refusing to sanitise that reality.

Jay is perhaps the character I'm most conflicted about.

His chemistry with Sun is undeniable. I genuinely enjoyed watching two people who both understand they're using each other while slowly becoming unable to pretend that's all they're doing. But I also found Jay frustrating. The rabbit reveal — discovering that Sun was the mysterious man from five years earlier — should have fundamentally transformed Jay's motivations. Instead, it mostly plays like another layer of romantic destiny. I wanted that revelation to matter more.

Because Jay doesn't just discover that he once slept with Sun.

He discovers that he has finally found the person he's been looking for all this time.

And that should change something.

I wanted to see Jay protect Sun without a deal attached. Without Sun owing him anything. Not because Sun is useful to him, but because, for once, Jay has found something he doesn't want to lose.

That would have made their relationship feel so much more significant to me.

In the end, Payback isn't a failed revenge story.

It's a revenge story that already contains the emotional journey I wanted to watch — it just never fully connects all the threads.