To those so quick to despise Genie, Make a Wish - not because they tried to understand it, but because they didn't want to - this is not a show meant for you. It was never designed to please those who skim, who fast-forward, or who mistake slowness for emptiness. It is a story that demands you wait, that you sit still long enough to hear what silence sounds like. That alone disqualifies the impatient.
What's disheartening, though, isn't disinterest - it's the noise made by those spreading disdain out of spite or ignorance, disguising their own lack of comprehension as critique. Many of the loudest detractors don't engage with what the drama actually says; they only react to what they assumed it said. They treat myth as misinformation, and metaphor as offense.
The inclusion of Iblis as a central figure has triggered arguments about blasphemy and insensitivity - a reaction that reveals more about the viewers' refusal to separate fiction from faith than about the drama's intent. Genie, Make a Wish does not mock religion; it mirrors it. It borrows the name of a figure from Islamic theology not to provoke, but to ponder. The show transforms Iblis from a symbol of evil into a study of moral fatigue, showing that even those burdened by eternity can learn humility. It's allegory, not apostasy - and it's tragic how few seem literate enough to tell the difference.
Art has always borrowed from belief, not to corrupt it, but to question humanity through it. Myth, religion, and morality are the raw materials of storytelling; they belong not to dogma, but to dialogue. Genie, Make a Wish belongs in that tradition. Its "divine wager" isn't about God's cruelty - it's about human frailty. It asks what happens when beings, divine or mortal, are forced to confront the consequences of their own desires. If that discomforts you, that's the point.
To those who accuse the show of sacrilege, I say this: fiction does not demand worship, only understanding. And understanding requires literacy - not the ability to read subtitles, but the humility to read subtext. This drama is not theology; it's reflection. It doesn't tell you what to believe - it asks whether belief still matters when desire outweighs conscience. That is not blasphemy. That is philosophy.
Every episode is a parable of greed, guilt, consequence, and the hunger for redemption. Every wish is a sermon on human weakness - a small study in what happens when longing outruns morality. The genie is not a god, and the human is not innocent; both are mirrors to each other's flaws. The show holds that mirror up to us too, asking if we can bear to look. Many viewers can't. So instead, they close their eyes and call it "boring."
But Genie, Make a Wish is not boring - it's unflattering. It doesn't entertain your attention span; it exposes it. It is not slow for the sake of pacing; it's slow because transformation is slow. It's about learning to feel again - and that, unlike a wish, takes time.
And then comes the loudest accusation - that the show "romanticizes Iblis." That claim is not just false; it's fear masquerading as literacy. Genie, Make a Wish does not glorify Iblis - it humanizes temptation. It doesn't ask you to love evil, but to recognize how easily you could fall into it. It's not a hymn to sin, but a confession of how near we all stand to it. The drama never seduces you toward darkness - it unveils how willingly humans chase it when it looks like mercy.
If you truly understood the show, you'd know it's not about the devil at all. It's about you. About how every wish we make is a quiet bargain with consequence, how every selfish desire leaves a trace on something sacred. The genie doesn't grant wishes - he reveals the cost of them. That's not romanticism; that's realism in its most spiritual form.
To mistake depiction for endorsement is the failure of an untrained mind - one that fears stories because it cannot tell symbol from sermon. Genie, Make a Wish does not tempt you to believe in Iblis; it forces you to confront how often you already do - when you choose desire over duty, pride over peace, comfort over conscience. That is the quiet, unnerving truth of the series: the devil doesn't have to appear if we keep summoning him ourselves.
So yes, to those who leave one-star reviews out of malice or mockery, this is your reflection: you hated what you did not understand. You scrolled past a mirror because you didn't like what you saw in it. You mistook allegory for arrogance, patience for pretension, and spirituality for offense. But that's not the show's failure. That's yours.
Because Genie, Make a Wish never once asked to be loved easily. It only asked to be understood patiently. And in that, it mirrors life itself: beautiful, slow, misunderstood - but waiting, always waiting, for those willing to look deeper.
If you couldn't, perhaps the problem was never the show's. It was your own inability to separate belief from metaphor, or impatience from meaning. This story does not bend to faith or fandom - it asks something far harder: that you listen.
And for those who did - who watched with open hearts and quiet attention - the lesson remains simple and sacred: fiction is not the opposite of belief. It is the language through which we try to understand it.
