Racket Boys

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Racket Boys

라켓소년단 (Raketsonyeondan) · 2021 · South Korea

WriterJung Bo Hoon

DirectorJo Young Kwang

Episodes16 eps · ~70–80 min each

⏱️ Binge Time21h 20m

AiredMay 31 – Aug 9, 2021

GenreSports · Comedy · Drama

Content RatingTV-14

Netflix
SBS

Badminton
Underdog
Coming-of-Age
Rural
Family

One box. Everything you need to decide.

Five boys, two coaches, and a village full of people who believe in them before they believe in themselves.

Tang Jun Sang

Yoon Hae Kang

Lead

Son Sang-yeon

Bang Yoon Dam

Lead

Kim Kang-hoon

Lee Yong Tae

Lead

Choi Hyun-wook

Na Woo Chan

Lead

Lee Jae-in

Han Se Yoon

Lead

Lee Ji-won

Lee Han Sol

Lead

Kim Sang-kyung

Yoon Hyun Jong

Supporting

Oh Na-ra

Ra Young Ja

Supporting

Ahn Se-bin

Yoon Hae In

Supporting

Cha Mi-kyeong

Grandma Oh Mae

Supporting

Woo Hyeon

Hong Yi Jang

Supporting

Jeong Min-sung

Kim Tae Ho

Supporting

Spoiler-light recaps — enough to remember where you left off, nothing that ruins the ride.

EP 01

End of the Road

May 31, 2021 · SBS

Yoon Hyun Jong moves his family from Seoul to Ttangkkeut village in rural Haenam, dragging along his baseball-loving son Hae Kang who wants nothing to do with any of it. The team he’s been hired to coach has exactly three members. Hae Kang joins only to make the numbers work — and immediately makes enemies. The final minutes, with the whole Yoon family jammed into a tiny countryside house together, set the tone: chaotic, warm, quietly funny.

EP 02

One Team

June 1, 2021 · SBS

The new school term begins and the team’s fragile number is immediately tested when they discover Jae Seok left for Seoul without a word. Coach Bae — the gruff legend known as the White Wolf — appears to set down a principle the drama will keep returning to: you either stand together or you fall separately. The Spring competition pits Hae Kang against his former teammate in a match that ends on a cliffhanger and establishes that this show takes its badminton seriously.

EP 03

His Mother’s Son

June 7, 2021 · SBS

Hae Kang beats Jae Seok, but the real episode is about Ra Young Ja — a former Olympic-level player who sacrificed her career for her pregnancy and has never quite let her son forget it. The backstory, delivered through a quiet conversation rather than a flashback montage, is the drama’s most emotionally honest scene so far. Meanwhile, Se Yoon competes in New Zealand and wins after watching a video Hae Kang quietly recorded for her — the show plants its romantic thread with enough subtlety that it doesn’t overwhelm the team story.

EP 04

Worth the Rush

June 8, 2021 · SBS

Budget cuts threaten the tournament until Coach Bae secretly advances his own salary — a moment the drama underplays perfectly. The subplot about In Sol’s councilman father trying to buy his son off the team is disposed of quickly and efficiently. The episode’s standout scene is completely unrelated to badminton: when Hae In suffers an asthma seizure, the boys carry her to hospital on foot without hesitating. It’s the first real moment the Racket Boys function as something other than reluctant teammates.

EP 05

Doubles

June 14, 2021 · SBS

Training doubles requires Yoon Dam and Hae Kang to stop competing and start trusting each other — easier said than done for two boys who arrived in Haenam as natural rivals. The episode’s best sequence is their first genuine sync on court, a moment the direction earns by taking its time. Se Yoon’s Jakarta match against Indonesia’s Ivana Putri — played in front of a hostile crowd — is the drama’s most internationally ambitious sequence and the moment her arc stops being a subplot.

EP 06

Gwangju Road Trip

June 15, 2021 · SBS

Four of the boys escape training and sneak to Gwangju — then immediately run out of money because Yong Tae loses the envelope. The construction job that follows nearly ends in disaster when a wrench drops from scaffolding above them. It’s a comedy episode that turns serious without becoming preachy: the boys return to Haenam quieter and more aware of how much they’re actually risking for each other. Park Hae Soo’s single-episode cameo as Hyun Jong’s old friend Jae Joon adds emotional texture without overstaying its welcome.

EP 07

The Rival Coach

June 21, 2021 · SBS

Ra Young Ja squares off against Lee Yu Ri of Seoul Jeil Girls’ Middle School, a rival whose recruiting tactics and institutional clout expose exactly how outgunned Haenam is in the wider badminton ecosystem. The episode shifts the drama’s lens to the adults — and Oh Na-ra carries it. The boys’ storyline takes a breather, which creates some pacing unevenness, but the community dinner sequences that bookend the episode remind you why the show’s rural setting is one of its strongest assets.

EP 08

Lines in the Sand

June 22, 2021 · SBS

The rivalry between the two coaches intensifies as regional association politics start shaping who gets what resources and recognition. Se Yoon faces quiet pressure to transfer to Seoul — a more prestigious program, a faster track, a better future on paper. Her decision to stay is handled without speeches: she simply keeps showing up to training. The episode is the drama’s weakest in terms of plot momentum, but it deepens the girls’ side of the story in ways the finale will need.

EP 09

Out of Their Bubble

June 28, 2021 · SBS

The team travels to Busan for competition, and the city works on them like cold water. Players with more funding, better equipment, and institutional support show the boys exactly what they’re up against. Hae Kang and Se Yoon’s unspoken feelings become visible to everyone on the team before they’re visible to each other — the drama handles this with a light touch that the show earns because it hasn’t forced it. The Busan scenes carry genuine tension: for the first time, the outside world feels like a real obstacle.

EP 10

The Cost of Dreams

June 29, 2021 · SBS

Former champion Coach Cheon passes through and offers a glimpse of what elite junior success actually looks like — and what it costs. Woo Chan’s military-officer father confronts him about badminton as a career, and the scene is handled with enough emotional honesty that it avoids being the generic disapproving-parent subplot. The team’s fatigue begins to show, physically and emotionally, in ways the drama refuses to paper over with easy motivational speeches.

EP 11

What We’re Carrying

July 5, 2021 · SBS

The drama slows down to examine what each player is actually holding onto — and what they’ve been using badminton to avoid dealing with. Yong Tae’s child-like innocence, contrasted with the increasingly adult pressures on everyone around him, is used here to quietly devastating effect. Kim Sang-kyung’s scenes as Hyun Jong — reflecting on his own failed career and resolving to be better — are the episode’s emotional core. This is the drama at its most interior, and it earns the space it takes.

EP 12

Someone to Look Up To

July 6, 2021 · SBS

Kang Tae Seon — Haenam Seo’s most celebrated alumni — returns to the village. His arrival should feel like a convenient inspirational cameo, but the drama earns it by letting the boys react to him as teenagers would: with awe, pressure, and something that starts looking like ambition. The national competition bracket is revealed. The episode ends with the boys understanding for the first time that they’re playing for something larger than themselves.

EP 13

Before the Storm

July 12, 2021 · SBS

The national competition is close enough to feel real, and every character’s arc enters its final phase simultaneously. Ra Young Ja fights a hostile selection committee for her girls’ team with the kind of fury that makes you wish the show had given her this storyline five episodes earlier. The boys’ preparation montage — intercutting with the girls’, with the coaches’, with the village — is the drama’s best-directed sequence. Everyone is carrying something into this tournament.

EP 14

The Village Behind Them

July 13, 2021 · SBS

The national competition opens and the Racket Boys face opponents who are better resourced and better trained on paper. The drama cuts between the court and the village with the kind of cross-cutting that only works when the community feels real — and here, after fourteen episodes, it does. The “End of the Earth Avengers” comedy cameo that runs through the episode is the show at its silliest, which is also the show at its most itself. Ttangkkeut is cheering. So is the audience.

EP 15

The Legend Appears

July 19, 2021 · SBS

Real-life badminton legend Lee Yong Dae appears in a cameo that the show absolutely earns — not as a stunt but as a moment of validation that lands because the boys have been working toward it for fifteen episodes. The semifinal matches push every player to their personal limits. Hae Kang’s match is the drama’s most technically committed sports sequence. The episode closes with all final battles set and every character at their most vulnerable. The finale has something to land.

EP 16

For Ttangkkeut

August 9, 2021 · SBS

The finale belongs to the national competition — both boys’ and girls’ teams. Every arc gets its resolution: Se Yoon faces her idol Im Seo Hyun in a career-defining match; Woo Chan’s father watches his son compete and finally understands; Hyun Jong sees the team he built reach the stage he himself never reached. The competition result is kept appropriately ambiguous — the drama understands that winning isn’t the point. The final image is the five boys and their coaches standing in the middle of the court with the entire village behind them, having put Ttangkkeut on the national map. It sticks.

Full spoilers ahead — everything that happens in the finale and what it all means.

Se Yoon vs. Im Seo Hyun. The girls’ final is the emotional centrepiece of the episode. Han Se Yoon — the girl who stayed in Haenam when every conventional path pointed toward Seoul — faces Im Seo Hyun, the national team player she has idolised for years. The match is not about winning. It’s about Se Yoon proving to herself that she belongs on the same court. Ra Young Ja watches from the sideline with a stillness that says everything: she fought the association, she kept this girl, and this moment is what that fight was for. The result is left deliberately open. What matters is the shot Se Yoon plays in the final rally — technically perfect, completely her own.

The Boys on the Big Stage. The Racket Boys — Hae Kang, Yoon Dam, Woo Chan, Yong Tae, and In Sol — reach the national competition final together. The moment is framed as an ensemble achievement, not a hero moment: each boy’s individual storyline is resolved not through individual victories but through what they collectively became. Woo Chan’s father appears in the stands. He doesn’t say anything. He stays until the end. That’s the scene. Hae Kang plays the best badminton of his life not because he finally accepted the sport, but because he stopped playing for his mother or his father — he started playing for the four people standing next to him on the court. Racket Boys is a drama about underdogs, but its real subject is what it feels like to be known.

What the Finale Gets Right. The drama resists giving Ttangkkeut a clean national championship. The result — whatever it is — is less important than the final image: coaches, players, parents, villagers, and the loudest cheerleaders in rural Korea crowded into a single frame. Hyun Jong doesn’t need to have won anything. He showed up every day to a team nobody believed in and turned it into something real. Ra Young Ja spent a career carrying the weight of an Olympic sacrifice and finally put it down. The Racket Boys drove hours from the countryside and played on the biggest court of their lives. That’s enough. That’s exactly enough.