After months of waiting, Webtoon fans are buzzing as two of their favorite series have finally returned to the platform: Let's Play and SubZero. With millions of subscribers each, they are among the most popular romance series on Webtoon.
Let's Play is about blossoming romance within a group of friends who bond over their mutual love of video games and programming. SubZero stars two mortal enemies who get married for the sake of their clans and world peace. Here's what you may have missed and what to know before starting their new seasons.
What Happened in Let's Play Season 1 & 2
Let's Play by Mongie has just entered its third season after a nearly one-year hiatus. Given its popularity, Webtoon offered a special coin promo to celebrate its return, allowing readers to receive five free coins if they fast passed any Let's Play episode between July 5 and July 12.
Let's Play stars Sam Young, a software developer and the future CEO of Young Technologies who dreams of being a video game developer. Sam developed her love and passion for video games during her sickly childhood, where she spent most of her days in the hospital playing games to mentally escape from her condition.
While in college studying computer science, she works tirelessly to create her first indie game called Ruminate. After her game is posted on Indigineer, a famous gaming ViewTuber named Marshall Law plays her game on his channel but does it wrong, subsequently trashing it in front of his audience and claiming the game is unplayable, so his fans take to the gaming platform to bomb Ruminate's rating to 0.3 stars. Despite Sam previously looking up to Marshall in the past, she is upset and angered by his video review and curses her luck when he suddenly moves into the apartment next door.
While Sam struggles to balance her career and dreams, she also grapples with the feelings of love and desire for the first time as she's never had a romantic relationship. She considers dating Link, an old friend she had made while she was in the hospital. Despite their special bond, they soon realize that they aren't romantically compatible and agree to stay friends. Meanwhile, Sam's handsome manager at Young Technologies starts taking a more proactive approach in teaching Sam how to be more confident and business savvy before she takes over as CEO of the company. When she admits to Charles she may not want to become CEO of the software company and would rather develop video games, he keeps her secret and appoints her as his assistant.
Charles encourages Sam to chase her dreams after he plays Ruminate himself and found the puzzle game intricate and entertaining, convincing him of Sam's potential as a video game developer. He also teaches her to step outside her comfort zone and love herself. As Sam and Charles spend more time together, they get to know each other better, both personally and professionally. When they become increasingly flirty with one another, Sam begins to daydream about Charles and feels new emotions she never experienced before.
Even though Sam's father and CEO of Young Technologies is an overprotective one -- who Charles also works for -- Charles finds himself accidentally falling for Sam as well. Season 2 of Let's Play ended with a drunken Sam trying to seduce Charles at his apartment as he refused her advances because she's intoxicated. Fans expect to see Sam and Charles's relationship develop further in the recently debuted Season 3, although the potential for a new romance may threaten to sink their ship.
What Happened in SubZero Season 1
SubZero is a Webtoon series by Junepurrr starring Clove and Kyro, the reincarnations of enemy dragons who have waged war for centuries. Eventually, their enemy clans become interested in achieving peace to end the cycle of death and misery, and when the dominant Crimson Clan approaches the Azure Clan with an unexpected proposition, Clove is willing to do anything for her suffering people. As the reincarnation of the Azure Dragon, they ask Clove to marry Kyro the Crimson Dragon Prince to finally unite their warring clans.
Clove agrees because the Azure Clan is badly weakened and her people are often left cold and hungry. However, Clove and Kyro have never met and neither of them are excited about their forced engagement. Clove leaves the safety of her clan to walk right into the heart of enemy territory to live in the palace with the crimson royals. Under the constant threat of living in a palace crawling with people who may want her dead, Clove is accompanied by Captain Nouren and Lieutenant Aaron, her most trusted allies from the Azure Clan. Clove and Aaron are also childhood friends who have romantic feelings for one another, feelings that they are brutally forced to give up after her engagement to Kyro.
When they first meet, Kyro tries to intimidate Clove to scare her off but she stands her ground for the sake of her people. As they're forced to spend more time together to convince their people that their engagement is legitimate, they start to develop genuine feelings for one another. Their trust builds, leading Clove to tell Kyro that she cannot transform or awaken her dragon form as he can. This knowledge gives her mortal enemy the advantage and an opportunity to kill her, but he instead safeguards her secret to protect her. Kyro later saves her life by kissing her to awaken the Azure Dragon inside of her after she is kidnapped and attacked.
Kyro and Clove finally get married toward the end of Season 1 after genuinely falling in love with each other. Their union is a joyful occasion, bringing hopes for peace and prosperity to both of their clans. However, this happiness is threatened by the end of the first season when Clove nearly dies, along with other palace personnel, in a collapsed jail bombed by a rogue criminal group. Despite their successful marriage, Season 1's ending proves that Clove and Kyro still have a long way to go to eliminate threats and bring about peace. Readers are excited to see their love and marriage develop further in Season 2 as they continue to fight for a united kingdom.
Let's Play can be read weekly on the Webtoon platform every Tuesday and SubZero every Monday.