Episode Summary
Police officer Han Xu returns to duty to hunt the drug lord who previously injured him, only to learn that his wife and an undercover colleague have been brutally murdered. As he investigates, disturbing clues and his own strange behavior begin to suggest the horrifying possibility that he is the killer he's looking for.
Spoiler Alert
Hide Games: Episode 1 Recap
Episode 1 of Hide Games begins in Huaguang City, where a new, high-purity meth is causing chaos. We meet Han Xu, a cop who's just returned to the force. He's got a personal score to settle with a drug lord named Wang Mingcheng. A previous operation to catch him went south, leaving Han Xu seriously injured while Wang Mingcheng got away with the drug formula. Now, Han Xu is back and determined to bring him down.
The show immediately throws us into a brutal murder scene. In a dark room, a man named An Shaocong is viciously attacked with a hammer and then stabbed to death with a broken chair leg by a shadowy figure.
We then cut to Han Xu, who jolts awake from a nightmare. In his dream, a photo of his wife, Xiao Ran, morphed with the face of a female victim. He's clearly on edge and tries calling An Shaocong, but the calls go unanswered. Later, Han Xu leads a raid on a drug factory. It's a success in that they take down the crew, but it's a dead end for finding Wang Mingcheng.
Just then, his apprentice, Xiao Wu, rushes over looking tense. He tells Han Xu that Chief Zhou and a special task force need to see him, warning him to brace himself. At the station, Chief Zhou introduces the task force, sent from a higher-up. They tell Han Xu the bad news: the undercover cop, An Shaocong, has been murdered, and they think Wang Mingcheng did it as revenge.
Shocked, Han Xu asks to join the investigation. But the task force leader, Wang Jian, drops another bombshell: Han Xu's wife, Xiao Ran, was also killed. When they show him the crime scene photos, Han Xu has a bizarre reaction, as if he's reliving the murder in vivid detail. He gets permission to visit the crime scene, where he walks through the killer's exact motions, almost like he was there.
On the drive back, Xiao Wu, noticing how strange Han Xu is acting, drops a crazy piece of information: Han Xu himself was the one who called in the report about the murder, but there's no evidence to prove he was ever at the scene. Han Xu begs him to keep it a secret. Xiao Wu seems to agree, but the moment Han Xu is gone, he calls Wang Jian.
The episode ends with Han Xu getting back to his apartment. His eyes land on a hoodie on a chair and a pair of shoes caked with dried blood and mud. He completely panics and collapses. When he forces himself to put on the clothes and look in the mirror, the reflection staring back isn't his own—it's the man who killed An Shaocong.
