'Flower of Evil' Episode 16: The finale sees Hee-seong get killed by cops, Hyun-soo suffers from memory loss
The finale of 'Flower of Evil' begins with a look at the past when Hyun-soo (Lee Joon-gi) and Ji-won (Moon Chae-won) had gotten married. The two pose for wedding pictures, have guests like in any other wedding ceremony, however, the one element that is missing in all of this is the presence of Hyun-soo's parents. At the time that he had gotten married to Ji-won, Hyun-soo was still Hee-seong and the family that Ji-won is referring to in this scene is none other than that of the father and mother of the real Hee-seong. We see Hyun-soo tell Ji-won in the past that the only person who mattered to his life was Ji-won. Then we jump into the present, and we see Hyun-soo fall after being shot by Hee-seong.
While he had initially struggled to give up on attacking Hee-seong because he had been led to believe that Ji-won was murdered by Hee-seong; he somehow manages to let go. However, Hee-seong had managed to find a gun and he had shot at Ji-won but Hyun-soo gets injured instead and it is a head injury at that. As a result, it seems that Hyun-soo was in a coma for a while before he woke with no memories whatsoever of Ji-won or the life that he had led as Hee-seong.
Instead, when he wakes up after all those months, he believes that it is still the year that he had met with an accident after being hit by Hee-seong. So the first time he sees Ji-won after waking, he notices her police badge and attempts to flee because he still believes that he is wanted in the case of the village foremen's death. The fact that he is a father or that he is married is not something that Hyun-soo recalls, and from what we see at the beginning of the episode, Ji-won doesn't seem to want to force the memories that the two of them had made together on him.
Initially, it is clear that she is shocked. She is also heartbroken that after all the struggles that Hyun-soo had been through to find a family that loved him as much as he loved them, he now recalls none of the great moments of his life. She attempts to figure out a way to rebuild their life together after helping him prove that his sister's crime was committed more as self-defense than anything else. However, it is Hyun-soo who is not confident about his feelings for her in the present or the sincerity of his feelings for her in the past.
All that Hyun-soo is aware of at the moment is the fact that he had cheated a woman and lied to her about who he truly was and had managed to marry her. The only memory that he recalls when Ji-won attempts to convince him to return to living with her is of when he had told Hee-seong's mother and father that Ji-won was a person who he needs by his side and that she can be fooled easily because she only believes that which she can see. So Hyun-soo ends up not believing in Ji-won, or his friend Moo-jin who also tells him that he had been sincere towards Ji-won. Then, Hyun-soo also recalls telling his sister that he had never, not once, felt that he had been in love with Ji-won. All of this leads to Hyun-soo telling himself that he doesn't deserve to be in Ji-won's or his daughter's life until his fractured memory throws up random moments which had brought Ji-won and Hyun-soo close to each in the past.
Like the time when Ji-won had first confessed to Hyun-soo that she liked him. He also recalls fleetingly, what it meant to belong to a family. Especially after he meets Hee-seong's mother in prison to confirm what she thought of his relationship with Ji-won. He had asked her what she thought of his relationship with his wife and Hee-seong's mother tells him that she had initially thought that his relationship was fake, just like his name and his identity. However, over time, she realized that Hyun-soo had come to cherish his wife Ji-won and his daughter Eun-ha.
Amid his journey towards finding himself and who he really was these past few years, Hyun-soo's sister who has been freed from prison informs Hyun-soo and Moo-jin that she wants to spend some time abroad and begin living for herself now that she is free from the guilt that she had been shouldering all this while. So, in the face of being left alone, Hyun-soo ends up visiting the place where he had spent some time with Ji-won and the onslaught of emotions that he feels in the present overwhelms him. Coincidentally, he also ends up visiting his own workshop, as it has now been put up for sale by Ji-won and it is after seeing his things lying around in the workshop still that he understands the situation.
He has an epiphany of sorts when he sees the name of the workshop. Turns out the meaning of the name of the shop, which was chosen by Hyun-soo was a symbol of the love that he had for his wife. He explains the same to Ji-won who also arrives by then to pack things up. She reveals that she is tired of waiting for a change and being disappointed repeatedly and so she has decided to start afresh. This unexpected news is what really pushes Hyun-soo to accept the fact that his feelings for Ji-won were real and so he begs her to reconsider, to live with him again so that he can be good to her and the two of them can together find the man that Ji-won had first fallen in love with. The confession is quite similar to how Ji-won had expressed her feelings years ago, and this convinces Ji-won how Hyun-soo's memory might be fractured, but with the right support, he can regain all of the moments the two of them created together.
The show ends on a happy note for Hyun-soo and his sister Hae-soo while the real Hee-seong is nothing but a horrific blot in the lives of his victims. While Hyun-soo might not have found all of his memories, he is regaining important moments one by one and that indicates how his life will return to a new normal where everything would return to the way it was, except for his name.
All episodes of 'Flower of Evil' can be streamed on Viki Global.
