A Time Called You is a Netflix miniseries that follows a grieving woman magically traveling through time to 1998, where she meets a man with an uncanny resemblance to her late love.
Warning: This article contains heavy spoilers
Plot summary
Han Jun-Hee lost her boyfriend a year ago to a plane crash and continues to grieve for Koo Yeon-Jun. On her birthday, she receives mysterious flowers, and she starts to feel that her late lover might be alive somewhere nearby.
She later receives a photo on her Instagram from an anonymous account of three young people, one of whom looks like her late boyfriend and a girl who others say looks like her. She starts investigating her lookalike.
Jun-Hee receives another strange package. Meanwhile, in 1998, a reserved and quiet high schooler Kwon Min-Ju gets to befriend her crush, but soon faces a heartbreak. Jun-Hee plays the cassette player she received in the package and gets magically transported into Min-Ju’s body.
Min-Ju was hit by a car when the switch happened. When Jun-Hee wakes up in the hospital, inside Min-Ju’s body, she learns that she was found in a remote spot with a head injury from a blunt object.
She tries to make sense of her memories with Min-Ju’s as they all get jumbled up. Nam Si-Heon sees a new side to Min-Ju after earlier rejecting her for his best friend In-Gyu, who likes her. Jun-Hee later gets transported back to 2023.
There, she struggles to tell reality apart from her dreams. When she receives a diary that belonged to Min-Ju from her uncle Chi-Won in 2023, she reads the contents and finds her own writing she put in it when she traveled back in time and inside Min-Ju’s body.
She realizes it is all real and she pops the earphones back in and plays the cassette, traveling back to Min-Ju’s body in 1998, where her bubbly personality shines through Min-Ju. Her friends, family, and classmates take notice, along with a mysterious person.
Si-Heon finds himself attracted to the new Min-Ju and he eventually comes clean to Jung In-Gyu about it when the latter confronts him about it. Jun-Hee tries to warn the boys of the dangers that Min-Ju faces but they don’t take her as seriously.
Meanwhile, the mysterious lurker kills Da-Hyeon, a popular classmate of the trio who is jealous of Min-Ju growing closer to her crush, Nam Si-Heon.
The clock winds up to the time when Yeon-Jun first met Jun-Hee. He tries hard for a long time until Jun-Hee finally accepts his feelings. They enjoy their blissful relationship until a little spat and then Yeon-Jun’s unfortunate end.
Meanwhile, Si-Heon shows up to Jun-Hee in 2023 and explains to her the course of events he’s lived through. Jun-Hee vows to save Min-Ju but Chan-Yeong, who she confides in all of this, turns out to be the culprit behind all this mess, and he acts fast.
Jun-Hee manages to travel back in time but Min-Ju takes control of her own body this time. She also pays no heed to Jun-Hee’s warnings and requests while focusing solely on spending time with Si-Heon. However, he and In-Gyu grow suspicious.
Min-Ju takes her life into her own hands as everyone else tries to talk her out of a drastic choice and fails. That is until Jun-Hee tries one last ditch effort and succeeds.
Then she and Si-Heon have to make a hard but necessary choice, as A Time Called You reaches its conclusion.
A Time Called You ending explained in detail:
Are Kwon Min-Ju and Han Jun-Hee the same person?
No, Kwon Min-Ju and Han Jun-Hee are two different people born in different places and times. At the beginning of A Time Called You, it’s unclear if they are the same person or not but soon it becomes clear that they’re not.
However, they have an inexplicable connection that transcends space and time such that when Han Jun-Hee travels through time in 1998, she gets into Min-Ju’s body.
When she does, the real Min-Ju gets trapped inside her own psyche, in a spatial construct that resembles the abandoned building in tatters near where she was found unconscious after she ran from home.
Min-Ju can see through her eyes all that’s happening to her body, which is controlled by Han Jun-Hee. Meanwhile, Han Jun-Hee gets access to Min-Ju’s memories. Later on, Min-Ju is somehow able to regain control of her body when Jun-Hee time travels again.
This time around, it’s Jun-Hee who gets trapped inside the spatial construct inside Min-Ju’s mind. The two also learn that they can interact with each other. The one in control of the body can look into the mirror to interact directly, although it’s not a compulsory requirement.
Are Nam Si-Heon and Koo Yeon-Jun the same person?
Yes, Nam Si-Heon and Koo Yeon-Jun are the same person. They’re not the same in the body (although they do look terribly alike) but they are the same in the soul. It’s later in A Time Called You that this is made clear.
When Han Jun-Hee travels back to 1998 and into Min-Ju’s body, she meets her classmate, the popular and genius all-rounder Nam Si-Heon. She instantly gets emotional as she thinks he’s her late boyfriend Koo Yeon-Jun’s younger self.
However, in 1998, her boyfriend would have been 11 years old, so she chucks that theory away. Still, his mannerisms, thinking, face, voice, and many other things are so strikingly similar to Yeon-Jun that she can’t help but fall in love with him.
She realizes he’s really Koo Yeon-Jun when she finds the same painting of a girl running through woods that she found at Yeon-Jun’s workshop. In 2023, she finally meets Si-Heon who’s quite aged and walks with a limp and a cane.
In 1998, when Min-Ju died, In-Gyu was sent to jail as he was holding on to her dead body at the crime scene and admitted that he killed her. Si-Heon went to America returned in 2002, and paid a visit to In-Gyu in jail.
Returning from there, he gets into an accident, while in 2007, the real Yeon-Jun gets into a crash as well. Si-Heon gets transported to 2007’s Yeon-Jun and wakes up from a coma to find all his surroundings and his body different. Meanwhile, the 2002 Si-Heon also wakes up from his coma.
Koo Yeon-Jun, who’s now Si-Heon, decides to pursue Han Jun-Hee and win her heart, which he eventually succeeds in doing. When she goes to America for a better job to be more financially secure. Yeon-Jun goes to meet her and dies in a plane crash, returning to his body in 2002.
Before boarding the flight, Si-Heon meets Yeon-Jun and tries to stop him, but Yeon-Jun realizes he must sacrifice himself for Han Jun-Hee to go back in time and meet him (Si-Heon) for the first time. Towards the end of A Time Called You, Si-Heon with the cane meets Han Jun-Hee and reveals all this to her
Who is the killer?
Oh Chan-Yeong is the killer in A Time Called You, the one who kills Min-Ju and Da-Hyeon in 1998. However, to learn who he is, one must go back to the aforementioned time in Noksan.
Oh Chan-Hui, a nerdy and quiet guy at the school, has a crush on Min-Ju, and he thinks they both are very similar. His younger brother, Oh Chan-Yeong, has been a psychopath from a very young age, and he often kills animals for pleasure.
He thinks people should be preserved like butterflies. Oh Chan-Yeong is the person who becomes Yeon-Jun’s friend at the same university where Han Jun-Hee also studies. After Yeon-Jun’s death, he takes over his workshop and remains Jun-Hee’s friend.
When Si-Heon finally meets Jun-Hee in 2023, she confides in Chan-Yeong about all the time-traveling stuff and the murders in 1998, while Si-Heon is at school trying to find leads on who the killer of Min-Ju and Da-Hyeon was.
Si-Heon learns that Chan-Hui was admitted into psychiatric care shortly after the murders. Meanwhile, Chan-Yeong uses the cassette player at Jun-Hee’s home and gets transported into his elder brother’s body in 1998.
He meets Min-Ju on the night she runs away from home and walks her home. On the way, though, he attacks her, and while she tries to run away, he hits her in the head with a club. He can’t kill her because he’s woken up by Jun-Hee before that.
In 2023, he strangulates Jun-Hee and reveals he’s the one who killed Min-Ju and Da-Hyeon. Si-Heon arrives and also adds things up. However, Chan-Yeong ends up stabbing him to death, before taking the diary and cassette player with him.
Jun-Hee and Chi-Won ask police’s help and they eventually nab him. He shouts and asks to be freed because he was just about to kill Min-Ju on October 13, 1998.
Before getting cuffed, he breaks the cassette player which Jun-Hee later gets repaired. In the penultimate episode of A Time Called You, she uses the cassette player successfully one more time.
Does Jun-Hee change the future?
In the final episode of A Time Called You, after getting the player repaired, Han Jun-Hee travels back in time and gets trapped inside Min-Ju’s mind.
Min-Ju still can’t be accepted by Si-Heon, who knows it’s not Jun-Hee talking through Min-Ju’s mouth but Min-Ju herself.
This, and the fact that people again start seeing her and talk behind her back messes with her head and she can’t take it anymore. She decides that she would give herself up to Chan-Yeong willingly so that she can be remembered forever by people, and not as a pitiful person.
Chan-Yeong can’t kill her in time because he’s woken up by the police in 2023 and arrested. However, Min-Ju still decides to end her life, despite Jun-Hee inside her mind and In-Gyu from the outside trying to talk her out of it.
She falls from the building to her death and In-Gyu blames himself for her death since he couldn’t save her. Jun-Hee is transported back to 2023 and the tape also breaks. She gets it repaired again and is told that it won’t play again.
However, she wishes it does one last time and it indeed does. She goes inside Min-Ju at the moment before she falls and this causes enough delay in her tripping off the ledge that In-Gyu holds her and saves her.
Jun-Hee, having read Min-Ju’s thoughts and feelings, tells her that she’s been living with unrealistic expectations and that she should choose to live for her own sake irrespective of what others think.
She then hands over the cassette player to In-Gyu to burn them away. This would cause her and Si-Heon to have never met and forget each other.
Before that happens and she relinquishes control of the body to Min-Ju, Jun-Hee spends quality time with Si-Heon and the two know the cassette player must be destroyed to keep Min-Ju safe and Chan-Yeong from ever getting back in time, even if it perishes themselves from their timelines as well.
They turn into dust as the cassette player and the cassette are destroyed. In 2011, Si-Heon works in a comics publication company, unaware of Han Jun-Hee’s existence but always feeling he’s missing something in life.
One day while riding on a bus, he plays the same Seo Ji-Won song he sees another woman singing along to. It’s Han Jun-Hee. Something compels him to get off the bus when she does and stop her.
She turns and he goes to say something but before that the screen turns black and A Time Called You rolls the credits, implying that they do eventually find each other, just like Si-Heon promised when he and Han Jun-Hee were with each other for the last time.
Also Read: 6ixtynin9 summary and ending explained