JENTRY CHAU VS. THE UNDERWORLD Recap: Girl With a Pearl

No one’s telling the whole truth all the time. In Jentry Chau vs. The Underworld Season 1 Episode 3, “Girl with a Pearl,” Jentry (Ali Wong) starts to piece together the history that has led to her present situation. With a little outside (and magical) help, she learns her parents’ true fate. And burns down another building.

Heading back to school the day after setting off the fire alarm and having a face-to-face with the Guards of Diyu, Horse-Face (Stephen Fu) and Ox-Head (Kaiji Tang), Jentry’s the topic of everyone’s whispers. When a jerk jock bumps her deliberately, knocking her notebook out of her hands, Kit (Woosung) appears to pick it up for her. He admires her sketches. She gets awkward. Their moment is interrupted when Ed (Bowen Yang) arrives on a skateboard, masquerading as her cousin.

Kit and Jentry stand together, smiling awkwardly. Jentry Chau vs. the Underworld 103 — Credit: Courtesy of Netflix

Jentry Chau vs. the Underworld, “Girl with a Pearl”

That evening, Ed uses a tennis racket to swat tiny demons back through the portal. Gugu (Lori Tan Chinn) gives Jentry a pep talk on summoning up her powers to close the rift to Diyu. Jentry prepares but sighs and gives up. She tells them that she’s afraid to use her powers because something bad always happens. Gugu tries some tough talk but relents at Jentry’s expression. In a gentler tone, she reminds Jentry that her powers are a part of her soul. She needs to master them so they don’t cause more damage.

Back at the house, Jentry catches Ed using her phone. She has a plate of bao made with Gugu’s recipe, although Gugu’s not impressed with the execution. As she’s critiquing them, Jentry’s eyes glow blue as a ghost walks past her. She drops the bao and follows to see her young pregnant mother, Moonie (Lucy Liu), meet with her father, Peng (Jimmy O. Yang). They kiss gently and walk away into the woods.

Jentry chases after them. Overhead, a glowing dragon flies by. Jentry arrives in a clearing to see her mother knock the dragon to the ground. Peng runs to her with a bag, and Moonie fills it with dragon scales. Just as Jentry’s third eye opens, Gugu shows up and asks her what she saw.

Desperately Seeking a Shèn

Jentry tells her about the dragon, and Gugu looks serious. She tells both Jentry and Ed to get inside. The house ghosts toss Jentry’s room, looking for a shèn, a pearl that can cause visions. Gugu believes there’s one hidden in Jentry’s things. She reminds Jentry that her parents were telemarketers and didn’t fight dragons. The visions are misleading and might be a trap set by Mr. Cheng (Greg Chun). In the kitchen, Jentry hangs her pearl-studded jacket on the chair while she and Ed search for the shèn.

While fighting Ed for a jar of expired goo, she knocks her backpack over, and a shell falls out. It opens in her hand, and the mollusk inside attaches a shèn to her palm. Immediately, she sees ghosts of her parents in the kitchen. Her father finds a vial inside a turtle figurine. Moonie insists they get to the park immediately, as Jentry’s future depends on what they do next.

Coming out of her vision, she looks at the turtle figurine on the counter. It opens exactly as it did for her father. Gugu floats in to see if they found the shèn. Jentry pulls a pearl off her jacket and sticks it in the shell. She shows it to Gugu. Gugu has Ed stomp on the shell to destroy the shèn.

After Gugu leaves, Jentry shows Ed that she still has the real shèn. She doesn’t believe the visions are false. Gugu’s hiding something, and Jentry plans to find out what it is in the morning.

A Little Time Apart

Jentry finds Gugu in her study with a box. Gugu can’t open it without telekinesis but won’t tell Jentry how to do it, either. Jentry proposes she takes the day to center herself so she can call up her powers to close the portal while Gugu gets the house ghosts to teach her telekinesis. Gugu’s not completely on board with the plan, but Jentry runs out, leaving Gugu behind.

Jentry and Ed head to the playground. While Ed tests out the slide, Jentry activates the shèn and sees her mother chasing her toddler self around the playground. Her father appears next to her, looking into the distance where a woman with a staff and suitcase stands staring at them. The woman approaches and tells Peng and Moonie they’d better not be wasting her time.

Moonie tells her they have the longevity elixir. Peng holds out the vial he found in the turtle. The woman takes it and drinks it. She turns youthful in appearance and hands Peng the suitcase. It’s full of cash. They promise the woman they won’t tell Flora (Gugu) to whom they sold the elixir, but the woman says she can’t take that chance. She attacks Ed with her bladed staff, but he’s wearing an undershirt of the dragon scales. They run off with the woman in pursuit.

A Parent Trap

Moonie and Peng split up. Peng leaps to the roof of a nearby building. Moonie runs to an alley and casts a spell that creates multiple copies of her and little Jentry. Once the woman runs past, the real Moonie and Jentry climb out of a dumpster and meet Peng at the train station that once stood where Mimi’s is now.

Still lost in her vision, Jentry crosses through traffic carelessly and into Mimi’s, where she sees her parents argue about taking one last job that could provide for Jentry’s future. Ed pulls the shèn out of her palm just as Michael AJ Beckles) asks if she’s okay. Stella’s (Cristina Milizia) there too and Jentry has a reaction to seeing them together. Just then, Kit walks in, and Jentry makes up a date with him. Kit plays along.

At home, the house ghosts try to teach Gugu telekinesis. It doesn’t go well, but she’s willing to keep trying.

After running around the corner from Mimi’s, Jentry apologizes to Kit for using him as a cover and tries to ditch him. He grabs her hand and asks her to be his tour guide around town. The shèn attaches to Jentry’s palm again, causing her third eye to open. Kit notices and tries to grab her hand again but gets burned on contact. In a trance, she walks away.

Contract

The shèn embeds itself deeper in Jentry’s palm. She sees her parents return to the train station/Mimi’s. Following them, she walks past the front-of-house and into the kitchen. Michael follows her into the kitchen, and when he reaches out to touch her, he sees the shèn migrate up her arm and into her third eye. Ed comes in, sees what’s happening, and tells Michael he’s going for help.

Jentry watches as Mr. Cheng rises from the ground and her parents sign a contract coin with him. She panics and tries to force him away from them, setting fire to the deep fryers in Mimi’s. Jentry rises into the air, sobbing and coughing. Michael grabs a fire extinguisher and tries to call her out of her trance. The smoke overwhelms him, and he passes out. The building begins to collapse around them. Gugu arrives with Ed. She orders him to get Michael to safety. As a ventilation pipe begins to fall on Jentry, Gugu rushes forward and uses her telekinesis to stop it.

In her vision, Mr. Cheng addresses Jentry directly. He sympathizes with her pain from being separated from her parents. He thought she should see her parents before he took her soul. In the kitchen, Gugu examines the shèn in Jentry’s third eye and uses her telekinesis to remove it. Jentry wakes up and tells Gugu that it was all a trap by Mr. Cheng. Then she passes out.

Another Way

Jentry wakes up in her own bed a day later. Michael’s been released from hospital, and Gugu’s happy to tell her she hasn’t missed any school. Jentry’s adamant that she doesn’t want to ever use her powers again. She begs Gugu to find another way to close the portal. Gugu promises they’ll figure it out.

In her study, Gugu opens the puzzle box from earlier. The contract coin Moonie and Peng signed is inside. She removes it and calls the woman from the playground. She offers a trade if the woman can help Jentry realize her potential.

Jentry Chau vs. the Underworld is streaming now on Netflix.

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Diana Keng

Diana lives in Vancouver, BC, Canada, where she invests her time and energy in teaching, writing, parenting, and indulging her love of all Trek and a myriad of other fandoms. She is a lifelong fan of smart sci-fi and fantasy media, an upstanding citizen of the United Federation of Planets, and a supporter of AFC Richmond 'til she dies. Her guilty pleasures include female-led procedurals, old-school sitcoms, and Bluey. She teaches, knits, and dreams big. You can also find her writing at The Televixen, Women at Warp, TV Fanatic, and TV Goodness.

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