Queen of Tears‘ ending episode is the longest at an hour and 49 minutes. I mean, we’ve seen shorter movies, but this means plenty of time for extending the story further and to places we could never imagine. I mean, for the most part, we could predict the ending of the series, but it still delivers more drama, which is of course exciting for any viewer. Queen of Tears‘s final episode isn’t only focused on Hae-In and Hyun-Woo’s happy ending but also provides closure for every important character on the show. There are some redemption arcs, and I’m not sure everyone is going to love what happened to Eun-Sung (I was certainly disappointed). Additionally, it’s quite disappointing that the final evil is one person when two people are equally responsible for everything that happened to the Hong family, but I guess that’s K-dramas for you. The series ending is sure to shock viewers; I was personally surprised.
Spoiler Alert
What Happens To Eun-Sung?
Queen of Tears episode 16 begins with Eun-Sung getting away with hitting Hyun-Woo by getting someone else to take the fall. In the meantime, he kidnaps Hae-In and takes her to a secret hideout. It seems her memories haven’t really come back, but the notebook made her believe that Hyun-Woo was her guy. When Hae-In wakes up, she attacks the man who is stationed near her room with a lamp and makes a break for it, only to be caught by Eun-Sung outside. In the meantime, Hyun-Woo’s family is called to the hospital, but by the time they get there, he’s disappeared. He’s called his lawyer friend to come pick him up, despite being weak and unable to even stand properly. It seems like it’s a lie when Hae-In tells Eun-Sung about not having any memory of Hyun-Woo and only wanting to confirm things with Hyun-Woo about her notebook. However, later in the episode, we learn that she’s actually not getting her memories back; she only believes the notebook because it’s her own writing. In the meantime, Grace finds out where Eun-Sung has kept Hae-In by deceiving Seul-Hee, and Hyun-Woo gets his friend to drive him to the safe house. It’s snowing, and Hyun-Woo gets his friend to call the cops but decides to head in alone because he can’t stand the thought of anything happening to Hae-In.
Apparently, he’s had an epiphany about how much he loves Hae-In, so he’s willing to put his own life on the line to save her. In the meantime, we also learn about what happened all those years ago with Hae-In’s older brother. Apparently, Seul-Hee was the one who messed with the boat so that the kids would drown. She wanted them to die, but Hyun-Woo saved Hae-In. Eun-Sung was also present at the scene at the time and watched his mother get someone to mess with the boat, but he told her that he wouldn’t tell anybody about it because she probably did it so that they could live together happily sooner rather than later. In the present day, Hae-In overhears Seul-Hee telling Eun-Sung that Hae-In should’ve died that day too, then he wouldn’t have messed with her plans like this.
Hae-In escapes the house and meets Hyun-Woo halfway. They try to escape together, and the cops also arrive, but Eun-Sung follows them out with a shotgun. Finally, Eun-Sung stops the two of them in their tracks and pulls the gun out. He tells Hae-In that she still has time to leave Hyun-Woo and be with Eun-Sung, but Hae-In tells him that she wouldn’t be with him even if she were dead. It’s not the best thing to say to a man with a gun in his hand, but that’s obviously a trigger for Eun-Sung, and despite the cops in front of him, Eun-Sung ends up shooting at Hae-In, but Hyun-Woo steps in front of her (obviously) and takes one in the shoulder. Eun-Sung gets shot by the cops then.
What Happens To Seul-Hee?
Seul-Hee is called in to identify Eun-Sung’s body, and instead of being broken-hearted, she has one memory of her son as a child telling her not to leave him before becoming completely stone-hearted. She then immediately asks her lawyer to give her Eun-Sung’s shares. She thinks she’s going to be the next chairwoman of the Queens Group, but obviously, Hyun-Woo has bigger plans for her (after he recovers, of course). While Hyun-Woo is in the hospital fighting for dear life, Hae-In’s mother apologizes to his mother for treating him badly when all this while he was the one who saved Hae-In when she was a child. She admits that she’s been a terrible mother by blaming Hae-In for her brother’s death when it was never her fault. Hyun-Woo’s surgery goes well, and after a lot of crying, he finally wakes up ready to fight a battle for Queens Group.
The third family sibling returns to help the Hong family get their company back and avenge their father. He helps with his shares to give the Hongs an upper hand against Seul-Hee. Da-Hye wants to help too and tells Grace that they should turn themselves in so that the Hongs can unfreeze their shares of the company. This is when we find out that Grace has been helping Hyun-Woo with small things so Hae-In can get her memory back. Da-Hye then tells Soo-Cheol that she had liked him since they were children and even had a doll that he had given her all those years ago. She tells him to wait for her to return from prison, and he tells her that he’ll hire the best lawyers to make sure she doesn’t have to spend too much time there.
There’s a trial for Queens Group’s 900 billion won that Eun-Sung laundered through his shell company, which he then spent on Queens Group shares. This is a month after his death, and Seul-Hee sits in the defendant’s seat. She pretends to be all sad and dramatically cries in front of the judge while saying that she bears no fault in this whole ordeal. She even admits that she and Eun-Sung have been distant for 20 years (how shameless). Unfortunately for her, Hyun-Woo has all the evidence he needs to put her behind bars. An audio recording of when she admitted to messing with the boat and, thanks to Grace, the video from Eun-Sung’s tablet, which Seul-Hee thought she got rid of. Finally, she’s imprisoned, and the Hongs are reinstated. Woohoo, happy ending number 1! In prison, we see Seul-Hee getting beaten up by her fellow inmates pretty badly. I suppose this is the fate she will suffer, but what I don’t appreciate is that Eun-Sung was simply killed off and made to look like a better person compared to Seul-Hee, which is really not fair and boils down to villainizing a mother character, but alas, what can I say?
Beom-Ja and Yeong-Song start seeing each other, and we know for sure they’re going to be happy for many years together. On the other hand, Da-Hye and Grace get out of prison and are greeted by Soo-Cheol and a slightly grown Geon-U. On the other hand, Hae-In tells Secretary Na about all the changes she wants at the departmental stores, but Na tells her that she’s already got it in the bag because she told her before the surgery. Apparently, even with memories gone, ideas aren’t lost.
We then get to see a new romance blossom between Hyun-Woo and Hae-In, almost like they started over. Hae-In ends up remembering the worst memory of their time together, i.e., when they lost their baby. She admits to Hyun-Woo that she was afraid that if they got married again, things would get bad again, but with the return of that memory, she knows they’ll be just fine. They promise to live together for a long time and face both the good and bad times together. In a street filled with cherry blossom trees, Hyun-Woo asks Hae-In to marry him again, and she agrees.
In Queen of Tears‘ ending, we see Hyun-Woo and Hae-In getting older and starting a family, always returning to the same location they visited during their honeymoon. They have a baby girl and take her there too. The show ends with the rather sad image of an old Hyun-Woo returning to the location in 2074 alone after Hae-In’s passing. However, just as he promised, he returns to her grave every day with flowers. Of course, it is a happy ending, but it goes a bit further to tell us that the couple lived a happy life for very many years.
