The residents of the Hera Palace are the epitome of the Korean 1 percent; rich, ruthless and willing to do anything to go higher in life. Their turbulent but relatively stable lives hits a snag when during a costume ball, a young high schooler known as Min Seol-ah dies within the building's premises.
A second season and third season were both announced, with season 2 starting in February 2021. Season 3 premiered on May 2021.
This series provides examples of the following tropes:
- Absurdly Divided School: Cheong-ah Arts in a nutshell. The Little Hera Palace has every student under their thumb, and everyone not named Min Seol-ah or Bae Ro-na bow and kowtow to their every whim; likely because of the Hera Palace adults having so much of an influence on their futures. Unfortunately for said clique, they're not actually very popular and the other students are quick to turn against them on a dime.
- Arch-Enemy: Oh Yoon-hee and Cheon Seo-jin. It's apparently a hereditary trait, as their daughters also have this relationship.
- The Bad Guy Wins: By the end of season 1 at least. Su-ryeon is dead, Yoon-hee is presumably dead, and Yoon-cheol is forced to temporarily move overseas. Meanwhile the Joos, Seo-jin, Eun-byeol, the Yoos, Kangs, and Lees get off scott-free and even celebrate with a private party. As such, Seol-ah's death is once again swept under the rug.
- The Beautiful Elite: Especially the queen bees of Hera Palace, Su-ryeon and Seo-jin.
- Beautiful Singing Voice: Not surprising, given that a performing arts school is central to many of the show's plotlines.
- Seo-jin, an alumna of Cheong-ah Arts, went on to become South Korea's prima donna. However, Yoon-hee has an even better singing voice than her, a fact that plagues Seo-jin. Their daughters inherit their singling abilities, and also become rivals.
- Seok-kyung, Jenny and Min-hyeok.
- Big, Screwed-Up Family: No family in the Hera Palace is stable, except for maybe Yoon-hee and her daughter Ro-na.
- Bittersweet Ending: With the major threats Dan-tae and Seo-jin dead, and everyone living out their own lives and careers peacefully. However, several major characters (except Ma-ri, Kyu-jin and Sang-ah) are dead and never got a chance to see their children fulfilling their dreams or a chance to be together like Logan and Su-ryeon. The final scene is Logan's soul reuniting with Su-ryeon and going to the afterlife together to meet new people.
- Bully Brutality: The children especially. In season 1, after Anna Lee is revealed to be Seol-ah, they physically push her around on a daily basis and even go as far as to nearly kill her at the junkyard. Their parents aren't much better, with Dan-tae and Seo-jin tying her up and torturing her after she blackmails them about their affair.
- Chekhov's Gun:
- Played with: When Yoon-cheol goes to Dan-tae's villa and sees him with Seo-jin, he grabs a literal gun that we see hanging on display every episode, going in and killing them both. However, this turns out to be a fantasy; he puts the gun back and leaves instead.
- Seo-jin loses her voice right before a really important performance. She's then diagnosed with nodules and a tumour, but we don't hear anything about it again. Fast forward three years, and we see that she's receiving treatment for laryngeal cancer.
- Chronic Back Stabbing Disorder: Essentially the main trait of pretty much everyone minus Ro-na. Initially, anyway.
- Cool House: Hera Palace. It better be, given how much of the series plot revolves around it.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: All the husbands of the main cast. Screwing over small businesses, families and whole districts just to further their own wealth/influence? Just another Monday.
- Creator Provincialism: Yup, it's set in Seoul. Where else?
- Dramatic Shattering: Quite a lot of glassware was broken in every episode.
- Education Mama: All of the parents, given how large amounts of the plot revolve around the competitive nature of Cheong-ah Arts School. However, some of them take it to the extreme (like Seo-jin, who also happens to be the school's Director).
- Even Evil Has Standards: Played With. While they do try to sweep it under the rug, the Hera Palace adults are furious when they discover just what their kids did to Seol-ah; the incident at the junkyard that almost lead to the poor kid dying in a car explosion.
- Every Man Has His Price: Bribery is rife, with many cases full of won and gold bars changing hands throughout the show.
- Everyone Is a Suspect: The main plot of season 1 is trying to figure out who killed Seol-ah, as everybody besides Su-ryeon acts incredibly guilty, and all had some part to play in how miserable her life was when she was alive.
- Faking the Dead: Happens a few times:
- We're left to think Su-ryeon is dead in season 1, killed by Yoon-hee. However, it's revealed that she's very much still alive, and that it was Dan-tae not Yoon-hee. He actually killed Ae-kyo, thinking she was Su-ryeon.
- Logan Lee was killed in an explosion in the season 2 finale, but it turns out he was kept alive by Seo-jin, who blackmailed Yoon-cheol into treating him.
- In season 2, Ro-na ends up in a coma after being slashed with a trophy by Eun-byeol, making Eun-byeol think she is responsible. Then Yoon-cheol tampers with her life support, apparently causing her to flatline, leaving viewers to think he's the one who ultimately killed her. However, Ro-na's life-threatening injuries actually occurred when Dan-tae found her soon after her fight with Eun-byeol, and stabbed her in the head with the trophy (turns out Eun-byeol only slashed her shoulder and had no idea about the head injury). Dan-tae later cuts off her life support; turns out Yoon-cheol couldn't bring himself to do it. Su-ryeon, who's been lurking nearby, reconnects her life support and rescues Ro-na. However, everyone still believes she's dead for little a while after that, including a grieving Yoon-hee.
- The Friend Nobody Likes: The Little Hera Palace may rule Cheong-ah Arts but they're not very well loved monarchs. It's all but stated that the staff, faculty and students only obey their word because of their parents' power and influence.
- Helicopter Parents: Many parents commit bribery and fraud for their children to pass their exams. A prominent example is Seo-jin, the director of Cheong-ah Arts, abusing her authority multiple times on behalf of Eun-byeol. Yoon-hee even killed Seol-ah so that Ro-na could take her spot at Cheong-ah Arts.
- High-School Sweethearts:
- The love triangle between Yoon-hee, Yoon-cheol and Seo-jin.
- Seok-hoon and Ro-na start dating in season 2. At the end of the season finale of season 3, we see that they are still together even after three years and despite careers that land them in different countries from one another.
- Hourglass Plot: At the start of the series, Ro-na is a poor girl who only got into Hera Palace by skill alone, while Eun-byeol is the rich and haughty "princess" of Hera Palace. At the end of the series, Ro-na is a world-famous opera singer, while Eun-byeol, having lost her singing voice, works as a modest church conductor.
- How the Mighty Have Fallen: By the final two episodes, Seo-jin and Eun-byeol, formerly the most influential members of the Hera Palace, live in destitute, with Seo-jin being sent to prison and slowly dying of laryngeal cancer, while Eun-byeol is reduced to working as a hawker. After shattering her vocal chords and thus permanently ending her singing career, Eun-byeol manages to get by as a church choir conductor, but she no longer has any contact with her mother, who dies alone, watching her from the distance.
- Inferiority Superiority Complex: Seo-jin and Eun-byeol may act smug, but it masks a deep insecurity over how Yoon-hee and Ro-na got their talents without money or connections.
- Made of Iron: There are multiple examples of this throughout the series:
- Despite being blown up by a car bomb, Logan Lee ultimately survives and ends up barely scarred.
- A chandelier lands on Seo-jin, ending the episode on a cliffhanger as we wait to see if she survives, but in the subsequent episode we can see that she's more or less completely recovered.
- Hye-in is kept in a medically unnecessary coma for 17 years, but survives and is able to walk and speak.
- Never Suicide: the Hera Palace club frame Seol-ah's death as a suicide by moving her body and faking a suicide note, but she was actually murdered.
- Orphanage of Fear: Neither the orphanage Seol-ah grows up in nor the place Dan-tae sends Seok-kyung in season 3 are loving, nurturing environments for kids, let's just say that. Especially when the Seol-ah's orphanage manager begins selling the children to wealthy families for organ harvesting.
- Outliving One's Offspring:
- Su-ryeon outlived her daughter Anna Lee, real name Min Seol-ah. She was switched at birth with Joo Hye-in, who was raised by Su-ryeon, while Anna was sent to live in an orphanage.
- In the season 2 finale, Yoon-hee seemingly outlives her daughter, Ro-na, who is stabbed by Eun-byeol. However, the following season reveals that not only Eun-byeol didn't do it, but Ro-na is still alive.
- Outside-Context Problem: For a while, Logan Lee and his corporation, in regards to building the casino with J-King Holdings.
- Privilege Makes You Evil: True throughout the series for most of the Hera Palace club members and their children, especially in season 1. Their greed drives them to do terrible things like profit from Seol-ah's death, bribe and blackmail politicians in order to manipulate land value, and steal from one another given half an opportunity.
- Privileged Rival:
- Seo-jin with Yoon-hee
- Jenny and eventually Eun-byeol with Ro-na in season 1; Eun-byeol thereafter.
- Red Herring: Dan-tae and Seo-jin seem like the most obvious culprits responsible for Seol-ah's murder, and Su-ryeon spends most of her time and resources pursuing them. However, it turns out to be Yoon-hee, who didn't even know/remember she did it at first, even helping Su-ryeon on her quest to find the killer.
- The Rich Want to Be Richer: Despite being members of the 1%, they continue to scheme for more money, like the time they tampered with the market to generate greater returns for their investments in Cheonsu District.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: The all-but-stated life motto of the Hera Palace. Yoon-hee and Ro-na's initial problem is their lack of money and being forced to play on an uneven field compared to the other families.
- Stage Mom: Seo-jin forces Eun-byeol through a grueling routine of singing practice in order for her to beat Ro-na and continue the family legacy; the pressure she places on Eun-byeol ends up taking a huge toll on her mental health and their relationship. This is intensified by the fact that Seo-jin and Yoon-hee are childhood archrivals, and Seo-jin is plagued by the fact that she never was able to truly beat Yoon-hee.
- Teens Are Monsters: ALL of the Hera Palace kids. Even the Token Good Teammate Ro-na isn't above methods to screw the rest of the kids over, given their bullying of her.
- The Topic of Cancer:
- Seol-ah had only been adopted into Logan Lee's family to provide him with bone marrow, in order to treat his bone marrow cancer. He makes a full recovery, but at some point during the three year time skip in the show's finale, the cancer returns; too grief-stricken about Su-ryeon, Logan forgoes treatment this time around and succumbs to the condition.
- We see in the time skip that Seo-jin has been receiving treatment for laryngeal cancer while serving time in prison.
- Even dogs aren't exempt. In season 1, Seol-ah takes her dog to the vet and discovers it has a cancerous tumour that she cannot afford treatment for. After she dies, Ro-na ends up taking the dog in, not knowing that it is sick; it dies shortly thereafter.
- Together in Death: The finale reveals that Seo-jin didn't actually push Su-ryeon to the sea, but Su-ryeon died anyway because she had planned a Thanatos Gambit to bring Seo-jin to justice. Upon discovering her body, Logan Lee was so crushed that he refused the treatments to his cancer, and eventually died some years later, joining Su-ryeon in the afterlife.
- The Un-Favorite: A few of the characters probably fantasize about being only children:
- Seok-kyung feels overlooked as a step daughter, compared to Su-ryeon's "real" daughter Hye-in. This turns out to be the opposite of the truth; we find out Seok-kyung is actually Su-ryeon's bio daughter, while Hye-in is technically her step daughter, having been baby swapped with Seola, Seokgyeong's twin.
- Eun-byeol resents the attention Ro-na gets from Yoon-cheol, especially as she is "just" his step daughter although it turns out he's the biological father of both.
- Even the adults aren't exempt - Seo-jin and her half-sister Seo-young were constantly compared to one another as children, and Seo-jin definitely senses that she is not her stepmother's favorite.
- Unlimited Wardrobe: The entire ensemble, which is expected given that they live in the most exclusive residence in all of South Korea.
- Villainous Breakdown: During her trial in the penultimate episode, Seo-jin is unnaturally calm whenever she is questioned about her crimes, only to completely lose her shit when Eun-byeol slits her throat in shame of her mother's shady dealings. While she survives, the wound shatters her vocal chords and permanently ends her singing career, ensuring that Seo-jin's legacy of grooming her into a star has come to an end.
- White-Collar Crime: Rife among the Hera Palace club members, particularly Kyu-jin, Dan-tae and Seo-jin.
