After the success of the 2017 series Strong Woman Do Bong-soon, it makes sense to try to recreate the same magic through a spin-off. Strong Girl Nam-soon has plenty of the same elements that made the original a success – the wacky humor, the love triangle with a cop and a CEO male leads, crimes to solve, and of course, the girl with superpowered strength. However, unlike the romcom approach of the original series, this spin-off is more of a family drama, as the titular strong girl gets lost in Mongolia at a young age – leading to the split of her parents, and the focus on that family dynamic. It still is able to balance the crime element too, with the family’s vigilantism. While the humor can sometimes feel forced, Strong Girl Nam-soon keeps what’s great with the original, but rewrites its plot points to have a more natural and understandable background.

The concept of a physically strong woman isn’t exactly new. An earlier drama, Weightlifting Fairy Bok-joo, already presented the concept a year before the Bong-soon series, albeit the female lead’s gains were obtained through physical training, not through inheritance. The two series has some similarities, as the main female leads feel insecure about their strength. Being physically strong, they don’t exactly fit the idea of a delicate woman, especially with Bong-soon, who struggles to control her power.

Strong Girl Nam-soon does this differently. In this spin-off, being physically strong isn’t something to be insecure about. In fact, it’s treated like a superpower. Geum-joo, the mother, doesn’t just use it to intimidate her underlings – she uses it whenever she moonlights as a vigilante, despite being a fairly big CEO. Nam-soon, while she is living in Mongolia, actually has fun with it, using the power to integrate with her rural community, and of course, help out her adoptive parents in the farm. This change makes the show feel refreshing, and it’s a good fit in a world where more and more women are encouraged to use their strength rather than conform to one idea of womanhood.