Nine Puzzles’ ending leaves the door open for a possible second season. The 11-episode K-drama, centered around a serial killer on the loose, is mysterious and thrilling right up until the end, where I personally felt like it fell a bit flat. I’m also not a big fan of making psychological professionals the evil guys in the media because it messes with their reputation, and everyone and their mom needs to be in therapy right now. In Nine Puzzles, it was a little bit, almost halfway through the show, that one of the psychiatrists was revealed to be evil, and it made me like the show a little bit less, but I digress. In the show, Ena is the protagonist, who appears to be a morally grey character because she’s made to look like the killer initially, before things take a turn and it becomes obvious that she hasn’t done anything wrong. She’s also a great profiler and essentially solves this case almost by herself, with some help from Hansaem. But what happens to the killer, and why does Ena quit being a profiler? Let’s find out in the show’s finale.
Spoiler Alert
What happened to Seungjoo?
Nine Puzzles episode 11 begins with a flashback to 20 years earlier, where a young girl in her school uniform stands alone in the Dream Land amusement park. 10 years later, that girl is now Lee Seungjoo, presumably at psychology school, where she meets Jungho. He gives her a handkerchief (yes, the same one) and a notebook, both of which belonged to her mother. He tells her it took him so long to find her because she changed her name. She asks him where her mother is now, and we go to the credits. We can assume this is when she learned that her mother was killed in a fire, and he witnessed it all. This is also probably where they became friends, and that’s why he was eager to protect her till the end, for the sake of her mother. We’re then transported to the present day, where Seungjoo and Ena are face-to-face at Ena’s home. Ena wonders if it was fun for Seungjoo to watch her struggle to figure things out when she was right there the whole time. Seungjoo tells her it wasn’t, because she wanted to keep her close to the answers, but not too close. A complicated endeavor.
Seungjoo tells Ena to come with her under the false notion that she may not kill the final victim. But this is obviously not true. Still, Ena goes with her to “The One City” building. In the car, Seungjoo admits she was surprised to see Ena show up for therapy, the child she’d left behind. In a flashback, we learned that Jungho figured Seungjoo was killing people associated with her mum’s death, and he tried to stop her, because that’s what her mum would’ve wanted. In Seungjoo’s case, it’s interesting because she was probably stuck on the fact that she’d get mad at her mum one day when she finally met her again for abandoning her. But when she learned that her mom waited for her all those years, and that she ended up dead because of those people, meaning that she and her mom never reunited, she channeled her rage in their direction.
Ena wonders if things would’ve been different had Seungjoo not learned of her mum’s death. Seungjoo tells her that this is just how this story has been written, and she shouldn’t think about the what-ifs. Finally, when they get to the building, Seungjoo tells Ena that none of her victims even remembered her mother. Maybe if one of them had apologized, she might’ve spared them or even forgotten about the whole ordeal, but now she kills the last of the lot, leaving Ena struggling to search for her. The man falls right in front of Hansaem, who is desperately looking for Ena. That was a close call; the dude could’ve fallen on him. Anyway, guess it’s a show. I don’t think you can really call Seungjoo a “killer” per se, because we don’t get to see her execute the kills in an orderly manner or anything. It’s more like she needs these people gone rather than she’s hungry to kill. With blood splattered on his face, Hansaem goes to the roof of the building where Ena is standing, wondering how come she couldn’t stop the final killing. Ena is still trying to make this whole thing about herself, but she should know that it’s got nothing to do with her.
In the car, Ena tells Hansaem that her uncle received 3 apartments in that building, all under her name, for brushing the story under the carpet. He then sold them and moved to a luxurious home. Ena has the final puzzle piece now, and the two try to figure out who the final victim could be. The police track Seungjoo down to the same funeral home where Jungho’s body is kept. But she doesn’t go inside; she just stands outside in the rain for a bit before leaving. I suppose you could say that was her giving her condolences. But Ena knows exactly where she’s going to end up after that.
Ena meets Seungjoo at Dream Land. Seungjoo tells her that she always used to wait at the amusement park, expecting her mother to show up some day, hug her, and cry out, telling her she didn’t abandon her. But what I find quite silly about this story is how the mom never came back to the amusement park to find her daughter. I mean, that was the place she got lost, so why wouldn’t she at least check there if someone had seen her or not? The whole thing makes no sense to me at all. The unfortunate thing is that Seungjoo couldn’t remember which restaurant her mom worked at. Seungjoo tells Ena that she shouldn’t feel guilty at all.
Why Does Ena Quit?
In truth, I think Ena quits after what she sees here because she couldn’t guess anything right about Seungjoo’s case. Later in the show, she goes on a news show and admits that she became a profiler because she used to consider herself guilty. So she was always good at the job because she put herself in the shoes of the killer, and she empathized with them. But, in Seungjoo’s case, she was almost blinded? I think Ena believed the person who killed her uncle was a stone-cold killer, but if she had picked up on the fact that they spared her, she would’ve realized it was someone who was always close, and left her alive not because she was some special puzzle piece, but because she was a kid who was innocent. I suppose Seungjoo being tired of life makes a little bit of sense because she made it all about revenge, but like Ena says, she could’ve lived on and absolved herself. Instead, she kills herself there by setting the ride she’s sitting in on fire and screaming to death in front of Ena and Hansaem. What really is the point? At the station, the duo both pretend like they don’t know what exactly happened with Seungjoo.
After spending days doing nothing but moping in bed, Ena quits her profiler job. On the surface, she looks like she’s completely fine and she can handle even quitting her job, but on the inside, she feels hollow, almost like a part of her is missing. Technically, it is, because she made her entire personality that one incident. Ena gets to try Hansaem’s mother’s Japanese curry, the same one that apparently tasted like “jajangmyeon.” The reason she calls him Curry-Nam. She asks him how his mother got to live at The One City. Turns out she won the lottery, and she says everybody dreams about living in a luxurious apartment someday, and you can’t really judge them for it.
In Nine Puzzles’ ending, a new case takes over, and there’s a hoarding that reads something like “forced demolition is murder,” meaning that despite the serial murder of people who forcefully tried to displace a woman, people continue to do the same, and the cycle will probably continue. Hansaem sees the body of a woman who looks made up but has a huge gash in her neck that’s been stitched up. He’s trying to figure out what happened to her when a familiar voice approaches him from behind. Ena returns in all her glory, now with long hair, making it known that at least a little time has passed. It looks like they’ll be working together again, and she’s very clearly understood the assignment this time around. I could say that Ena’s finally guilt-free and also liberated from the trauma of finding her uncle dead at home all those years ago. Sometimes, all you need is a break.
While there’s no official news of it, there’s a chance we could get a second season of Nine Puzzles, based on the ending of the show when Ena pulls out a puzzle piece, saying the story isn’t over yet. I suppose we’ll just have to wait and watch, but another puzzle would not make sense. If we do get another season, it will only be because we like to see Hansaem and Ena work together.
