Dear X’s ending is rather underwhelming, considering how the show has been ramping things up all these episodes. I really expected something catastrophic for Ah-Jin, but instead, what we get is something quite unimaginable for a character like hers. But I guess in the way women enjoy horror, because they end coming out on top a lot of the time, we can enjoy Ah-Jin coming out nearly unscathed here too. Dear X was definitely something different, and in many ways it could be considered a fantasy plot, because there are so many men at the beck and call of Ah-Jin, but is it a fantasy if she ends up all by herself by the end of it? Would you call it a tragedy? I think I would. Sure, Ah-Jin is a psychopath, but does she really deserve to be alone? And is she really going to be all that sad if she ends up alone? Yes and no? Yes, because she’s got nobody to help her anymore, nobody to cover up for her, nobody at her feet, but no, because she genuinely doesn’t feel anything? Anyway, food for thought, but with that said, let’s jump into episode 12.
Spoiler Alert
How Does Ah-Jin Bend Do-Hyuk to Her Will?
Dear X episode 11 ended with Jae-Oh being thrown off a high rooftop, and though there was a small sliver of hope that he might survive, we’ve sadly seen the last of him. We see his mangled corpse unceremoniously dumped into a barrel, probably to be filled in with concrete and dumped into a construction site or body of water. Do-Hyuk’s people have clearly done this before, from how casually they discuss the details. But Jae-Oh had one last trick up his sleeve before he died. In a flashback, we’re shown that he’d preemptively set up cameras on the rooftop he was thrown off, plus his phone was set up to constantly broadcast audio and video to his boss’ spare phone. When footage from both sources is sent to both Jun-Seo and Ah-Jin, they have very different reactions.
Jun-Seo watches the footage and then rushes to Jae-Oh’s office, where his boss gives him all the footage Jae-Oh wanted him to have and tells him how he’d have tried to stop Jae-Oh if he knew this was how the case would go. Jun-Seo can already tell Ah-Jin had a hand in this. When she gets the text with the link to the footage, Ah-Jin doesn’t even tap on it. Instead, she rings Jae-Oh up, and when the automated message asking her to leave a voicemail comes on, she doesn’t respond. She just stands in her bathroom and tries to take it all in before finally stepping into the shower and letting the grief take over her. Clearly, she knew he was walking into his own death.
The next morning, she gets out of bed and unwraps Do-Hyuk’s arms from around her. When he joins her at the breakfast table, she starts dictating terms to him: he’s not to touch her without her permission ever again, and she won’t even tolerate him breathing on her. When he starts to laugh at her audacity, she shows him the footage from the rooftop, where the goons are loudly discussing how Moon Do-Hyuk’s the one who ordered Jae-Oh’s killing. She’s even got footage from when Jae-Oh was being stuffed in the barrel, sort of as a cherry on top. This shuts Do-Hyuk up, and when he tries to call her out for exploiting Jae-Oh’s death, Ah-Jin says this is exactly what he would’ve wanted. Jae-Oh had always wanted Ah-Jin to use him; that’s the only time he ever felt useful or like his life had some purpose. To take things a step further, she answers a call from Jun-Seo and basically admits she drove Jae-Oh to this point just so she could bring Do-Hyuk under her heel. He tries to get her to promise she’ll stop being a ruthless psychopath, but she tells him he just can’t understand her position and hangs up on him. This is going to come back to bite her.
Why Does Jun-Seo Expose Ah-Jin?
Jun-Seo randomly shows up to confront Do-Hyuk one day and tells him to leave Ah-Jin alone, but it’s not because he’s being protective. It’s because he thinks he’s the only one who can take her on. Do-Hyuk seems confused, but after Jun-Seo uses the same footage as Ah-Jin to blackmail him, he backs down. The phone call Jun-Seo made after Ah-Jin hung up on him, where he contacted the producer from the last episode, is relevant here. After she basically brings Do-Hyuk crashing down, Ah-Jin goes from strength to strength in her career. Ultimately, it gets to the point where she’s a shoo-in to win the Best Actress award at the 46th Blue Dragon Awards. As the event starts to kick off, Jun-Seo’s standing on a nearby rooftop, watching everything unfold.
When it’s time for Ah-Jin to step onto the red carpet, it’s suddenly the scene from the very start of episode 1, where we were introduced to Ah-Jin as a successful actress who’d caused the deaths of 2 people and was a psychopath who used men to her advantage. Only now do we realize that these facts are being narrated as part of the documentary exposing Ah-Jin, the one that Jun-Seo agreed to help with. The awards show kicks off, and it’s no surprise that Ah-Jin wins for her portrayal of a nun who goes on a vengeance-driven killing spree. As she goes up on stage, the documentary releases, and her emotional speech about how hard her life was is intercut with interviews from shadowy figures from her past calling her out for being a monster who could act out any emotion that was convenient to her. They did get Sung-Hee to speak up, so she must’ve had a great time there. But of course, there were a bunch of other people from her past too.
Ah-Jin finishes her speech and pauses for applause, but it never comes; the news has made it to everyone’s cell phones already, and they’re all reeling in shock. Puzzled, Ah-Jin makes it off the stage, only to see the documentary being broadcast on a television backstage. She catches it just in time to see Jun-Seo talking about how she used Choi and the stalker to orchestrate the killing of her father. Frustrated, she shrieks and hurls her award onto the floor, stomping out of the building. She just wants to get away from it all, but that’s easier said than done; she’s a nationally famous actress walking down the street in an Oscars-worthy gown and tripping on her dainty heels, of course people are going to stop and take pictures of her.
This is when Jun-Seo, the architect of her downfall, shows up in his car, and she simply climbs in without a word. What follows is an extensive monologue from Jun-Seo about how he’d spent years hoping she would change, that she’d stop being a monster. He says he loves her and that he wants them to go to hell together, given they’re both responsible for this mess. They hold each other’s hands, and he drives off a mountainside, sending the car tumbling into the void. It’s interesting that he decided to keep his seatbelt on if suicide was his goal, but Ah-Jin kept hers on too (K-dramas, you know? Always about safety). The news later reveals that Jun-Seo died on the spot, but that Ah-Jin is missing, and even Do-Hyuk and his men can’t find her. After a while, even he seems to give up.
Jun-Seo’s mother is deeply affected by his passing, though. He’d left behind a note for her, after he’d disposed of all his childhood pictures and emptied out their photo album. Maybe he was acting in advance to keep his mom from grieving and to give her a chance to move forward in life. They’d both been unfair to each other, though she herself is clearly more to blame, being the adult of the two. In her grief, she takes a tumble down a staircase while rushing off to find him, and though she doesn’t seem seriously injured, it does calm her down, giving her a moment to reflect on what she’s done with her life. She will probably regret trying to kill Ah-Jin back when the kids were young for the rest of her life, because it’s what led Jun-Seo to hate her.
In the ending of Dear X, we see that Ah-Jin has survived the car crash. In the immediate aftermath of the crash, her first instinct was to yell out for someone to fix this mess, but Jun-Seo was too far gone to respond and help her anymore. When she manages to cut through her seatbelt with a shard of glass and crawl out, Jun-Seo tries to grab her wrist, silently begging her to stay, but she pushes him off and leaves him to die. It’s only when she makes it some way up the hill that she turns around to look at the wreck and realizes what’s truly happened. The expression on her face changes as the credits start to roll, and she realizes that, for the first time since she was a little girl, she’s now truly alone. No Jae-Oh, no Jun-Seo, not even her deadbeat dad, just her and her Xs. The final episode is titled “The Final X,” and this has me wondering who the final X is meant to refer to. Is it Ah-Jin herself or Jae-Oh? Well, I think it’s Jun-Seo, because he did love her, and she did ultimately discard him like trash. But let us know what you thought of the ending of Dear X.
