Netflix’s Chicken Nugget sees an alien-made machine turn an unsuspecting woman into a chicken nugget, forcing her father and her one-sided lover to do all they can to reverse the situation.
The aliens in Chicken Nugget have arrived on Earth for a tour and land in Joseon during the 19th century. However, they soon come to regret their arrival as their valuable machines get stolen.
They spend centuries trying to find it and remain in their human forms throughout their stay, assimilating into the culture and humanity, albeit not that effectively.
The historical context
In the year 1801, the first year of King Sunjo’s reign, Queen Jeongsun, who served as regent to the late King Jeongjo, ordered a strict prohibition of Catholicism.
It was because of their “heretic beliefs and corrupt human morality.” As per the conservative ruling faction, if the Catholics didn’t repent, they were punished as traitors.
That night, Jeong In-Seon knelt outside the Seosomun Gate, who had King Jeongjo’s favor and held important posts.
He was a scholar and a devout Catholic, who dreamt of giving practical help to the people, and thus, stepped down from his office and dedicated himself to the Lord for the benefit of his fellow man.
His family was dispersed to distant regions after his death.
Women in the family were sent to the countryside as government slaves, and the men, barely able to preserve their own lives, were demoted from noblemen to commoners.
Among those men were Jeong Hyo-Bong.
The aliens arrive
One day, while collecting some twigs at the mountains, he was surprised by a purple light and soon he was aghast to see four humanoid figures being descended by a beam of light from a vehicle that hovered above.
With them came two boxes. A hologram of a human appeared in front of the boxes. One by one, they entered one of the boxes, saw the hologram, and turned into humans identical to the ones the hologram was projecting.
Hyo-Bong drew what he saw that day on a craft paper and showed it to his commoner friends in the village. He made an oath with them to use these boxes to change the world.
He kidnapped a nobleman with their help and transformed himself to look like him. He then had an instant personality switch and got his (the nobleman’s) men who were looking for their lord, to seize the boxes and kill his commoner friends.
The aliens eventually did find Hyo-Bong and asked him to return the boxes to them. He didn’t and told them he dumped the boxes into the Socheon River.
The aliens, dejected, just walked away sulking, without doing anything to Hyo-Bong because they couldn’t harm humans or they would get punished for it and would have to live on the Planet of Darkness alone forever.
They can’t harm anyone and they can’t lie, because that’s how they’re evolved.
However, one of his commoner friends he thought he had his men kill, named Twerp, managed to survive. He returns for revenge and slices Hyo-Bong’s throat, who dies then and there.
The present-day
In the present day, the four aliens run the Baekjung Chicken Nuggets store, and they find one of their purple machines in the background of the singing video that Baek-Joong recorded at his workplace and uploaded online.
They go to More Than Machines and find the note Sun-Man and Baek-Joong had left there, to call the police if they don’t return from the place where they claim they’ve gone to fetch their stolen machine back.
They are held captive there by Yoo In-Won and Yoo Tae-Man, who are working on their research to fully understand how the machines work. The aliens reach there and seek to negotiate with the humans, not harm them.
The alien using the human name Baek-Jung begins attacking humans at the end because he sees no other way after failing to get the humans to negotiate.
His alien friends look in horror and try to stop him. Baek-Joong and Sun-Man try their best to resist and get beaten up a lot. The aliens have their families at home to get to as well and the machine only can work once more.
They want to go home and Choi Sun-Man wants his daughter back. Both parties understand each other’s pain and empathize with each other.
The aliens suggest that Baek-Jung takes Min-Ah with him to their planet and turns her back into a human there, before bringing her back to Earth.
However, it’ll take one day on their planet, but fifty years on Earth. Sun-Man and Baek-Joong can’t afford that because they will most likely die before she returns.
However, Sun-Man sees no other solution to their mutual quandary and agrees to send his daughter with Baek-Jung, while he prepares to change his lifestyle and live for fifty more years so that he can reunite with his daughter.
He manages to live that long, but just before getting to meet her, he dies. Meanwhile, the alien named Baek-Jung returns with Min-Ah still as a chicken nugget.
He couldn’t turn her back into human form because he needed one more day to charge the machine, but that would have meant that fifty more years would pass on Earth.
So he proposes a final solution to Baek-Joong, which is to turn back the clock and go back to any point in time he wants. Baek-Joong ultimately decides to press the button of the device that sends him back in time.
Meanwhile, Baek-Jung’s other friends get to go back to their home planet and their families too.
Also Read: Chicken Nugget summary and ending explained