Delete is a new Thai thriller drama series on Netflix that truly makes for quite an entertaining watch. The premise is very interesting, as at its center is a mysterious phone camera that can make anyone disappear by simply photographing them with it. Amidst this context are Lilly and Aim, passionate lovers who are both cheating on their partners to be with each other before they stumble upon this mysterious phone. Although some of the eight episodes admittedly go wayward and take other unnecessary tracks, Delete is a fairly enjoyable and thrilling watch.
Spoilers Alert
What Is The Series ‘Delete’ About?
Delete begins with its protagonists, Lilly and Aim, spending a loving time together in the Koh Chang district of Thailand. The couple is on vacation together, making wishes and promises of staying with each other forever, but other twists in their personal lives are soon revealed. Aim is an executive media editor and quite a renowned face, especially following the recent publication of his first book, which is claimed to be an autobiographical account of Aim’s childhood adventures. Lilly is an art curator for a gallery owned by Too Wongroongroj, who belongs to an esteemed business family in the region. As it happens, Too and Lilly are married to each other, while Aim is in a long-term relationship with a photographer named Orn. With both Lilly and Aim cheating on their individual partners to be with each other, they have to stay wary of being caught.
But the inevitable draws nearer as Too gets suspicious of Lilly’s actions, especially because her personal driver has been noticed throwing money around. While this is because Lilly gives the man bribes to not tell anyone about where he drives her, Too senses something odd in the whole arrangement. To make things worse, Lilly gets a bout of vomiting and cramps, gets a pregnancy test done, and realizes that she is pregnant with Aim’s child. On the other side, Orn also starts to get suspicious of Aim, owing to his unnatural aloofness towards her, and she even finds a nose-pin in their apartment’s bathroom. To confirm her suspicions, the woman hides small cameras in the rooms of the apartment and soon finds out about Aim’s infidelity.
Amidst such a scenario, Lilly goes to a convenience store one evening for some household shopping when a young schoolgirl mysteriously approaches her. Even though the girl is terribly upset about something and has tears rolling down her face, she hands Lilly a phone and asks her to take a picture of her with it. Lilly follows and is shocked to see the schoolgirl disappear from existence in the short instance of the camera’s flash. After fully realizing what supernatural tool they have come across, Lilly and Aim decide to delete their respective partners with the phone in order to stay with each other forever.
Can Lilly And Aim Delete Their Respective Partners?
Although Lilly and Aim want to delete their partners, their plan does not go very smoothly, at least for both of them. Aim is faced with a severe threat made by Orn—she is ready to forgive his infidelity, but he must agree to break up with Lilly. Aim does not want to do this, for he genuinely feels out of love with Orn and wants to settle with Lilly, but Orn makes a series of threats. At first, she threatens to release the video footage of Aim and Lilly making love, but when the man seems unbothered, she makes a more dangerous threat. Aim’s recent book claimed that he had spent a significant number of days inside a forest all alone during his childhood, which had given him perspective in life. However, this whole claim was false, and the book was just a made-up story, and Orn knew about this. She now threatens to tell the world this truth if Aim does not break up with Lilly, and the man is even more ready to make Orn disappear. Although he does have some final hesitations right before pressing the shutter, Aim ultimately does take a photo of Orn with the mysterious phone and immediately deletes Orn from existence.
Lilly also plans to do the same to Too, and after taking the phone from Aim, she decides to delete her husband that very night. As she returns home, she finds that Too has organized a surprise party for her birthday, and Lilly’s plan has to be put off till the night. Once all the guests leave, Too takes Lilly to their stable and shows her a new pony he has got for her, and Lilly now confesses about her affair. Delete makes this scene look as if Too then does something harmful to his wife, as Lilly goes missing that very night, but Too keeps claiming that he has no idea where she is. Not only does Lilly and Aim’s plan to delete Too fail, but Lilly herself goes missing, along with the mysterious phone camera.
A senior police officer named Yutthachai soon starts to investigate the case of the disappearances, which include that of Lilly, the school girl, and also a few others who had gone missing all of a sudden. Both Aim and Too are under suspicion because of their respective situations. Lilly had been last seen at her own house along with her husband, Too, and so he is the prime suspect behind her sudden disappearance. Meanwhile, Orn had a sick mother who was cared for by a woman named Nicha, and she and Nicha were quite close to each other. Orn would always inform Nicha if she left the country for work, but he had not told her anything this time, contrary to Aim’s claim that his girlfriend had gone to China for work. When Yutthachai tells Aim that there is no record of Orn having left the country, he changes the story, saying that they have only recently broken up and that he has no idea where Orn is. All this while, Aim keeps on his search for the phone, knowing that he might need to delete more people for his safety, while Too keeps looking for Lilly.
How Does June Get Involved In This Whole Matter?
Too had a younger sister named June, who is actually a step-sister from his father’s second marriage, and the sister was very close to Lilly. While June and Lilly were very close friends, the younger sister had developed feelings of attraction towards her sister-in-law and even expressed her feelings. Lilly had no idea about these feelings, and she did not have any such attractions either, causing their relationship to get badly affected. Following this incident, June grew slightly vengeful against her sister-in-law and found out about her ongoing affair with Aim, even taking a photograph of the two. June showed this photograph to Too as well, but the husband actually decided to forgive the wife. This confused and angered June even more, and the girl, who already had a habit of stealing things, took the phone from Lilly’s bag. After finding out about the phone’s magical quality, June thought of deleting Lilly from existence, right after the woman returned home from the stable.
While for some time it seemed like June had gotten Lilly disappeared, she kept claiming that she did not ultimately press the shutter on her sister-in-law. Instead, she kept the camera with her and took it to school, where a regular bully of hers got hold of it while publicly calling out June as a thief. Enraged by this whole incident, June gets back the camera and then deletes the bully as well. June was then texted by someone who threatened to tell everyone about what she had done to the bully if she did not hand over the camera to him. With no other option, June agrees to this and goes to meet the man along with her classmate Tong, who had also found out about the phone camera. The blackmailer then gets hold of the phone and proceeds to delete June herself, which magically brings back the bully who had been deleted earlier. This brings in a new twist in Delete, as it is revealed that if a person who had deleted others is themselves deleted, then all the people they had made disappear would come back into existence. But these people did not have any idea what had happened to them, and they would only have the memory of being photographed for the last time.
Who Was The Mysterious Schoolgirl Who Had Approached Lilly?
We get to know fairly early on that the schoolgirl who brought the strange phone camera to Lilly for the first time at the convenience store was named Araya. This is first revealed when police inspector Yutthachai goes through the file of missing cases. More about Araya is gradually revealed later on, as we get to know that the girl’s mother was a nurse at a hospital in the city. Every day after school, Araya would go over to the hospital and wait for her mother’s shift to be over, before then returning home together. During this time, the young girl would have conversations with the patients at the hospital and would give them much-needed support. Among these patients was a young girl named Natcha, who was the same age as Araya. Naturally, the two girls became very good friends, and it was during this time that Araya got hold of the phone camera.
Having learned of its use, she deleted a number of the patients who all wanted to disappear because they could no longer bear the pain of their illness. Araya willfully vanished them, but this soon started a police investigation into the matter. But when Natcha then asked to be deleted because she, too, could no longer take her pain, Araya was extremely sad. Despite her grief, though, she decided to keep her friend’s request and ultimately deleted Natcha. However, Araya’s parents found out about the phone this time, and they decided to keep the whole matter a secret. But with a growing sense of guilt, Araya first tried to take her own photo with the phone, which did not work, and then she sneaked out of her house to go to the convenience store. Here she found Lilly and asked her to essentially delete her. Once Araya was deleted, everyone she had earlier deleted, including Natcha, was now back in existence.
Was Lilly Actually Deleted?
Delete then gradually moves towards what had actually happened to Lilly, as Too receives a sudden call one night in which Lilly says that she had been kidnapped. The woman had actually not been deleted by June or anyone else, but she had been abducted by the real perpetrator, who had also deleted June. On the night of her birthday, when Lilly admitted her affair to Too, the husband was extremely understanding, and he was even willing to raise the baby inside Lilly’s womb, despite knowing that it was Aim’s. The couple had then returned to their home, and Lilly got out late into the night in order to meet with Aim and tell him about what had happened. However, she was stopped by her abductor on the way and was then taken to his house. The real kidnapper turns out to be the police inspector Yatthachai, who was on a very personal mission to find the phone camera.
Yatthachai was actually the father of Araya, and he had found out about the camera when the girl deleted Natcha at the hospital. Both Yatthachai and his wife had decided to keep the matter secret in order to protect their daughter, but Araya ultimately got herself deleted. When Natcha and the other patients came back to existence, Yatthachai understood that by deleting the woman who had vanished Araya, he could also get his daughter back. Therefore, the police officer sought out Lilly and kidnapped her, keeping her hostage at his house while he kept looking for the phone. Once Yatthachai collects the phone from June, he drives towards his home, while Lilly has managed to escape.
Returning to the same convenience store, Lilly contacts Too from here and takes shelter at the place. But the workers also inform the police, as Lilly’s disappearance has been broadcast all over the news, and Yatthachai also reaches the place. Too arrives a bit late, and he witnesses the police inspector delete Lilly from existence. But the husband gives Yatthachai a chase, reaches his house, and tries to track him down for revenge. Aim also gets to know what the police officer was up to, and he also tracks down his house. Too then finally deletes Yatthachai, making both Lilly and June come back into existence. He also deletes the inspector’s wife, while Araya successfully escapes the place and the deletion.
‘Delete’ Ending Explained: What Secrets Does Lilly Find Out About Her Own Family?
After coming back into existence, Lilly chooses to stay with Too and end her affair with Aim. She had not told Aim about the fact that she was pregnant with his child yet, and now Lilly lies and says that she is actually pregnant with Too’s child and therefore needs to end their affair. Aim expresses a slight doubt at this, but then Lilly lies and says that she has gotten medical tests done to ascertain that it is indeed Too’s child. Despite not wanting to, Aim breaks up and, over time, grows disillusioned with himself. He struggles to continue with his profession and then finally makes an online post, accepting that he was actually a fraudster who had lied about his childhood experiences in the book. Aim also mentions that he is about to disappear, and he then contacts Too for help.
Too does not mind deleting Aim, for, after all, he does not want to keep his wife’s lover in existence. Aim’s deletion now brings Orn back, and she returns to meet with her mother. Orn also finds out about the phone from one of her hidden cameras and perhaps realizes that Aim had vanished in a similar manner. On the other side, Lilly visits the stable at her house and suddenly notices a lot of flies buzzing at a particular stall. Going to investigate more, she finds a big underground chamber that is filled with guns and other weapons. Lilly then also finds a number of trunks, which all contain decaying human bodies.
As Too arrives at the place, Lilly has to hide inside one of the trunks. The man then starts to delete the dead bodies one after another, and a grave secret about his family is revealed. Too’s father, the patriarch of the family, was seemingly in the habit of indulging young women and then getting rid of them. It could be that Too was also involved in such a habit, and he was at least given the responsibility of getting rid of the bodies. There was also a scene in which the body of a woman was seen floating in a river, and this was possibly either the father’s first wife (meaning Too’s biological mother), or some other woman that the patriarch had killed. Perhaps Too had disposed of the body in the river, but it was naturally quite risky. Therefore, after he gets hold of the mysterious phone camera at the end, Too tells his father that he does not need to worry about the bodies anymore. At the very end of Delete, it is revealed that Tong’s elder sister, Thong, who had been missing for quite a few years now, had been killed by Too and his father, as Too deletes Thong’s body inside the trunk in the underground chamber. As June finds out about this, Too also realizes that someone is hiding inside one of the trunks when Lilly frightfully whimpers. Delete chooses to end right here, but judging by how ferocious the patriarch and Too are, things do not seem too safe for June and Lilly.
