The WonderFOOLS (원더풀스) Season 1 Review

1999. Eun Chae-ni is an ordinary young woman living in a poor country in the aftermath of the financial crisis. A new millennium is just around the corner, but she's not even sure she'll live to see it: her weak heart could give out at any moment. She has absolutely no money for the travels she dreams about, and her strict grandmother refuses to let her leave the kitchen of their little snack shop. What a cheerful backdrop for saying goodbye to the 20th century!

But then she comes up with an idea for one last big adventure. The girl devises a small scam that drags her hapless neighbors into the scheme—but everything goes COMPLETELY off the rails. After an absurd accident, the heroes discover astonishing abilities within themselves and accidentally find themselves standing in the way of mysterious dark forces somehow connected to smiling cultists who are far too confident in predicting the imminent end of the world.

Well, if you enjoyed the way The Umbrella Academy and Stranger Things began, and you have fond memories of the good old X-Men, then The WonderFOOLS will definitely be your kind of show. This Netflix miniseries has a unique tone: it somehow manages to be hilariously funny and chillingly serious at the same time. Even the darkly surreal opening credits, styled as a collage of magazine clippings from the 1990s, are worth the price of admission.

Yes, in terms of its overall story and plot, it's not just an homage to genre classics but a solid cocktail of the most familiar ingredients. There's a mysterious conspiracy, an egomaniacal villain (who, naturally, is a mad scientist), a superpower serum straight out of The Boys, and even a hero-versus-villain showdown between characters with similar abilities, just like in dozens of other movies about extraordinary people. There's no genre deconstruction or even much novelty.

But sometimes that's not what matters. The overall story may be familiar (if not outright predictable), but if the characters feel alive and entertaining, the situations are unexpected and spontaneous, and the overall tone is kind and humanistic, then formulaic storytelling stops being a flaw and becomes a forgivable quirk—and not even the most important one.

The writers did an excellent job with the characters: this absurdly ridiculous quartet of ordinary people is instantly endearing. There's a clever girl with nothing to her name but boundless energy; two not-so-bright men who are constantly bickering—one a clumsy, simple-minded oaf, the other a professional complainer about "mutant carp" who also happens to be a pathetic henpecked husband. Rounding out the group is a mysterious, handsome loner from a government agency who knows far more than he lets on. Together, they try to master the powers that appeared out of nowhere, uncover their secret, and, if possible, save their hometown. They're superheroes now, right? That means they have to use their new gifts wisely—because "with great power comes responsibility," just as Uncle Ben once told a kid from Brooklyn.

Part of the show's charm lies in its setting. The year is 1999—a time of hope, chaos, change, CD players, flip phones, bizarre hairstyles, and vibrant colors. The WonderFOOLS lovingly references the era's defining features: environmental concerns, police corruption, bureaucratic inefficiency, and the rise of quasi-religious movements, including an almost direct allusion to the Japanese terrorist organization Aum Shinrikyo. The series also briefly reflects on the ethics of human experimentation and reminds viewers of the Nietzschean roots of the superhero genre, where all people are supposedly created equal, yet some are still "more equal" than others (Untermenschen and all that). The parallels are unsettling, but they serve the atmosphere perfectly.

The story is spread across eight episodes, and at first it feels like criminally little. But by the finale, the creative vision and genre boundaries become clear, keeping the story comfortably self-contained while still leaving room for a continuation (which feels more like a convention than a necessity—after all, what Marvel movie doesn't have a post-credits scene?).

It's also worth highlighting the remarkably high production quality. Not just the digital visual effects—which are excellent—but the practical effects as well. In The WonderFOOLS, there's a scene where the heroes try to save two police officers injured in a car crash. At the climax of the tense sequence, one character telekinetically shoves an empty car, and you can clearly tell it's a real practical effect, using an air cannon and a mechanism capable of launching a ton of metal into the air. There are many moments like that. They could have simply rendered it with CGI created by exhausted CG artists, but they didn't.

You can't recreate an era without the right music, and The WonderFOOLS has plenty of it: a memorable main theme, numerous covers of popular songs from the period, and one of the key rescue scenes is even set to "Creep" by Radiohead (filmed in a continuous take, no less). It's almost like James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy, only more grounded, infused with Korean flavor, and lacking any talking trees.

Is this series worth its eight-plus hours? Absolutely. As a pure superhero story for hardcore comic-book fans, it may be a slight disappointment (there are no groundbreaking ideas here), but if you're looking for something funny, lively, and lighthearted—something in the spirit of classic '90s comedies where lovable characters stumble into ridiculous situations and desperately try to get out of them—then yes, this is an excellent watch that should appeal to almost anyone. It's worth seeing for Eun Chae-ni alone—her overwhelming charisma, zest for life, cunning, intelligence, and fearlessness send her likability straight into the stratosphere.

Rating: 7.6/10. 'Men of X' meets Y2K—a densely packed and wildly entertaining blend of just about everything for those tired of sterile American fast food and ready to try a hearty superhero bowl of jajangmyeon instead. Predictable, but immensely fun and full of heart. Highly recommended.