W Episode 9 Recap

The aftermath of Oh Yeon-joo's comic edit incorporating Kang Cheol's dream wasn't too big. The culprit disappeared from the real world and only managed to kill 3 victims during his time here. Oh Seong-moo returns from his vacation early to visit his unconscious daughter. Yeon-joo fainted due to exhaustion from her travels between the two worlds. Seong-moo remembers seeing in the latest comic that Kang Cheol gave Yeon-joo a flash drive to give him. On the flash drive, Kang Cheol requests for Seong-moo to stop running away and to give W a proper ending for Yeon-joo's sake. Seong-moo creates an official culprit that can be caught by Kang Cheol in the comics based off of files he left him on the flash drive.

Now and then Yeon-joo would get transported back into W and get glimpses of how Kang Cheol's doing. He's back to his normal self that readers loved and adored. Yeon-joo would have encounters with him, but he doesn't recognize her.

Now that Kang Cheol is back to being fully committed to catching the culprit that killed his family, new evidence emerges. A black box from a bakery truck that was overlooked in the past captured the man that was leaving the hotel rooftop immediately after the stabbing incident. Kang Cheol sees the culprits face and confirms that's the man that he recalls stabbing him on the rooftop that night. Everyone kept telling him he was hallucinating so he didn't think too much of it. The culprits face turns out to be Oh Seong-moo. The background story of the culprit's character is that he was Kang Cheol's dad's former teammate and had a victim complex towards him. The police locate all the evidence at the culprits home and he admits to killing Kang Cheol's family. All the pieces of the puzzle fit perfectly. Assemblyman Han Cheol-ho who handled Kang Cheol's case in the past as a prosecutor was filled with rage. He's on the verge of his career being destroyed because he'll be known as the person that imprisoned an innocent boy after his family was murdered. He hires some men to kill the culprit and stage it as a suicide before he could go on trial. Luckily, the men get arrested and tell police that Cheol-ho hired them to do it. The comic W finishes with Kang Cheol and Secretary Yoon ending up happily together just as readers wanted.

Of course, things are never what they seem to be. Yeon-joo is suddenly warped back into the hospital in W and a mass shooting occurs at the broadcasting station Kang Cheol owns. The culprit is somehow still alive as he walks up to one of the cameras and directly calls out Kang Cheol saying they'll be seeing a lot more of each other before disappearing. Kang Cheol and Seo Do-yoon weren't in the studio at the time but saw everything from the back operating room. They run out to help all the injured employees as paramedics and police start arriving. The news reported that the CEO Kang Cheol was shot and Yeon-joo breaks down not knowing if he's alive.