We’re at the end of our twisty tale of greed, oodles of betrayal, and nefarious deeds in the name of revenge. Our heroine and her crew take on the evildoers for the final time, and they’re done playing it safe. Knowing it’s do or die, they go on the offensive as their adversaries scramble to stay in control. While somewhat open ended, we do get a tidier ending than expected that sees everyone, in some way or another, facing the consequences of their actions. For some that means punishment, for others new beginnings, and sometimes a mix of both.
EPISODES 11-12
So many people to take down, so little time. Moon-young and her sidekicks go all in and aren’t afraid to get a little devious. To get at Yeon-joo, they’ll need some help, so Moon-young teams up with CEO Choi and steals Yeon-joo’s right-hand minion Seok-goo out from under her. Seok-goo locates Yeon-joo’s safe, which houses boatloads of cash and her super secret computer with evidence against CEO Choi. Moon-young passes along the intel to CEO Choi, but first she sets up a spy cam so she can break into the safe herself – she’s not about to let CEO Choi steal away with murder evidence.
With no one on her side and nothing going to plan, Yeon-joo begins to unravel. But she’s not the only one falling apart. Sung-jae and his corrupt family are not doing so hot themselves. Sung-jae’s father’s shadiness catches up to him, and his loyal office manager slips Moon-young evidence of his corruption. It doesn’t take much convincing from Moon-young to get him to hand over Hwang Tae-soo’s DNA, evidence that will certainly damn his son, in exchange for the incriminating evidence against himself.
Sung-jae, already wallowing in his woes and self-pity, is stunned by this betrayal. He turns up drunk at Moon-young’s and throws a fit when she informs him that she’s already turned the evidence over to the prosecution. His father’s loving way of rectifying his betrayal is that he had Yeon-joo help him secure a boat so that Sung-jae can go on the run. Sung-jae knows better than to trust Yeon-joo, so he’s not about to get on a boat she chartered.
Yeon-joo is growing ever more desperate and reckless, so it was only a matter of time before she went totally unhinged. She finds Seok-goo stealing the cash out of her safe and watches him rip up her passport. Her response? Unflinchingly stabbing him in the neck with a kitchen knife.
Sung-jae walks in and pauses for a beat at Seok-goo’s dead body, but he’s much more concerned with his own problems. He found passage out of Korea and needs Yeon-joo’s help to retrieve their embezzled billions, so off they go. Surprising no one, it’s another betrayal. Sung-jae also struck a deal with CEO Choi: he can flee on a Geumshin vessel if he kills Yeon-joo.
Yeon-joo is no idiot and realizes the danger she’s in the second she notices a Geumshin logo on the boat. But it’s not easy to escape when you’re trapped on a massive boat with someone intent on killing you. She gets an unexpected savior in Moon-young who may hate her but draws the line at murder.
Jin-woo had a tracker installed on Sung-jae’s phone ages ago, unbeknownst to Sung-jae, which allows him and Moon-young to crash the murder right on time. The justice fighting duo earns an epic eyeroll from Sung-jae who has had it up to here with their righteous meddling. Up until now, Sung-jae has largely avoided outright hurting Moon-young, but he’s not about to let her get in the way of his ticket to freedom. When he advances on her, Jin-woo attacks.
While the guys duke it out, Yeon-joo gloats to Moon-young about a “present” she left her. Right then, Moon-young receives a call from Shin-hwa – her father is in the ICU after attempting suicide. Yeon-joo visited him in prison to taunt him with the gory details of how Moon-young’s life has gone down the drain and encouraged him to die. He isn’t dead, but he is in a coma.
Moon-young doesn’t get much time to process this latest trauma before Sung-jae comes charging in with a wrench. When she stands in front of Yeon-joo and refuses to move, Sung-jae warns he’ll kill her too. But before he can make a move, Yeon-joo grabs Moon-young around the waist and hauls them both into the water below.
Jin-woo doesn’t hesitate to dive in after them with life rafts; Sung-jae watches stunned but, of course, does nothing. Moon-young breaks free in the water and still takes the time to grab the unconscious Yeon-joo before she swims to the surface. The three of them get to safety, and they’re whisked to the hospital when the police arrive shortly after.
Meanwhile, Sung-jae makes his way to Switzerland and tries to retrieve his money, but the DNA results come out proving that Tae-soo, his assumed identity, is dead. Sung-jae is now a wanted person and hightails it out of the bank before they can take him into custody. He probably would’ve been safer letting the police arrest him because CEO Choi’s men find and almost kill him. With no identity and no one left to help him, Sung-jae is stuck in a Swiss hospital alone.
CEO Choi also sends someone after Yeon-joo in the hospital, but her guardian angel Moon-young thwarts that attempt too. Yeon-joo holds herself at syringe point to get Moon-young to hand over her keys, but Moon-young instead offers to drive her wherever she wants to go. They visit her father’s grave, and Yeon-joo is surprised to see a new headstone with the correct name. In her attempts to set things right, Moon-young had it changed. Looking into their family, she learned that Yeon-joo’s childhood dream was to be a prosecutor – to her, Moon-young stole her life.
Moon-young is gentle with Yeon-joo who is on the precipice of a breakdown. She even says she hopes Yeon-joo will learn to smile again. When Yeon-joo finally breaks down sobbing, Moon-young sits quietly by her side and motions for the officers standing by to let her grieve before taking her into custody.
From there, we get the typical finale wrap up with a surprisingly happy ending, all things considered. Chairman Choi, Yeon-joo, and Sung-jae’s mom are all arrested and sentenced. Sung-jae is miserable, alone, and poor abroad. Moon-young and Bom are reunited and begin a new, happier life. Jin-woo musters up the courage to meet his daughter and her adoptive parents. He and the now-retired Officer Baek work for Shin-hwa’s new law firm as investigators. Moon-young’s father pulls through and is acquitted.
The one downer is that Moon-young still has to stand trial for the crimes she committed while “saving” Sung-jae from his fake kidnapping. She’s convicted and sentenced to a year in prison with two years’ probation. (Who is going to care for Bom?) It’s a bittersweet ending where, in the final scene, we see Moon-young walking down a sunny street. She cries briefly before rallying herself and pushing forward, just like she’s always done.
Given how intense everything was, I’d expected more casualties to be honest (R.I.P. Seok-goo). I certainly didn’t expect the semi-reconciliation between Yeon-joo and Moon-young, but I didn’t mind it. They both lost their fathers to circumstances beyond their control as children but had very different opportunities that took them in different directions. I can’t imagine they’ll ever be friends – that’d be wild – but they reached an understanding, thanks in large part to Moon-young being saint-like in her ability to sympathize and forgive. She even wrote regularly to Yeon-joo in prison when no one else showed any concern.
While Yeon-joo turned out to be a somewhat stereotypical loneliness-and-trauma-made-me-like-this villain, I did think she worked well as a foil for Moon-young. Lee Chung-ah made her more three-dimensional than she might’ve been otherwise, and I found her infinitely more interesting than Sung-jae as an antagonist. It feels like the drama was suggesting Sung-jae was corrupted by greed and his terrible parents, rather than him being always terrible, but he was too much of a spoiled brat for me to really care.
Sometimes, you just need a fun, thrilling ride with some over-the-top moments, and Hide scratched that itch. The cast was strong and the story fast-paced enough (and short enough) that it kept me engaged and waiting to see what new, dramatic twist was around the corner. I’m not sure it would’ve worked half as well without Lee Bo-young at the helm, ensuring we had someone to root for and care about throughout the wild turns we took. Despite all the betrayal, greed, murder, and other various forms of bad behavior, the justice prevails worldview made for a surprisingly optimistic story where the good guys won and everyone was held accountable for their actions in the end.