Netflix has unveiled a new trailer and main poster for the Joseon-set romance The Scandal, giving viewers a closer look at the dangerous contest of desire that drives the series. The latest promotional drop arrives as the streamer prepares the period drama for a worldwide launch and puts its three leads at the center of a story built on secrecy, seduction, and social risk. Taken together, the footage and imagery present The Scandal as a lavish Netflix original that treats beauty and ruin as two sides of the same wager.
Adapted from the 2003 film Untold Scandal, the series follows a reckless game of love between Lady Cho (Son Ye-jin), a noblewoman whose talent and will refuse to stay locked inside the women’s quarters, and Cho-won (Ji Chang-wook), the most infamous playboy in Joseon. Their private contest soon pulls Hui-yeon (Nana) into a widening net of lies, turning her into the third figure in a triangle of calculation and longing. The drama traces that premise back to Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s Dangerous Liaisons, transplanting the classic tale of forbidden passion and irresistible seduction into an age that treated such feelings as a public offense.
The new trailer opens on a letter from Lady Cho to Cho-won and uses that correspondence to introduce the three people who are about to throw Bukchon into disorder. In the message, Lady Cho makes a startling demand: that Cho-won get So-ok (Shin Yoon-ha), a young woman slated to enter the household as a concubine, pregnant. The request violates the era’s most closely guarded rules, and Cho-won answers it with a challenge of his own, declaring that he will instead try to win the young widow Hui-yeon and thereby locking both of them into a wager that can only grow more hazardous.
From there, the trailer follows Cho-won as he steadily closes in on Hui-yeon, who keeps pushing him away while Lady Cho watches their every move from the margins. That silent observation sharpens the tension among the three, and later scenes leave the outcome of their entanglement even more uncertain. Hui-yeon pleads that she wants to live, Lady Cho tells Cho-won to stop what he has set in motion, and Cho-won finally lays bare his feelings by saying that everything happened because of her.
Watch the new trailer below:
The main poster gathers the same trio against a Joseon backdrop defined by taboo and by Bukchon’s especially rigid codes of conduct. Lady Cho dominates the frame in a striking red traditional upper garment, her expression cool and assured, while Cho-won looks outward with hunger in his eyes and Hui-yeon hides a sorrowful face beneath her sseugaechima, the veil-like outer garment that both covers and isolates her. Compositional details staged against the sweep of Lady Cho’s skirt further hint that the secret love wager will rearrange the bonds among all three, turning costume and setting into a map of shifting power.
The Scandal premieres on Netflix on September 18.
