Sisyphus: The Myth

Everything you need to know before you hit play.

Completed
🔥 Sci-Fi Must-Watch

Sisyphus: The Myth

시지프스: The Myth (Sijipeuseu) · 2021 · South Korea

WriterJeon Chan-ho · Lee Je-in

DirectorJin Hyeok · Kim Seung-ho

Episodes16 eps · ~70 min each

⏱️ Binge Time18h 40m

AiredFeb 17 – Apr 8, 2021

GenreSci-Fi · Action · Thriller

Content RatingNot Rated (TV)

Netflix
JTBC

Time Travel
Dystopian Future
Sci-Fi
Genius Lead
Time Loop

One box. Everything you need to decide.

Two people from different ends of time — and the villain who engineered both their fates.

Cho Seung Woo

Han Tae Sul

Lead

Park Shin Hye

Kang Seo Hae

Lead

Kim Byung-chul

Seo Won Ju / Sigma

Villain

Sung Dong Il

Park Hyeong Do

Supporting

Chae Jong Hyeop

Choi Jae Sun

Supporting

Tae In-ho

Eddie Kim

Supporting

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

EP 01

The Arrival

February 17, 2021 · JTBC

Kang Seo Hae materializes in the present, hunted from the moment she lands. Meanwhile, Han Tae Sul uses pure ingenuity to avert a mid-air catastrophe — and receives a USB drive from a dying co-pilot that cracks open the secret his brother Tae San took to the grave. The cold open sets the tempo immediately: this drama moves at a sprint and expects you to keep up.

EP 02

The Suitcase

February 17, 2021 · JTBC

Using the USB footage as a map, Tae Sul races to recover a fallen suitcase — and develops film prints that show images that should be impossible: his brother at a future event, and himself standing in a world that hasn’t happened yet. Seo Hae tries to reach him by phone while Control Bureau agents close in on her hiding spot. Both are cornered by the episode’s end.

EP 03

The Bureau

February 24, 2021 · JTBC

The mystery organization hunting Seo Hae gets a name — the Control Bureau — and a face: an investigator with a personal vendetta against her. Tae Sul’s kidnapping makes headlines, but the people searching for him have no idea who actually took him. Seo Hae negotiates a temporary alliance with Mr. Park to track Tae Sul down before anyone else does.

EP 04

Downloaded

February 24, 2021 · JTBC

Tae Sul witnesses a human being transported from the future to the present — and his understanding of everything he thought he knew collapses in real time. Seo Hae finally explains why people are risking their lives to come back to 2021, and why Tae Sul specifically is the target of both the Control Bureau and the shadow organization behind it. The episode ends with a car chase and drones closing in — and nowhere left to run.

EP 05

Scavenger

March 3, 2021 · JTBC

Tae Sul pushes Seo Hae away so he can search for Tae San alone — and she lets him, furious. The episode shifts into flashback territory, showing Seo Hae’s childhood in the devastated future: a young girl scavenging through ruins, protecting her father, learning how to survive in a world where most people have already given up. It reframes everything about who she is and why none of this is abstract to her.

EP 06

Erased

March 3, 2021 · JTBC

At a high-society gala, Tae Sul uncovers a secret technology transfer agreement between Quantum & Time and the enemy — then gets knocked out before he can act on it. Seo Hae spots Tae San and tries to follow him, only to be shot fleeing the party. She survives, barely. Tae Sul wakes in a hospital bed with no memory of the past month — someone has been carefully erasing him.

EP 07

The Moon Trick

March 10, 2021 · JTBC

A genius figures out he’s been manipulated the only way a genius would — by calculating the moon’s position. Tae Sul deduces that Kim Seo Jin has been drugging him, escapes the safe house, and makes contact with Seo Hae in a tool market. The episode peaks at a press conference where Eddie Kim announces Tae Sul’s removal as CEO while the chairman — the one person who could stop it — fails to appear.

EP 08

The Name Sigma

March 10, 2021 · JTBC

Facial recognition leads Tae Sul and Seo Hae to an apartment — and to a codename that reframes the entire conflict. Sigma. A reference to the myth of Sisyphus: endless, futile repetition. A flashback shows a teenage Seo Hae surviving the destroyed future, stealing antibiotics from a hospital, then sneaking into an abandoned amusement park for her own birthday. The episode ends with a revelation that makes the villain something far more personal than an enemy.

EP 09

The Diary

March 17, 2021 · JTBC

Sigma forces Tae Sul into an impossible choice between Seo Hae and the world — and she is captured. While held captive, Seo Hae relives the exact moment South Korea was obliterated in a nuclear flash, the trauma that defined everything she ever did. In a grave, she had earlier found a diary written by a past version of herself: pleading with her future self to save Tae Sul, whatever it costs.

EP 10

The Rescue

March 17, 2021 · JTBC

Tae Sul hijacks a hospital server with Jae Sun’s help and infiltrates the Control Bureau’s underground headquarters. He gets Seo Hae out before the gene-scrambling drug destroys her — but the antidote requires a time-trip, and one of them will have to go alone. Meanwhile, a revelation about Seo Hae’s father and his connection to the Control Bureau rewrites the timeline of who knew what, and when.

EP 11

Agnes

March 24, 2021 · JTBC

Kim Seo Jin reveals herself to be Agnes Kim — the future medic who holds the only antidote for Seo Hae — and warns that failure means being lost in the space-time continuum permanently. Tae Sul and Seo Hae travel through their own past timelines, reliving what they regret most. In a pivotal sacrifice, Tae Sul uses the last antidote on Seo Hae and condemns himself — until Tae San appears from nowhere and provides a second dose.

EP 12

The Painting

March 24, 2021 · JTBC

Seo Hae is finally reunited with her father — a moment of genuine warmth in the middle of everything falling apart. Tae Sul and Seo Hae trace clues from a painting in Sigma’s apartment to his old elementary school, where a fight with Control Bureau agents erupts. A flashback to the destroyed future reveals that Tae Sul’s former bodyguard survived the apocalypse — and adds a new layer of mystery to who was really watching over whom.

EP 13

Origin

March 31, 2021 · JTBC

Sigma is confirmed as Seo Won Ju — Tae Sul’s childhood classmate. The flashbacks are brutal and precise: a boy abused by his father, bullied without mercy, who learned a dangerous chemistry trick from young Tae Sul and used it to kill his abuser. The adult Seo Won Ju is not a mastermind in a tower — he’s a bitter, struggling painter consumed by jealousy, who manipulated governments into preparing for a war only he wanted. The episode ends with a severed hand delivered to Seo Hae in a package.

EP 14

Ashes

March 31, 2021 · JTBC

Seo Hae shoots Sigma at point-blank range — and he survives, having anticipated even this. Tae Sul suffers a Time Paradox after touching a canister of his own ashes retrieved from a future grave, confirming that in at least one timeline, he is already dead. The scale of the crisis snaps into focus: war is one day away, and the people who were supposed to stop it have quietly left the country.

EP 15

The Bunker

April 7, 2021 · JTBC

Tae Sul locks Seo Hae inside the bunker he built for her family, then walks alone into the Quantum & Time building to face Sigma. Sigma uses Jae Sun as leverage — threatening to bring his family back to Korea — to force Tae Sul’s hand. In the future flashback, Seo Hae and her father fight their way to the underground uploader. The episode ends on two devastating beats: Hyeon Gi kills Jae Sun, and Sigma reveals he manipulated every single step of their journey.

EP 16

The Loop Ends

April 8, 2021 · JTBC

Sigma is dead. Tae Sul secretly modifies the uploader so it can only be used once, and travels back with Seo Hae to a timeline where Jae Sun is still alive. Her father finds the young Seo Won Ju cowering in a park and offers him his jacket — a single act of kindness aimed at breaking the cycle that made a monster. It almost works. Then Eddie Kim arrives, demands Tae Sul complete the uploader code, and shoots Seo Hae. Tae Sul makes the only choice left to him.

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

Sigma dies — but the threat doesn’t end there. After Seo Hae kills Seo Won Ju with a sniper rifle, she and Tae Sul descend to the basement of Quantum & Time, where the uploader is located. This is the moment the entire drama has been building toward — not a battle, not a chase, but a choice made in a quiet room by a man who understands the mechanics of what he built better than anyone alive. Tae Sul secretly tweaks the uploader’s code to allow only a single use, then travels back with Seo Hae to a point several hours before Sigma’s final attack.

The kindness that might have changed everything. They arrive in a timeline where Jae Sun is still alive — giving Seo Hae a moment of relief so profound it almost feels like the ending. But the drama has one more thread to pull. Following Tae Sul’s instructions, Seo Hae’s father finds the young Seo Won Ju alone in a park — frightened, beaten, already on the edge of becoming the thing that destroyed the world — and simply gives him his jacket. No grand intervention. No speech. Just warmth extended to someone who had never received any. It is both the most quietly devastating and most hopeful gesture in the drama.

Eddie Kim — the manipulation behind the manipulation. The gesture is not enough. Eddie Kim, who had been in Sigma’s pocket far longer than anyone realized, arrives armed and demands Tae Sul complete the uploader code or watch Seo Hae die. This final beat is the drama’s sharpest argument: the problem was never only one villain. The uploader exists because people like Eddie Kim were always willing to use it. Sigma built the weapon; greed and ambition supplied the hands.

The only door left. Tae Sul takes his own life. In doing so, he permanently prevents the uploader from ever being built — the cause of the future war ceases to exist at its root. The missiles targeting Seoul vanish mid-flight. The nuclear power station does not explode. The world is saved by a man removing himself from it. It is the most literal possible interpretation of the Sisyphus myth: the boulder doesn’t reach the top this time because the man chose to stop pushing.

A goodbye that is also a beginning. Before pulling the trigger, Tae Sul pleads with a grieving Seo Hae to find him again someday. The implication is precise: in the new, peaceful timeline that now exists — one without the uploader, without the war, without any of this — there is still a Han Tae Sul. He just doesn’t know her yet. Whether she finds him is left unanswered, which is exactly right. The loop ends not with a resolution but with a door left open — and Seo Hae, who survived the end of the world, is absolutely the kind of person who walks through it.