“Dear X” Shocking Ending Explained

“Dear X” has concluded its run and aired its two final episodes today. Let us recap the 12^th episode and explain the ending!

“Dear X” episode 12 recap

Jae Oh talks to his friend about setting up cameras when he gets caught by Moon Do-Hyuk’s men. He does so and does other things with his phone too to make sure its traceable and becomes a listening device.

As he gets caught by the men at night, then end up throwing him off of the building, and he dies on impact. He smiles in his last moments, recalling his time with Ah Jin, happy to have sacrificed himself for her sake one last time.

Both Jun Seo and Ah Jin get a link to a hard drive that contains the video of his death. Jun Seo is in shambles and terrified, he contacts his friend and finds out even more details about how his body was disposed of.

Ah Jin gets back to her place, tries calling him after seeing a message with the link, but he does not answer. She knows he’s dead.

The next day, she wakes up with her husband on her side and has a conversation with him. She shows him the footage and threatens him to leave her alone, to not touch her and what not. He’s slightly taken aback and laughs at how Jae Oh died, she tells him he died knowing well this will serve her.

Jun Seo contacts Ah Jin again, telling her to stop, she refuses and tells him who has the right to condemn her and that she won’t stop. Jun Seo then makes up his mind, he will destroy her.

Jun Seo goes to see her husband and threatens him. Do Hyuk reacts unfazed at first, but then sees he has even more dirt on him than Ah Jin, he’s furious.

Jun Seo takes out all of his family photos and photos of himself from his album. He throws them out himself.

Ah Jin attends an award ceremony and is ready to receive the best actress award. She goes up on stage and receives it at the same time a documentary about her airs. Jun Seo personally appears in the Doc. To expose how she killed her dad and her other horrible actions. As she finishes the speech, she notices people are not clapping. She goes downstairs and sees the doc about her. She screams and runs away.

She stumbles on the street as she tries to escape while processing a mental breakdown, when Jun Seo comes for her.

Jun Seo says he realised it was too late that he couldn’t change her or love her, even to stop doing this. She comments on how it took him so long to realise this. He pleads with her one last time to stop, she looks at him weird for even asking it. He tells her he loves her and crashes his car atop a cliff.

Jun Seo dies while Ah Jin’s body is initially not found. Her husband looks for her body and does not find it but he does not wish to spend more time on it. Meanwhile, a woman whose face is not revealed goes to see Ah Jin’s resting place leaving flowers there.

Then, a follow-up to the doc aired, and we find out that Ah Jin is alive and well. She escaped the crash and crawled her way out of the car. We also find out that Jun Seo was still alive when she gained consciousness, but she left him behind and looked at him, slightly smiling as she climbed back up.

Ah Jin disappears and is never found.

The end.

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“Dear X” ending explained- FAQ

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“Dear X” ending- review

I don’t like the ending!

Speaking from a different angle, I get the ending and what it symbolises. That, despite how many people try to take her down [and rightfully so], she always ends up crawling her way back up.

But…. I still don’t like it.

Its true her reputation is ruined forever, and she’ll likely face more investigations or slight jail time if found, but she’s not completely destroyed, which irks me. I wanted to see her truly feel the consequences of her actions, her being able to walk annoyed me.

Ah Jin is an interesting character whom I disliked. It was interesting looking at her actions and how she tries to justify herself, making herself the victim even though she’s horrendous. On the other hand, it was weird watching Kdrama fans online trying to rationalise and play down or hype up her actions. Missing the point entirely.

While its somewhat understandable that society failed her, she’s a sociopath with limited emotional capacity but the ability to realise just how much her actions hurt others. With that, its difficult to even attempt to begin to understand her actions as she sinks deeply into worse sh-t.

I also liked how the creators emphasise that you reach a point of no return, and even if you argue that Ah Jin initially only hurt the people who hurt her, she develops into a worse character as time goes by. This tracks with human nature in general because it becomes difficult for one to stop the further they sink their teeth into horrible sh-t. It becomes harder to distinguish yourself from those who hurt you and harder to separate yourself, too.

There is so much that can be analysed about her character. Ah Jin is truly fascinating.

I don’t feel the production was trying to make you sympathise with her, which I liked. However, I wished this incident Jun Seo did crippled her both literally and figuratively so she could truly feel the weight of her actions and it still isn’t enough in my opinion. She needs to suffer even more for what she’d done.

Overall, I think this was a very interesting and fun drama to watch. I loved that we got a horrible female character in a kdrama and the production didn’t try to downplay it but display it as is which definitely got attention.

Yoo Jung puts on what could possibly be her best performance to date in my opinion.

Great work, everyone.

Did you like “Dear X” ending?