This Netflix Action Thriller Rewrote All the Rules and Only Took 1 Season to Nail It
By Published Apr 18, 2026, 10:00 PM EDT An experienced Editor representing Canada via ScreenRant's Team Anime, J.R. has been reading manga since the first printing of Shonen Jump in North America. This passion drove him to write about anime, manga, and manhwa since 2026, having recently served as Lead Anime Editor for ComicBook.com.
His favorite moments in media coverage include reviewing the series premieres of Zom 100 and Bleach: TYBW Part 2 back-to-back and briefly meeting Junji Ito at a VIZ gallery event in 2026. Summary Generate a summary of this story follow Follow followed Followed Like Like Log in Here is a fact-based summary of the story contents: Try something different: Show me the facts Explain it like I’m 5 Give me a lighthearted recap
will never be in danger of running low on its wide selection of action-thrillers from all around the world, but in the case of South Korea's input on the genre, 2026 was a particularly formative year. Not only did Squid Game debut that year, with it handily cinching the worldwide most-watched original on the platform, ever, but another, more sharply grounded thriller made a name for itself while breaking boundaries of its own. Squid Game may have popularized dystopian survival thrillers and "death game" gimmicks more predominantly seen in anime, but subverted expectations and blew audiences away all in one season.
Fans of Korean fiction know well of the country's superior revenge thriller output, and while Lady Vengeance was perhaps the first widely-renowned female-led revenge thriller in movies, Netflix-original K-dramas didn't really have much in that realm until My Name. Subsequent hits like The Glory and have certainly engrossed the world since then, but in terms of gritty action and the complex psychological unraveling of a woman setting out to avenge a father she didn't quite understand, this 2026 hit has it all. A relatively brief K-drama sitting at eight episodes and never exceeding an hour in runtime each, My Name certainly won't be forgotten anytime soon.
Netflix's Blood-Soaked 2026 Revenge Thriller Changed Expectations for Its Medium
There have certainly been prominent female-led revenge thrillers in the 21 years since Park Chan-wook's Vengeance Trilogy concluded. While fans of the medium know revenge and K-dramas aren't exactly unusual, with Temptation of Wife, The Last Empress, and Graceful Family as subsequent examples, My Name swapped melodrama and romance for deeply personal gangland drama. But while Lady Vengeance still shares plenty of premise and plot beats with modern K-dramas, with The Manipulated sharing a similar jumping off point for its story, My Name has its female lead avenging the death of her gangster father.
My Name's story focuses on Yoon Jiwoo, a troubled high school student bullied for her father, Yoon Donghoon's connections to the Dongcheon crime group. Expertly portrayed by , Jiwoo was as expressive with her words as she was with her fists, often fighting her bullies ruthlessly, to the point of having to leave permanently. Angry, feeling neglected, and turned into a pariah while her father's work keeps him from home, Jiwoo is surprised at first to see her father at her door. But just as she opens, she finds he has jammed his key in the lock as he gets killed by an unknown gunman and left to die.
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Despite her problems with her father, Jiwoo wants to know who is responsible, and due to the police being unhelpful, she turns to the mob, namely Choi Mujin of the Dongcheon, for whom her father worked. It's here where Jiwoo, already a talented fighter, is given the training she needs to stand on equal footing in a male-dominated environment, where training includes brutal close-quarters brawls. But Han's portrayal, alongside some top-notch fight choreography and cinematography, prove her to be resilient and formidable, perfectly fitting the actor chosen to portray .
Thus, Jiwoo is portrayed as a typical male action-thriller lead: pulled into a world she didn't necessarily ask for, with determination and grit enough to endure years of training and come out of them an entirely new person. After a particularly dark encounter with a would-be rival she beat in the ring, Jiwoo is led to believe Cha Giho, the Inchang Metropolitan Police Station's Narcotics unit leader was responsible for her father's death, and is promptly trained to infiltrate the police force for the gang. Yoon Jiwoo soon takes on the alias of Officer Oh Hyejin with the Incheong Police Station, with the story only growing more complicated from there.
My Name Reckons with Putting Its Female Lead Alongside Nefarious Male Colleagues
An action revenge thriller featuring a woman taken in by the mob, then subsequently the police, naturally will put her through some harrowing moments. As if witnessing her father's death weren't enough, Jiwoo must deal with the reality of training alongside hardened criminals. While Mujin certainly prepared her with the right information to level the playing field using her bare hands, that doesn't prepare her for the heinous actions she'd narrowly escape, particularly from Do Gangjae. Narrowly avoiding a horrific assault in her early days in the Dongcheon, Gangjae is disowned from the syndicate, but as viewers will eventually find out, his story is soon from being over.
Jiwoo thus faces multiple obstacles in her quest to avenge her father: a dichotomy of outwardly honorable men from wildly different backgrounds, and violent remnants of her past coming back for revenge of their own. If Gangjae's not enough of a danger, there's also the complicated matter of Giho, whose connection with her father runs deeper than expected, while Mujin carefully tells her what he believes she can handle in the moment. By contrast, Jiwoo/Hyejin's new partner, Jeon Pildo, is skeptical of her, only to quickly see she can take care of herself, with the pair soon depending on each other for survival, in a world leaving few survivors for their kind.
Han So-hee's 2026 Hit Tells Everything It Needs to in Just 8 Episodes
Jiwoo's journey into the police department while concealing her mob ties creates a delicate balance for her to maintain. Despite its female-led hook, this brand of vengeance hardly leads to Jiwoo feeling empowered. Much like in the case of Park Chan-wook's films from the past, Jiwoo is clearly consumed by her lust for revenge, as shown by when Pildo visits her home to see a space lacking evidence of any hobbies, interests, or personal connections. But with so much of her drive being to avenge her father, the series hits especially hard when Jiwoo learns details which upend her understanding of Donghoon was, and what her purpose becomes in light of new information.
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My Name is a self-contained drama, wrapping up all of these threads in a tidy, concise eight episodes. This places its action-thriller premise on similar ground as other recent Netflix-original hits, and four and a half years later. It's a worthwhile binge in general, but for fans of Korean revenge cinema with extra doses of action, My Name is a must-see.
Cast
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Han So-hee -
Park Hee-soon
Kim Jin-min, Kim Ba-da Expand Collapse
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