Netflix's 16-Episode Fantasy Romance Is Quietly One of the Best Shows on Streaming

Published Sep 13, 2026, 6:45 AM EDT

Kelcie Mattson is a Senior Features author at Collider. Based in the Midwest, she also contributes Lists, reviews, and television recaps. A lifelong fan of niche sci-fi, epic fantasy, Gothic horror, elaborate action, and witty detective fiction, becoming a pop culture devotee was inevitable once the Disney Renaissance, Turner Classic Movies, BBC period dramas, and her local library piqued her imagination.

Rarely seen without a book in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other, Kelcie explores media history (especially older, foreign, and independent films) as much as possible. In her spare time, she enjoys video games, amateur photography, geeking out over music, and attending fan conventions with her Trekkie family.

The K-Drama market has long relied on a combination of formula and versatility. While exceptions always exist, by and large, as long as a new series delivers time-honored tropes through a skillfully fresh concept, audiences will turn the show into appointment viewing. 2023's My Demon might not count as new by airdate standards, but the smash-hit genre mash-up (fantasy rom-com with a mystery-thriller edge) fits the bill and then some.

Writer Choi Ah-i, one of the minds behind the sensationally clever Mr. Queen, combines numerous top-tier tropes into a nearly pitch-perfect package: a marriage of convenience, a fated love story between a supernatural entity and a human (with a side of reincarnation), expertly timed banter, bucket-loads of formative trauma, sneakily potent themes, and a conventionally attractive couple gazing into each other's eyes as the rousing music swells. This irresistible binge-watch will make you splutter with laughter, kick your heels in delight, and maybe shed a subtle tear or two.

What Is 'My Demon' About?

Jeong Gu-won (Song Kang), an immortal demon, offers humans their greatest wish in exchange for collecting their souls 10 years later. Gu-won suspects he was born human, but aside from some recurring dreams, he can't recall any memories. It's puzzling, but not a huge concern when he spends his days and nights slinking around in black leather and rocking a disdainful smirk. Inconveniently for his hellish business, however, an accident robs him of his fancy powers — unless his hand is touching a specific human woman.

Meet Do Do-hee (Kim You-jung), the heir apparent to a massive family-owned corporation. The merciless chaebol entrepreneur wields razor-sharp intelligence and cut-throat confidence from the top of her perfect hair down to her clacking high heels. Only Do-hee's adoptive mother, Joo Cheon-sook (Kim Hae-sook), has witnessed Do-hee's heart-of-gold vulnerabilities, all of which stem from her birth parents' deaths. Do-hee refuses to let anyone new into her life, because the chance of losing more people she loves isn't worth the risk. Cheon-sook's will forces Do-hee's hand, stipulating that she can only stay on as CEO if she marries within one year.

To make matters worse, Do-hee's adoptive siblings aren't exactly pleased about their mother's favoritism for the sister they despise; their jealousy kicks off a succession power struggle that includes mysteries, manipulations, and multiple assassination attempts. Since Gu-won, now the person desperate enough to make a bargain, depends upon his powers, and Do-hee simultaneously wants to claim her inheritance and needs someone to protect her life, they agree to a mutually beneficial — and mutually disdainful — contract marriage. Enemies-to-lovers sparks fly, and they’re a glorious inferno.

Watching My Demon is a little like opening a bottle of champagne: its whimsical and zany tone pops forth like sparkling bubbles. To stretch the metaphor further, the show is pleasantly intoxicating thanks to a wealth of charming characters with believable inner lives, a compelling network of relationships, pacing that moves at an engaging clip but doesn't sacrifice character development or intimate emotional interplay, and satisfactorily tight plotting. My Demon largely rejects common narrative shortcuts in favor of nimbly sliding past viewers' expectations, yet always knows when to enthusiastically and unashamedly commit to the characteristic K-Drama spectacle. Nowhere else will you see two leads fighting villains by dancing a magical tango.

As for that main couple, Gu-won and Do-hee's courtship is so electrifying that it almost circles back around to distressing. Their bristling rapport snaps between whiplash-inducing bickering and head-over-heels sensitivity, even after their earlier hostility has mostly faded into smitten devotion. Since both actors could have chemistry with a slab of motionless plastic, it's My Demon's sneakily deft characterization that provides the performers a runway to brandish their exceptional skill. Gu-won isn't the brooding bad boy archetype but a mischievous tempter, only for Song to temper that irreverent swagger with startled complexity once he starts rediscovering his lost compassion. Every Kim performance radiates the sense that she's left everything on the table, no stone unturned; here, she's sensational at depicting the legitimate power of Do-hee's infamous ice princess persona as well as how it shields her inescapable, terrified loneliness. Immortal or mortal, devil or human, the duo are equally wounded and equally made for each other.

Ultimately, My Demon does dance around its themes about the cost of human connection — the inherent need for it, the courage love requires, unhealthy but completely normal responses to grief, being another person's personal heaven and their hell — instead of wrestling with the ethical complications to their fullest extent. Although some later-stage choices lean repetitive and lackluster, those emotional beats only fizzle out because My Demon's opening salvo blazes so high. Choi Ah-i knew their goal from the start and achieved it by creating an earnest, sparkling, enchanting rom-com that's both warmly familiar and wildly inventive.