Interesting premise, decent execution despite a few shortcomings, overall a satisfying watch

SPOILERS
The premise is interesting but also tricky to execute well, and I think for the most part it was very well executed.
I really like the characterization of all of them, but especially Jiwon - she's kind, but not a Mary Sue. It's a little understated what passing on her fate to Sumin actually entails - it's not just "if you want Minhwan so bad you can marry him", she's actively trying to make sure this woman dies instead of her. Not that it's a bad thing, it's fair enough considering Sumin was so eager to see her die, but it makes it clear that Jiwon is not altruistic, her kindness has boundaries and this is reinforced over and over - if someone screws her over, she has no hesitation to screw them over in return.
Jihyuk feels a bit like there's not much to him beyond him being in love with Jiwon, but well he is her allowance so I guess he gets a pass?
Slowly unravelling the many ways in which Sumin has constantly manipulated Jiwon and the people around her to make her life difficult makes it all the more cathartic when she gets her payback.
I really appreciated the direction it seemed to be heading in after Sumin and Minhwan get married, with Jiwon thinking that she has successfully passed on her fate to Sumin but realizing that it's more complicated than that when her situation ends up mirrored to someone she is close to instead. Juran being at the risk of dying better contextualizes what passing on her fate really means and reminds us that fate is not that straightforward and manipulable. It would have significantly weakened the plot if Sumin marrying Minhwan was all it took for Jiwon's fate to be transferred to Sumin. While they did carry this arc to a decent conclusion, I wish they had focused on it more.
I do have a few gripes, mostly with the later episodes. The pacing and structure was pretty good in the first 11 episodes, and then it seemed to devolve into utter chaos. The stakes dramatically went from 0 to 100, while the plot derailed into something overdone and predictable.
Did we really need Oh Yura? She serves a purpose, not just as the one to put things into motion and then take Jihyuk's fate in the end, but also as a way to balance Jihyuk's all-powerful protagonist with an all-powerful antagonist. On the other hand, I've never liked this archetype and she felt even more unnecessary in this story. Her introduction and the escalation she caused felt like a detraction from story that had been set up through the 11 episodes before, and frankly a natural escalation from the events and characters that were already set up would have felt a lot less jarring. The final episode manages to get back on track and give a good balance of action and emotions as well as satisfyingly tie up all the loose ends, which makes up for a lot of the issues I had.
I like that it's Minhwan who gets Jiwon's fate, that after terrorizing and trying to kill the women he had power over multiple times in both lives, he's the one who ends up dead at one such woman's hands. This also means that Sumin gets to live - and be miserable as she watches Jiwon be happy and be unable to do anything about it. For her, this is a fate worse than death. Yura felt too much like a cartoon villain for her life or death to provide any emotional value, she needed to be dead because of the danger she posed and so she had to die - and she took Jihyuk's fate while she was at it and finally made herself useful.
This is a bit nitpicky, but it bothers me that the things that were set to happen over the course of 10 years ended up happening in a few months time. Obviously, they can't stretch it out for 10 years, but it might've been better to go for a more reasonable time frame to begin with, like 2 or 3 years at most. The premise is that things that are destined to happen will happen anyway, and you can only change who it happens to. To some extent it makes sense that their interference may accelerate some events, but it felt like one plot point too many getting preponed by years, especially Juran getting Jiwon's fate 10 years in advance. It also felt a little funny to see the bag and heels ten years before they were originally bought - which would mean that in the original timeline they were outdated by a decade and not nearly as expensive and trendy as they were supposed to be.
Overall, I think the show hit the mark. It has it's shortcomings but they don't hold it back from being a satisfying watch with many powerful and cathartic moments. It's also important to mention the lighthearted and heartwarming moments of friendship, family and romance interspersed in between to balance it out. All of the cast were amazing, and Song Hayoon and Lee Yikyung especially deserve their flowers for playing the antagonists so well. Park Minyoung, as usual, knocked it out of the park. All in all, a good watch.

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A hot mess, honestly

Watched I-LAND as it was airing and this is a combination of some notes I wrote back then and my thoughts in retrospect now.

1. The setting for part 1 is basically a materialized barrier between those who are "in" and those who are "out". Like the judges discussed in the first episode, the resources and privileges you get at I-land create a conducive atmosphere for them to focus on training, while ground contestants have more limited time and resources. Although there isn't an immediate elimination risk, this incentivizes moving "up" to I-land. But it's a bit excessive to make a hugely expensive building in the middle of nowhere just to visualize that incentive to move up from ground to I-land, that came off as just an opulent and weird flex on BigHit's part. I also didn't like the extent to which they focused on this contrast and the "othering" factor, especially considering the method of determining who goes where (more on that later).
2. I liked that there were fewer contestants and no elimination in the first half. It allowed more room to focus on each contestant, gave the contestants more opportunity to appeal to the audience, and made sure one bad moment wouldn't ruin their journey. It wasn't executed quite that well and some contestants still ended up getting more focus anyway, but the scope was there.
3. The voting system in the first half was a dumpster fire. Starting from the start, in the first episode it was obvious that the sooner you perform the more of an advantage you'll have, and that's exactly what happened: majority of the seats were full before even half the candidates performed, and after that they started becoming more reserved with their votes and ended up eliminating some candidates who were better than some of the selected ones. Having the voting happening publicly where everyone (including the contestant being judged) can see who is voting yes or no also puts its own pressure and biases the decisions. Even following this, it was clear and even stated by some contestants that they were voting not just based on perceived skill/performance but also personal preferences. Early decisions and first impressions had long term impact as they essentially created a "class divide" - I-landers got comfortable with each other and were more likely to want their friends to stay, grounders also formed similar bonds, and despite the questionable system that created the divide, I-landers were perceived as collectively "better" than the grounders and that bled into their interactions when grounders moved up to I-land.
4. The change in system for part 2 did not improve much in terms of fairness. I guess they were going for unpredictability and if that's the case they were definitely succeeding but things did not make sense. Why alternate between producer scores and audience votes for different rounds when it would've been more comprehensive to combine both for each round and eliminate someone based on an overall score?
5. I did not like the way some people were villainized for dramatic effect when the conflicts could've been shown in a much more normal way. I know this is an mnet survival show so it is how it is, but I don't have to like that. Mistranslating what some contestants said, editing footage from one place to another for dramatic but untrue "reaction shots", and even editing contestants out of footage altogether to paint narratives, there's nothing they won't stoop to, and it sucks that the audience eats it up so easily. Even now, three years later, people keep hating some former contestants and painting victimhood narratives based on mnet's presentation of certain events. I'd wish mnet would have ethics but that would be in vain so I wish people would watch more critically.
6. While the performances were good, they were sorely underprioritized in favor of reality show-esque drama, be it for conflicts, emotional moments, wholesome fun, or guest appearances. It's not that I didn't like these aspects, they did help us get to know some contestants better, but I wish more of it had been relegated to additional behind the scenes content coz sometimes it did not feel like an audition show for building a kpop group. There's of course also the inherent bias in who got what kind of coverage (if any) and how that pretty much determined who makes it into the group more than the performances themselves.
7. Sometimes even the judges' feedback seemed outright scripted. Some criticism would seem like it came out of nowhere at a convenient moment when it was time to get rid of a contestant and the contestant in concern would always be someone who was already getting negligent or negative coverage. I wouldn't say it was outright rigged but it seemed clear that the production team already had an idea who they wanted and they had the power to make sure that those would be the contestants that fans would grow to root for as well. Any "unwanted" contestant could be rooted out by the judges, and the final group would be pretty much what they want it to be with maybe some contestants swapped out.

On the whole I would say it was kind of a mess, the premise was interesting and the contestants had potential, but it wasn't well structured, not executed well, and focused too much on stirring up dramatic moments and too little on the trauma it would create. I wouldn't say it was an enjoyable experience, nor do I think - in retrospect - it truly helped me know these contestants in terms of skills or personality.
On the positive side, the songs and performances were pretty good, and because of the low starting number of contestants, these new faces got more exposure and a better chance to make an impression than they would on your average survival show. Regardless of whether they made it into the final team, this was a good point of introduction into the industry.

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