Spoilers for all of Gyeongseong Creature season 2 ahead. Last year, Netflix released Gyeongseong Creature, a genre-bending K-drama that combined mystery, horror, and romance into a thrilling show inspired by real-life historical elements. The first season followed star-crossed lovers Jang Tae-sang (Park Seo-joon) and Yoon Chae-ok (Han So-hee) as they investigated a nefarious plot involving monstrous experimentation, Japanese WWII soldiers, and mysterious supernatural creatures called the najin. It also ended on a major cliffhanger, which brought the series from 1940s Gyeongseong to present-day Seoul and promised a continuation of the thrilling plot.
Now, Gyeongseong Creature season 2 has arrived. 70 years after the events of season 1, Yoon Chae-ok is an immortal private investigator, after becoming infected with the najin of her mother all those years ago. While looking into a series of gruesome deaths, she crosses paths with Ho-jae, the amnesic mystery man from the season 1 cliffhanger who looks just like Tae-sang. Over seven episodes, the pair get tangled up in the nefarious activities of Jeonseung Biotech, a shady corporation that has created the Kurokos, an army of najin-infested superpowered fighters. Soon, they learn that the evil they faced decades ago was never defeated, and they have to face it again.
Even still, the Korean hit is full of romance, which director Chung Dong-yoon intended to emphasize in bringing the show to the present day. "For season 2, I wanted to focus on the love story between Ho-jae and Chae-ok, [and] show how they are still loving each other and running towards each other," he tells Marie Claire. "I also wanted to show the remnants of the past that we still see in the modern day."
In doing so, the series is quite a doozy. So, below, read an in-depth breakdown of the ending of Gyeongseong Creature season 2, with added commentary from director Chung and stars Park Seo-joon and Han So-hee.
Yoon Chae-ok and Jang Ho-jae reunite after 70 years
After Gyeongseong Creature season 1, fans were left with the mystery of Ho-jae, Jang Tae-sang's doppelganger who was somehow alive in 2024. Despite theories that the new character could be a descendant of the 1940s businessman, viewers (and Ho-jae himself) eventually learn that Ho-jae is Tae-sang, who has lived for decades after being infected with a najin.
Episode 5 of season 2 begins with an extensive flashback to the 1940s, which explains that Tae-sang's victory over Lady Maeda (Claudia Kim) was only temporary. Eventually, Maeda returns with an army of proto-Kurokos, and kills all of Tae-sang's employees—R.I.P. Gap-pyeong (Park Ji-hwan) and Beom-o (Ahn Ji-ho)—before feeding Tae-sang a najin. He goes through a similar transformation as Chae-ok, waking up with an intense hunger for human flesh. The scene cuts out before we see it, but it's alluded that Tae-sang may have eaten Mrs. Nawol's (Kim Hae-sook) brain through her eye socket, like how Chae-ok fed when she first woke up.
So, how did immortal Tae-sang end up as the everyday 2024 human Ho-jae, without a memory of Chae-ok or his '40s life? And how does Kuroko serial killer Seung-jo (Bae Hyun-sung) know him? Well, if you can recall the chase sequence at the beginning of the season—in which the Kurokos fought another superpowered man with a motorcycle helmet—that was Tae-sang, who had been fighting to take Jeonseong Biotech down. They took the najin out of his neck taking him down on the bridge, removing his powers and his memories, and he'd been living as private eye Ho-jae for a whole year, in the same building that used to be the House of Golden Treasure, completely none the wiser. That is, until he accidentally finds himself in the crosshairs of Seung-jo and Chae-ok at the start of season 2.
What is Jeonseung Biotech?
With one establishing mystery of season 2 solved, let's discuss the other: What is Jeonseung Biotech, and how do they have an army of najin-infected Kuroko soldiers? In episode 4, the mysterious Captain of the Kurokos lays it all out for an imprisoned Chae-ok: After Onseong Hospital was destroyed at the end of WWII, Jeonseung Biotech was built atop its ashes. The new company was founded by season 1 villains Lady Maeda and Kato (Choi Young-joon), with the secret goal of continuing to experiment with the najin. The current chairman is Kato's son, and the Captain was infected with the najin to lead the Kurokos and the experiments. And Lady Maeda is still alive, having been infected with the najin herself to become immortal.
Speaking to Marie Claire ahead of season 2's release, Gyeongseong director Chung Dong-yoon explains that two pillars have ruled the company from Onseong to Jeonseung: Lady Maeda's central goal and Kato's (which appears to be the same as the Captain's). While Kato was "just a scientist," who wanted to continue his research to "see what he could do for humankind," Maeda is less altruistic. "[She] thought of najin as a means of gaining power, and making everyone submissive to her. She realized that it was very difficult to control the najin, so I think she was experimenting to find a way to control the najin and the creature," he says.
It's not shown how Tae-sang learned about the company, or how long he was fighting them, but the catalyst for the events of season 2 is their human experimentation. As we see through the case of Ho-jae Antenna's (the halmoni who serves as his eyes and ears in the neighborhood) grandson, Jeongseung finds its future Kurokos among the desperate people of Seoul, leaving their loved ones in the dark. Sometimes, these test subjects escape the facility, and someone has to go after them to tie up loose ends. This probably has been handled quietly over the years, but when Seung-jo's on clean-up duty, he leaves a trail of bodies in his wake, which puts police on the search for a serial killer murdering random people all in the same, unbelievable way. Luckily (after several episodes), the detective duo realizes what connects all the victims: They all worked in some capacity for Jeonseung.
Seung-jo's complicated past and his betrayal
New addition Seung-jo is the most fascinating character of the new season, in that his motivations are the least predictable. We eventually learn that he is Myeong-ja's baby, all grown up after being raised by Lady Maeda since his mother's death. Through the flashbacks we see of his childhood, it's clear that she raised him to be her pawn and lab rat, and he says that he "just wanted her approval." She never showed him love, but he seemed to have created a brotherly bond with Tae-sang before he was de-najined, saying Tae-sung "helped him realize he was human."
The Seung-jo we meet in season 2 is torn between his fear of Maeda, his fondness for Tae-sang, and his own mysterious goals. Seung-jo kidnaps Chae-ok and Ho-jae and brings them to Jeonseung for Maeda, so she can enact her revenge (or give Tae-sang his memories back and then have Chae-ok die because of him). However, once Tae-sang's back in action, he helps him and Chae-ok escape, so they can flee Seoul and live together. When the couple plans to rescue Antenna's grandson and stop whatever Maeda has planned, he offers to help them, but he does Maeda's dirty work once again. He injects Chae-ok with the shot that makes her najin fall asleep and leaves her vulnerable, the same one that Maeda injected him with so he couldn't save Tae-sang that night on the bridge a year ago. It seems he'll always be Maeda's pawn, despite wanting to help Tae-sung.
At the beginning of the finale, Seung-jo embraces his monstrous side—the one that gets a kick out of killing and feeding on humans. He even tells Chae-ok that he knows how his birth mother Akiko died, and he doesn't care. It's in the past, and Maeda is the one that raised him. However, Chae-ok points out that Maeda was probably using him. He responds that he was using Maeda, to survive, but Maeda was a noblewoman, and he was just a kid. Who was experimenting on who?
Then Maeda makes a move that proves she always saw Seung-jo as expendable. Moments after he has his villain moment (and cop Noh Ji-su shoots out his eye to help Chae-ok get away), the Kuroko lieutenant (played by Physical: 100 alum Kim Kang-min) and a bunch of the fighters appear to snatch Chae-ok... and attack Seung-jo. Seung-jo survives and goes to confront Maeda at Jeonseong, where she says she should have killed him a year ago for choosing Tae-sang over her. (Again, Seung-jo would've been on that bridge fighting alongside Tae-sang if she hadn't made him invulnerable.) Seung-jo asks if Maeda ever considered him as a son, and she gives a haughty little speech about how family and love make humans weak. "How disappointing," she says of his need for a mother and his friendship with Tae-sung.
This is when Seung-jo fully turns into the monster. "I'll do better," he says, promising that he won't "long for anyone or expect anything ever again," right before he stabs her with a tentacle through the gut and flings her back through the hole in the ground, into the chamber filled with nitrogen gas. They stare at each other as her skin dissolves, and as she dies, an emotionless Seung-jo walks away.
The fight for Chae-ok and a new threat
Outside of Seung-jo's chaotic evil arc, the rest of the season 2 finale focuses on Tae-sang's efforts to infiltrate Jeonseung. After a quick fight sequence with the Captain, the supposed baddie surprises Tae-sang by giving him some of the najin sleep chemical for Tae-sang to use against Maeda.
Instead of fighting his way in, Tae-sang walks through an empty building to Maeda, where she gives him a classic hero's dilemma. Chae-ok, his business partner (and Jun-taek's grandson!) Yong-gil, detective Myung-jun, and Antenna's grandson are about to die; whose life is more important to save? Tae-sang takes a three-step route to deal with the immediate danger first: dose Maeda with the najin-sleep (which is how Seung-jo's able to kill her later), punch a hole through the glass floor to get down to the three humans, fight off two new creatures to help them escape. (Anyone who missed season 1 as a creature feature, this fight's for you.) Maeda even releases nitrogen gas into the chamber, but everyone's able to get out alive. Tae-sang also ignores her when she aims a gun at him.
Elsewhere, Captain and Lieutenant Kuroko have beaten Chae-ok up and dumped her into the najin-transfer water tank. It turns out that Captain's intentions aren't as True Neutral as they seem; he plans to use the mature najin he takes out of Chae-ok to help his niece recover after being disabled in a car crash. It seems Tae-sang isn't going to make it to Chae-ok before she dies in the freezing water, as she spends several minutes running back through their super-brief romantic time together. Right after her mom's najin leaves her body, Tae-sung arrives and punches through the tank glass to free her. We don't see if she wakes up.
Chae-ok's new life
The final scenes of Gyeongseong Creature season 2 flash forward sometime in the future (when Jeonseong's under investigation), to show Antenna halmoni cooking breakfast for... Chae-ok! She's alive! She's just a girl now! She and her new guardian discuss her plans for the day (school, a fundraiser, and drinks after). Halmoni asks if she has a boyfriend when she notices Chae-ok wearing the '40s bracelet, but Chae-ok says no. Via voiceover, we learn she has a recurring dream where she chases after someone without knowing who it is, and her heart aches when she wakes up.
As she walks down the street, someone steps out of a store as she passes by. She stops walking and turns around twice to see him. He stops walking away and turns back as well. It's Ho-jae! Or Tae-sang; we don't know whether he has his najin, since the pair don't talk to each other. We only see them staring at each other from afar; Chae-ok begins tearing up without knowing why, and Ho-jae smiles. In the final bits of narration, Chae-ok repeats the seasonal motif she has brought up all series: "Spring will soon pass, and it will be summer again." And Ho-jae completes it: "And we will live on again."
Speaking with Marie Claire, stars Park Seo-joon and Han So-hee agree that the ill-fated aspect of their characters' love story has helped the romance become a fan-favorite element of the series. "[I'm very happy to hear that viewers are rooting for Ho-jae and Chae-ok," Park says. "People root for them because they want them to be together but they know there are these inevitable circumstances that keep them apart. It's the star-crossed-ness of the romance that makes people rave for it."
The post-credit scene that's a setup for season 3
If fans thought Gyeongseong Creature would stop the cryptic cliffhangers with season 1's ending, they were wrong. After the credits roll, viewers are taken back to Jeonseung Biotech, where Seung-jo (minus an eye, in full supervillain mode) is observing a team of scientists as they handle mysterious vials of water. The chairman stands behind him, looking hesitant, but Seung-jo orders him to "keep it going."
As the camera pans up the chamber, we see endless rows up to the ceiling of thousands of vials. A machine injects the water into bottled drinking water, which is shipped out and distributed to a convenience store. A blurred figure reaches into a freezer and picks out a bottle as the camera lingers on the back of the shelf, long enough to see a silver sliver of najin, ready to be picked up.
So, season 2 of Gyeongseong Creature ends with our two heroes possibly reuniting for a happy, mortal life together, just in time for the entire city of Seoul (or maybe all of South Korea) to drink najin-infested water. Sure, we'll get more of Ho-jae and Chae-ok's love story, but at what cost?
