We finally get the answers we’ve been waiting for after having watched the excruciating first part of the Taiwanese Netflix original Had I Not Seen The Sun. The Taiwanese show is a dark and gritty serial killer mystery, but at its heart, it’s a show about loved ones and revenge and the real impact of sexual abuse on young women. Part 1 of the show ended in a place where we knew that Jen-Yao murdered those men and the one woman because of what happened to Hsiao-Tung. Part 2 follows the events that occurred between 2014 and 2023 and finally gives us the answer to who Tien-Cheng is. I think the show did a good job in trying to keep us interested, but by the end of part 2, it tried to make things too complicated, and 20 episodes is quite a lot for a revenge story, even if it’s got a lot of details to give. At the end of the day, you want to know if it’s a happy ending, why the documentary film producer was obsessed with Jen-Yao, and who Tian-Ching is. Well, let’s get into it in the ending of Had I Not Seen The Sun Part 2.
Spoiler Alert
Was Pin-Yu Really Possessed by Hsiao-Tung?
The most shocking reveal in Part 2 was that Hsiao-Tung was essentially dissociating into different identities to deal with her trauma. At the beginning of part two, there’s a woman named Chi-Chi, or rather, a teenager, who sucks on the same lollipop Hsiao-Tung used to have back in school. I guess this should’ve been enough for me to catch on to the fact that she was just a different identity of Hsiao-Tung. Turns out, the girl was traumatized so badly that she came up with an identity to turn her into a different person. So basically, Chi-Chi helps Hsiao-Tung forget about everything and turn into Tian-Ching. Now you’re wondering how she looks different even to other people? Well, when Hsiao-Tung receives word that her video has been uploaded online for the whole world to see, she feels the letters of the comments that say she wanted it climb all over her body. This forces her to break the mirror in her room and then cut herself, scratching her face enough that it would leave permanent scars. But when her parents realized she had forced herself to forget about everything, they didn’t want her to get back to that feeling again. So they got her plastic surgery and even made it seem like she killed herself so everyone would stop talking about Hsiao-Tung altogether, until the documentary guy became obsessed with this story.
So, no, there was never a possession. Tian-Ching was also blind because that was just how the identity dealt with the world. Of course, there wasn’t anything physically wrong with her, but Tian-Ching genuinely couldn’t see because she believed she was blind. Meanwhile, all her parents could do was look over her by pretending to work for her. Her dad was a cab driver, and her mom was a cook who kept an eye on her in the house. However, after getting with Jen-Yao, Tian-Ching’s life changed completely, and one day, after having a terrifying nightmare where Hsiao-Tung shows up, Tian-Ching suddenly woke up with eyesight, learning that there was never actually anything wrong with her vision.
Then, when Shen Mu comes back into her life, something shifts in Hsiao-Tung. It’s the presence of her colleague, Joy, that really changes everything. Joy is a lesbian co-worker of Tien-Ching’s who is different from everybody and doesn’t really care about anything. Or that’s how Tien-Ching sees her, so when, for the second time, Hsiao-Tung forgets everything, it’s because Chi-Chi convinces her that she’s a woman named Pin-Yu, who looks exactly like Joy. Simultaneously, Shen Mu gets Jen-Yao to promise that he won’t show up in Hsiao-Tung’s life ever again, which is why when she goes to see him in prison, she feels a connection with him instantly, even though she doesn’t recognize him. Additionally, this is also why Shen Mu visited Jen-Yao in the middle, telling him not to forget about their deal.
On the other hand, Wei-Ling is also a woman who we saw feeling like she was being haunted by Hsiao-Tung. Wei-Ling’s trauma caught up to her in a different way. She always knew she did something wrong but never admitted to it, especially to the fact that she contributed to people believing that Hsiao-Tung did, in fact, want to be alone with those boys and that she was asking for what happened to her. Jen-Yao doesn’t come for Wei-Ling ever, but we hear about her suicide, and it so happens that Shen Mu visits her but doesn’t kill her. Shen Mu just knows that the woman has finally realized her mistakes and her karma has come for her.
Why Did Jen-Yao Kill the Kid?
Right at the start of the show, we’d seen Jen-Yao tell his interrogators that he might’ve been a monster all along, right from the beginning. We find out over the course of Part 2 that he’d said this in reply to the police asking him why he’d killed Shih-Yu, the son of Yu-Hsiang, one of Hisao-Tung’s rapists. He was wholly in the right in targeting pretty much every other person he killed, but it’s difficult to imagine how the murder of a child could be justified. Right after he got out of prison in 2014, he set out with the intention of tracking down and eliminating Ouyang Ti first and foremost, even going up to Big K (the former loan shark who used to target his father) and beating him up for information. Big K managed to get him to cool off, though, but it wasn’t long before he started down the path of revenge anyway. Fan Wei-Ting was the first to go, and this death was almost accidental. I think Jen-Yao did want to confront the guy, but when Wei-Ting tased him and then harassed him, Jen-Yao lost his mind and ended up killing the guy in a fit of rage. Wei-Ting was the absolute worst and didn’t care that a girl took her life because of what he and his friends did to her. This is why killing him was just so easy for Jen-Yao.
Things calmed down for a while after that, even though Fan’s body was eventually discovered and identified using dental records and fingerprints. Eventually though, Che-Li, one of the rapists from back in the day, feels guilty enough about what he did that he tries to track down Hsiao-Tung and apologize to her. Even though she lives under a different name now and has had plastic surgery, he follows her mom and ends up finding out where she lives. When he knocks on Tien-Ching’s door and she tells him nobody by the name of Hsiao-Tung lives there, she means it; the memories of her past life are buried very deep within her. It’s his repeated insistence that she just let him in and listen to his apology that finally cracks something inside her. The door opens, and all of a sudden it’s not Hsiao-Tung or Tien-Ching, but Chi-Chi waiting inside, and she smashes a glass vase over Che-Li’s head.
This is when Jen-Yao shows up and stops her from killing him, ironically. But Chi-Chi seems to have no filter, and she lays out pretty much Yun-Chen’s perspective on things: Everything would have been okay if Hsiao-Tung had never met Jen-Yao, so this is all his fault, given he couldn’t even protect her. He seems to take all this to heart, especially since she cuts herself and ends up in the hospital right after. This is when his revenge begins in earnest, and his first target? Che-Li, whom he kidnaps from a parking lot one night. He’s learned his lesson from the killing of Fan Wei-Ting, so this time he sets up a “Dexter”-esque killing room, complete with a splash-resistant suit and a plastic tent. This first murder feels the most brutal, with Jen-Yao pouring cleaning fluid down his throat until he dies, before extracting all his teeth and removing his fingerprints.
The body is later identified through DNA testing, but all this is helping him buy time to execute his plan. Yun-Chen finds out what he’s up to when he ends up saving her life and killing Jung-Tai, another of the rapists, who now teaches at the school they used to attend. Unlike Che-Li, Jung-Tai didn’t even pretend to be repentant; he carried on as he was, and he was trying to bully a girl into dropping out because she came from a poorer family when Yun-Chen found out about it. Given the girl’s parents weren’t in the picture and she was being raised by her grandma, Yun-Chen probably empathized with her, which is why she helped her record a bullying session on a hidden camera and get Jung-Tai fired. When Jung-Tai later finds out she was involved and lures her to a temple for a confrontation, Jen-Yao shows up to intervene, gutting him then and there. That leaves En-Ya, the rival ballet; Meng-Hung, who runs a noodle stand; and then Ouyang Ti and his pudgy friend, Yu-Hsiang. Now, of course, he has the support of Yun-Chen, who’s also in Hsiao-Tung’s corner.
Meng-Hung’s death is quick and almost impersonal, a few quick stabs in the dead of night, after which Jen-Yao sits down and finishes the beef noodles he’d ordered, the story that truly sealed his reputation as an unrepentant psychopath. Ouyang Ti’s murder is executed in a bit of a hurry, after the monster seems to figure out where he can find Hsiao-Tung. The whole thing becomes even more shoddy when Jen-Yao is interrupted by the return of Ouyang’s mother, Li-Yen. Jen-Yao hides around the corner, but he’s shocked when he sees Ouyang’s mother take the opportunity to suffocate him to death, following which she sings him a lullaby. It seems she’d finally realized there was no redeeming her son, and the world was a better place with him gone.
En-Ya is an easy target; Yun-Chen baits the influencer with an offer of a brand collaboration, and Jen-Yao rocks up to her address with a massive box, which he later puts her in to cart her away. Although we’re not shown it, we already know En-Ya ends up being murdered in the woods and buried there. When Jen-Yao gets to Yu-Hsiang’s place, he sees that the man is physically abusive towards his wife, who is then violently abusive towards their son, to the extent that young Shih-Yu wears an eyepatch as a result of the beatings his mother has given him. Killing Yu-Hsiang’s wife is an easy choice for Jen-Yao; in fact, he even does it before he kills Yu-Hsiang, perhaps to let the terror build in him. But finally, he hears a frail voice call from the stairs, “Don’t forget about me.” This is the moment when he starts to totally lose it; he hears the voices of all the disappointed people in his life coming out of the boy’s mouth, but none as loud as Hsiao-Tung in her Chi-Chi persona, telling him how he let her down. Ultimately, he puts his hands around the little boy’s throat and squeezes, just to shut out the noise, and he faces no resistance from a tortured soul who already wants it all to end.
Does The Show Have A Happy Ending?
In Had I Not Seen The Sun’s ending, we’re meant to believe that Jen-Yao was happy to have died for Hsiao-Tung, because he got his revenge. He’d lost all of his humanity when he ended up killing the kid, who was a reflection of himself. Jen-Yao believed he was responsible for Hsiao-Tung’s rape, but additionally, he didn’t want the kid to turn into another him. Jen-Yao didn’t see a kid who had just watched his parents being murdered; he saw himself, a younger version, and because he was so fed up, he wanted to stop being blamed for everything that had gone wrong. The show ends on a happy note for Hsiao-Tung, who now remembers everything and has a letter from Jen-Yao. We never find out what’s in this letter, but what we can imagine is that it’s Jen-Yao’s love for Hsiao-Tung as well as his wish for her to live a happy life, even if it’s without him. Jen-Yao’s death isn’t a surprise. At the end of the day, he is a serial killer, and he did kill an innocent child, but it’s still sad to know that Hsiao-Tung and Jen-Yao don’t end up together. At least they were together at some point, so Jen-Yao got to live that dream anyway. We don’t find out if Hsiao-Tung’s split identities are gone for good, but as long as she doesn’t go through any more traumatic incidents, I think she’ll be fine, considering how all the bad guys are gone for good. She also has Shen Mu by her side for good, and in an alternate universe, maybe they’d be happy together too, as more than just friends, that is. Hsiao-Tung doesn’t plan on dancing again, but at least she’s working within the industry now, so she will come to remember her love for the artform again.
The ending of the show makes it almost look like she’s killing herself by walking into the water. Additionally, the epilogue shows Jen-Yao and Hsiao-Tung meet for that Christmas that they were meant to celebrate together, and then two butterflies fly out of the screen towards us. The butterflies just symbolize the fact that the two of them are finally free. It doesn’t mean Hsiao-Tung is dead too; it’s just an alternative scenario where this could’ve been possible. Ultimately, the documentary also doesn’t get made because Ta-Wei was only after closure for his own sister’s rape and suicide. Once he knew that Jen-Yao was a serial killer because he wanted revenge, he got what he needed from it, so now he can concentrate on doing real work. Additionally, the whole point of Jen-Yao’s sacrifice was to conceal Hsiao-Tung’s identity and make sure nobody ever finds out about her. On the other hand, Ouyang’s mother dies soon after Jen-Yao says he won’t apologize for killing her son. It’s revealed that she was the one who actually killed the boy, because everybody knows he was actually evil, but she must have given up at that point because she slowly deteriorates and dies in the hospital.
