“Reverse 4 You” is an interesting take on “star-crossed lovers” who have to overcome their fate and find a way to be together, not just with each other, but with their loved ones. I believe that the show would have benefitted from telling stories of Jattawa (Mae Methakarn Anektanasuwan), Vivi (Manao Natnicha Polsombat) and Four’s (Christine Gulasatree Michalsky) past and/or alternative lives to drive the story and add tension, instead of following just one timeline, because it left the ending feeling too rushed and the pay off was lacking because some crucial things were not explained or dealt with. With enough care and thought, this could have been a very compelling series, but it because boring very quickly due to the writers focusing on all the wrong aspects of it.

Four and Jattawa are soulmates and things seem to be on the up and up for them, until Jattawa, whose power is to stop time, suddenly has an ominous vision of Vivi dying. Vivi, who has the gift of seeing the future can no longer see her future past her 16th birthday and this becomes worrisome to Jattawa because of the vision she saw. The two attempt to change the series of events that could lead to Vivi’s death and when it seems like they have succeeded, someone murders Vivi while she is home alone on a night she is supposed to be at a fan meet. Vivi’s murder goes unsolved due to some corruption, and this fuels Jattawa to become a prosecutor so that she does not allow any more families to suffer what she went through.

Years after Vivi’s death, Jattawa is still not over her death and on the anniversary of her death, she meets her long lost father at Vivi’s gravesite and finds out that her father was not only alive, but had abandoned them in the hopes that their fate might change, as he had experienced and remembered all the timelines in which Vivi had died and despite his powers to reset time (on a grander scale that Jattawa), it seemed that Vivi was bound to die, just as Jattawa was bound to meet Four. Vivi’s death was always caused or linked to Four, and this occurred in every timeline. Jattawa’s father only had one last life and was willing to reset time to try to save Vivi, however, he advised both Jattawa and Fourth that this could mean that they would never cross paths. Jattawa is able to concoct a better version of the timeline in which Four and Vivi both live, and their father sacrifices himself for the sake of his daughters.

Stories with magical realism ask of the audience to suspend their disbelief and not question too much of the logic in the story, however, it would have been nice to at least get an explanation of where the powers came from, why Jattawa’s suddenly stopped? Was it grief? And why their father’s powers did not stop with Vivi’s death but his own? This bit of exposition would have taken less than 5 minutes to explain. The series also wastes a lot of time on Four’s family, which time could have been used to get into the history behind Jattawa’s family and how they got their powers. The love story between Jattawa and Four is actually rushed when it could have benefited from being slow burn if the story focused on world building instead of what they opted to do. While the show was indeed watchable, it left a lot to be desired and was not captivating enough to rewatch to fill in the gaps. They could have done more with the amazing cast, but the writing fell short.

Rating- 3.5 out of 5

Streaming on- Netflix