Lovecraft Country: Everything you need to know about Ji-Ah

Here’s everything you need to know about Lovecraft Country’s Ji-Ah.

Warning! This story contains spoilers for Lovecraft Country episode 6.

HBO’s Lovecraft Country is full of complex, unique characters with their own strengths, weaknesses, and special abilities. And because of that, it’s worth breaking down and analyzing all of the show’s main characters to understand more about them.

Our last character profile was all about Ruby Baptiste. Ruby is the sister of Leti who endured her own triumphs and adventures when she was given a magic spell that could turn her into a white woman. You can read all about it in our character profile on Ruby. But this week, we went back in time to learn about Atticus’ ex Ji-Ah, and why he ended things.

Read on below to learn more about the character Jamie Chung plays in Lovecraft Country, Ji-Ah.

Ji-Ah Lovecraft Country character profile

Ji-Ah introduction and overview

Ji- Ah (Jamie Chung) is a nurse who treats wounded American soldiers and is the love interest of Atticus Freeman (Jonathan Majors) during the Korean War. Not only is Ji-Ah a nurse, but she is a kumiho, a nine-tailed fox spirit that can be summoned to dwell in the form of a beautiful woman to take revenge for the crimes of men. Ji-Ah is a dreamer who yearns for love, but something is holding her back. She has to bring men home and slay them in order to be fully human again, but her feelings changed when she met Atticus. Will she sacrifice her spirit for love?

Relationships

Ji-Ah was not born a kumiho. Ji-Ah’s stepfather abused her as a child and her mother, Soon-Hee (Cindy Chang), summoned the kumiho spirit to protect herself and take revenge. Soon-Hee is desperate to get her daughter back but feels ashamed of her role in not realizing what her late husband was doing to her. She feels Ji-Ah can never understand what her stepfather did was wrong because she has never felt love. In fact, she thinks she can’t feel anything because she’s a monster in her eyes. Ji-Ah expresses the only reason she feels like a monster is because her mother made her feel like one.

Ji-Ah and Young-Ja

Ji-Ah’s best friend, Young-Ja (Prisca Kim), works at the hospital with her helping soldiers who were hurt in the war. Young-Ja sees Ji-Ah for who she is and tells her that her fears shouldn’t control her because of her mother. Ji-Ah takes notice of Young-Ja’s relationship with men and believes the guys she goes out with are communists. Young-Ja confides in Ji-Ah telling her that she doesn’t believe that being different from others has to come with a death sentence.

Ji-Ah, Young-Ja, and a small group of nurses are taken to a military campground because one of them has been leaking information to the communists. When no one comes forward, a nurse is killed and Atticus gets called to kill another nurse if someone doesn’t confess the truth. Just when they are about to kill Ji-Ah, Young-Ja confesses to being a communist spy and is taken away by Atticus and his soldiers.

Ji-Ah and Atticus

After losing her best friend, Ji-Ah seeks Atticus as her last victim. Ji-Ah discovers they share similar interests with each other. They have a love for movies and books, especially The Count of Monte Cristo, and understand the struggle of having a controlling parent. Even though they both have done terrible things, they are not monsters (as her mother depicted her to be). We see a different side of Atticus: that he truly is a romantic and fell in love with Ji-Ah. They found comfort in each other to be themselves around each other and enjoy the time they had before Atticus leaves. But once Ji-Ah exposes her true form of a kumiho, Atticus is freaked out and decides to stay away from her. We see how he still dreams of Ji-Ah as the red woman fighting in the war in episode 1 and an enemy combatant in Ardham Lodge during episode 2.

Motives

In order to become human again, Ji-Ah has to take the souls of 100 men for her spirit to return to her body and the kumiho to return to the supernatural. We see how she doesn’t relish the killing, and the violence she enacts is the cost of being in this world. Her mother wants her to be a human again, but you start to see how unsure she is about everything. Ji-Ah has the inability to feel or experience love fully when it comes to all the men she has killed. But when Atticus comes to the hospital after being injured in the war, Ji-Ah plans to make Atticus her final victim for murdering her best friend. Ji-Ah admits to Atticus her real intentions for pursuing him; they confess to each other that they have done monstrous things to each other but they are not monsters. They began to share a love for fiction and started to fall in love with each other. Ji-Ah escapes into film like Atticus escapes into books, and escape is what they see in each other.

Strengths and weaknesses

Ji-Ah has a hard time understanding her stepfather’s actions and how that kind of “love” was wrong. She gets some idea of love from watching Judy Garland subtitled musicals at the local theater. Ji-Ah fell in love with Atticus through their shared love of storytelling, and for his immense generosity spirit. The qualities Ji-Ah sees in Atticus allow her to realize the potential she has within herself. She stops feeding altogether, delaying her transformation back into a human. She struggles with pleasing her intimidating mother to restore honor to their family by taking Atticus’ soul.

When Ji-Ah’s tails insert themselves into a man to consume his soul, she absorbs the victim’s memories. She remembers all of her victims’ memories including her stepfather. Ji-Ah has no memories of the girl she was before and fights with her mother about taking another soul because she doesn’t want to lose the person she has become. But when she tries to take Atticus’ soul, she sees into the future, something she has never done before…

What’s next?

Ji-Ah was able to see Atticus’ future which apparently ends in his death. She begs him not to go back home to the states because he could die. At the end of last week’s episode, Ji-Ah and her mother visit the shaman who is responsible for Ji-Ah’s transformation. Ji-Ah asks the shaman about her vision and how she can stop it from coming true. We saw in episode 5 that Atticus deciphered a cryptic message involving his death, and Ji-Ah told him that he finally saw what she was trying to tell him. Will Ji-Ah come to America to help him? We know that Ji-Ah has to only kill one other man in order to meet 100 souls and become human again, but she is unsure if she wants to be a kumiho anymore. Now, the question remains: Will Ji-Ah stay a kumiho or become human again before the season is over?

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