The Scarecrow · Season 1 · Episode 1 · 20 April 2026
S1E1 Tae-ju's Comeback to Gangseong
THE MOMENT Tae-joo's first confrontation with Si-young reveals their shared history carries as much danger as any serial killer in the town.
The premiere establishes the atmosphere of institutional rot before the first murder scene: a detective demoted to his provincial hometown, a cold case that local powers want buried, and a prosecutorial adversary with a shared past. The show withholds easy genre comfort from the first episode.
Full episode analysis below. Spoiler-light verdict above.
Updated
The Scarecrow Season 1 Episode 1 'Tae-ju's Comeback to Gangseong' aired April 20, 2026 on ENA as the series premiere. The show went on to become ENA's highest-rated Monday-Tuesday drama of all time, climbing from a 2.9% premiere to an 8.1% finale; MyDramaList audiences scored it 8.2. The premiere establishes the show's atmosphere before its first murder: a detective demoted back to a provincial hometown he left in disgrace, a cold case that local power structures want buried, and a prosecutorial adversary whose history with the detective runs back further than their professional rivalry. The show's formal strategy is to ground the horror in institutional failure rather than conventional crime drama mechanics - the precinct politics, the suppressed evidence, the hierarchy of who gets to decide what gets investigated. Park Hae-soo and Lee Hee-joon's first confrontation introduces the season's central engine: two men whose shared history is as dangerous as any serial killer in the town.