As You Stood By’s ending gives us an interesting moral conclusion. The show initially plays out like a “Good For Her” thriller before turning women against women and making it all about how evil the world can really be. I truly hope women like Jin-Young don’t exist in real life, but I suppose for the reputation and benefit of one’s own self, many lose the path to whatever we want to label “righteousness.” In this show, from the start, we are on the side of the abused and the oppressed. Whether it’s wrong for them to commit murder and hide it, we don’t really care, because we’ve seen how terrible the offense really is. As You Stood By is clearly set up to make women cry out for help when they need it. It’s exaggerated and has many imaginary sequences to make us feel confused and give off more of a thriller vibe, though in truth, these are the horrors many women face. But at the end of the day, the girls do survive this traumatic past and end up in a happy place, so let’s see how they got there in the ending of the show.
Spoiler Alert
Why Does Hui-Su Confess?
When Hui-Su agrees to Eun-Su’s plan of killing her husband, she doesn’t realize how much trauma it’ll bring to her and her friend. After his death, she gets flashbacks from the scenes of the killing, sees his dead body often, and even imagines him beating her up again, all because of the guilt. However, when Kang returns and wants money from the women, she starts to think she’s ruined Eun-Su’s life, too, by getting her involved in this situation. Ironically, it was Eun-Su who came up with the plan in the first place, after she couldn’t just stand by and watch her best friend being murdered by the man who was supposed to call her family. But Hui-Su’s guilt is unbearable; she believes she deserves to die too, and this thought is reinforced by Jin-Pyo’s sister, Jin-Young. Honestly, the most annoying part of this story is that the sister, who is a cop, is so invested in her own promotion that she’s willing to turn a blind eye to her brother literally torturing a fellow woman, all while their mother gives speeches about how all domestic violence victims deserve to be heard. Not to forget, the mum’s just as bad too.
When Jin-Young tells Hui-Su to kill herself to keep Eun-Su alive, she doesn’t hesitate for a second. She’s given up so completely that she just wants it all to end. Fortunately, Mr. Jin and Eun-Su are able to save the girl, but this doesn’t change the fact that she thinks she should’ve died, and this is the worst-case scenario. However, when Hui-Su wakes up in the hospital and sees that her friend is still trying to save her, she realizes the best thing to do in this situation is to confess to save them both. This way, Jin-Young can’t touch her, and Eun-Su will be safe too, because the truth will be out there. Her confession is her liberation, because without it, she’d still be stuck to Jin-Pyo, and she’d always have something to hide. It also allows her to tell people her story about how she was abused and how she murdered him because she couldn’t stand it anymore. Hui-Su and Eun-Su do end up going to prison, but that’s not the end of their lives. There’s so much more to it.
Why Does Eun-Su Return Her Judo Belt?
Throughout the first half of the show, I thought Eun-Su was doing judo to expend her negative energy. Like doing a sport to manage your rage, because she was struggling with the guilt of letting her mom be beaten up by her dad, as well as what happened with Mrs. Kang from the store. However, it’s soon brought to our attention that Eun-Su’s never been promoted from a white belt because she’s got too much on her mind that could cause harm to other people in her class. But one fine day, Eun-Su ends up actually hurting someone and getting suspended for a month. But she later shows up when the coach is alone, and he asks her to spar with him. At this time, he awards her with a blue belt because he knows it’s her last day there. He’s just got a hunch. This is when we realize that Eun-Su wasn’t just chilling while doing judo; she was practicing so she could use it in real life sometime in the future. For example, against Jin-Pyo and Mr. Kwon.
But after everything, in As You Stood By episode 8, Eun-Su sends the belt back to her coach, and this is symbolic of her letting go of her traumatic past. By this time, she’s gotten her dad to change and even killed a man who hurt her best friend; she has nothing more to do, and so letting go of the belt also means letting go of that fear that led her to the dojo in the first place. Another scene we see is Eun-Su letting out her and her brother’s kid versions out of the wardrobe, letting them know they’re okay and that they were not in the wrong. She’s finally healed, and even though they both go to prison, the girls are happy, well, and ready to conquer the world again. Returning the belt is, in a way, her liberation too.
What Happens to Jin-Young?
Throughout the show, Jin-Young is so determined to get her promotion that she doesn’t even lose focus when she realizes her sister-in-law is being viciously brutalized by her own brother. In fact, she tells her to keep it hush-hush because it’s a private matter when Hui-Su tries to report it. Ironically, I think if Jin-Young had taken her sister-in-law’s side, things might’ve turned out so much better for her, and she would’ve actually gotten that promotion. When she traps Kang in the closet and her mother ends up killing him, the guy blames the old lady for raising bad children. But we never hear about a dad who might’ve been just as abusive as his son. While the mom is certainly a little responsible, both the kids are full-grown adults, and they make their own choices, so behaving the way they do is solely on them.
Ultimately, Jin-Young loses everything because she’s truly evil, telling Hui-Su to kill herself, never once realizing what a monster she’s become in saying that to a victim of abuse. So it’s truly karma when she ends up getting caught for trying to kill Hui-Su and also helping her brother in the embezzlement and fleeing case. Unfortunately, she had to be one of those women who don’t help but come up with ideas to make it look like the women are in the wrong, faking wounds and getting away with these cases. All for some promotion that she’ll now never get. Additionally, we can assume she confessed to killing Kang, too, because she wouldn’t want her mother to suffer like that.
Who Is Mr. Jin In All Of This?
Mr. Jin feels like a character who almost doesn’t play by the rules of the world he’s in. He fulfills the same role an angel or a demigod might have in a different story. He seems to have no real desires or drives of his own while having no apparent limit to his powers. We never see him lose a fight, he throws around money like it’s nothing, and he helps the girls just because he feels like it’s the right thing to do. Throughout the show, if Eun-Su and Hui-Su didn’t have Mr. Jin by their side, things would have been a whole lot tougher; he was the one who planted the idea of murdering Jin-Pyo in Eun-Su’s head in the first place. Towards the end, Jin-Young is exposed only because of the private detective Mr. Jin had hired to tail her constantly. That’s what allowed Eun-Su to follow her and ram into her car, exposing the fact that she had a dead body in her trunk, Jang Kang’s. After the girls have served their prison sentences, he’s right there to whisk them away and give them a second shot at life. Korea’s not very forgiving to convicts, and even though he bankrolled the best lawyers money could buy, the girls have stains on their records now.
During As You Stood By’s ending, Eun-Su and Hui-Su are living their best lives in Vietnam, with Mr. Jin right there by their side. He stays mysterious till the end, and we never really find out what he’s thinking or what he wants from life; he’s like a blank slate sent to earth to be nothing but “the helpful man,” and the girls never even feel slightly uncomfortable around him, despite the fact he’s (at least seemingly) single, big, and burly. The only time we see him be vulnerable is when he talks about the death of his son, but that only serves to make him an easy protective figure for the friends, who needed all the help they could get. On the other hand, the girls both change up their hair to short, and Eun-Su even dyes it blonde, both man-repelling hairstyles. I don’t know about Eun-Su, but I have a feeling Hui-Su won’t be looking for love anytime soon.
As You Stood By’s ending sees her genuinely enjoying the sunrise, the weather, and working together with Eun-Su. Hui-Su’s mother passed, which means her only family now is her friend, but Eun-Su’s family is still back home. All we can imagine is that she’ll be in touch through letters or something and hopefully receive pictures from her mother where she’s smiling, because that’s all she really ever wanted. Maybe her mother left her dad; maybe she’ll visit someday in the future in Vietnam. We hope she does. Guess the ending of the show does make it “good for her.” But let us know in the comments what you thought.
