The Taiwanese crime-drama The Victims’ Game is genuinely so gory that sometimes I forget I’m watching TV. Season 1 introduced us to forensic investigator Feng Yi-Jen and his daughter Hsiao-Meng. To cut a long story short, they’re estranged because when she was a child, Hsiao-Meng ended up getting hurt from acid in Feng’s home office, leaving him so worried that he ended up divorcing his wife and leaving the home immediately. Feng is considered “weird” at work because he’s on the autism spectrum, but apart from a single mention of Asperger’s in the first season, the show doesn’t directly address this subject but takes a more generic approach to telling Feng’s story. Maybe this is a “lost in translation” situation or simply bad subtitling, but the only word we see used to describe the man is “weirdo.” In the process of solving a terrifying serial suicide murder (you know what I mean if you’ve seen the first season), Feng meets a journalist, Hai-Yin, who starts to help him solve the case because she wants to write a big fancy piece on it. In my predictions for the second season, I guessed we’d see some romantic attraction between these two characters, and that’s exactly what we got. However, Hai-Yin, Feng, and Hsiao-Meng are far from a happy family. Let’s dive into the ending of season 2 to understand if this changes or not.
Spoiler Alert
Why did Hsiao Min-Chun kill those people?
In the final episode of The Victims’ Game Season 2, we learn that the forensics investigator working on this case was Min-Chun, Chia-Ying’s (the girl accused of murder 15 years ago) mother. She had reconstructive surgery to look like a new person, changed her identity, and started working for the police to find out what really happened with her daughter’s case. Feng realizes that the only man who tried to understand him just a little, Mr. Lin, was actually a fraud because, at the end of the day, to cover up something his son did, he gave up on all his morals and ruined Chia-Ying’s reputation. In the final episode, Hsiao-Meng and Hai-Yin go in search of Yi-Jen in the forest. In the meantime, Feng shows Min-Chun that her daughter brought her father’s things to the place of “rebirths” because she believed everyone needed a second chance. Min-Chun is immediately furious at the prospect of her daughter wanting her father again.
Throughout Chia-Ying’s childhood, her mother pushed the idea that they escaped her father and were on their own because she was afraid of losing her daughter. While Chia-Ying’s father was abusive to his wife, the little girl saw her mother kill him at a very young age and decided to hide the truth to protect her mother and stay with her all her life. However, I suppose the madness of killing the man got to Min-Chun’s head, and she started treating her daughter in a paranoid way, which pushed the girl away during her teenage years. When the kids finally went on their rebellious trip, Chia-Ying tried to talk to her mother, but she told her never to return home if she wanted to be with her father, since she’d always liked him more. By this, we understand that Min-Chun had been guilty this whole time of essentially sending her daughter to her death. If only she hadn’t said those harsh words to the girl who had kept her secret all these years, Chia-Ying would’ve never stayed as long as she did, and all of those kids would’ve been happy to date.
Feng reveals the truth about Chia-Ying knowing about her father’s death, but Min-Chun doesn’t want to believe him. She ends up shooting him, but by the time she can shoot a second time, Hsiao-Meng and Hai-Yin show up. Hsiao-Meng convinces Min-Chun that she’s not a bad person and that she’s made some genuine mistakes, but she doesn’t have to kill her father because all he did was help her. At the last moment, Min-Chun holds Hsiao-Meng at gunpoint and takes her away, leaving Hai-Yin to look after Feng.
It is Hsiao-Meng who then tells Min-Chun that her daughter didn’t want her abusive father to be reborn again, but she simply wanted to leave her past behind and return to a better life with her mother. It’s like Min-Chun is finally enlightened by her daughter’s feelings, leading to her wanting to shoot herself. While she aims the gun at her head and we hear a gunshot, we get a scene of Min-Chun and Chia-Ying meeting again at the place of rebirth. It’s a moment of closure for the mother, who finally knows that her daughter never hated her, but she went through this massive ordeal out of her own guilt. In actuality, Feng managed to nudge her hand away in time to stop her from shooting herself, saving her life and successfully sending her to prison.
Is Feng okay?
In the video where Min-Chun is torturing Feng, he confesses that he was a “weirdo” and trusted Lin because he was the only person to ever acknowledge him and try to understand how he worked. Hsiao-Meng and Hai-Yin hear this and realize that they’ve never actually tried to understand Yi-Jen’s point of view but simply thought he didn’t know how to share his feelings and left it at that. By the end of the second season, in the meantime, Hai-Yin becomes the CEO of “Sevenleaves” (that was quick), and Yi-Jen and her finally have a conversation. It seems all is well between them. Hsiao-Meng gives Hao’s father an album of their pictures, where he dressed as a girl. She’s finally found closure regarding being the only one left behind in the suicide ordeal and doesn’t feel guilty about being alive anymore.
Father and daughter finally visit the beach that holds so much meaning for them and start to seem like a genuine family for the first time. They meet each other halfway, both trying to make the other comfortable. I suppose working together on a murder case and almost getting killed could do that to people, no? But while we get a happy ending for Yi-Jen, who I’ve come to like very much, there’s more to The Victims’ Game.
In The Victims’ Game season 2’s ending, Mr. Jang meets with the deputy director of the police force. The man congratulates Chang for doing an excellent job with the case and praises him. But, to his astonishment, Chang threatens him with exposing the police department regarding other buried cold cases. He then visits a prison, from which a woman steps out in a white suit. Chang hands her a ring, like the one he’s been seen wearing throughout the show, which can only mean he’s part of some massive organization. Cheng-Kuan watches this whole ordeal. At the end of season 2, we learn that there was a cold case from 30 years ago when Chang was six and was the only witness to something horrendous happening. We’ll have to wait for a third season to learn what happened 30 years ago.
