'Sweet Home' Ending Explained: Song Kang, Lee Do-hyun show ends on a cliffhanger begging for Season 2
Watching 'Sweet Home', the new Netflix Korean show adapted from the webcomic of the same name by Kim Kan-bi and Hwang Young-chan, is the best way to spend your time this weekend. The show is an end of the world thriller that doesn't center on zombies but an evolutionary strain that turns humans into monsters. It is no virus, according to news that we hear in the first season, however, it is centered on human desires. So the more strongly you feel about your life, about things that you regret, and about people that you might have heard, the more this strain of evolution will transform you.
However, can it really be that simple? How did this spread so quickly and how did an entire city fall prey to this particular monstrous transformation? There is one person who seems to know more about this disease, and that is even before it had spread, however, who he is or how he got in contact with this particular 'disease' as it is referred to in the show is something that we did not find out even until the end of the episode. 'Sweet Home' is about a young boy Cha Hyun-soo (Song Kang) moving to a new apartment called the Green Home and considering dying by suicide since he has no one to live for anymore. This young boy is momentarily distracted by a young ballet dancer who convinces him to not die that day or in that apartment because things will get complicated for the neighbors. So he sets a time, and place for his death. 15 days from then, he decides to consider suicide again but his life changes drastically after he sees his neighbors change into grotesque monsters.
Initially, Hyun-soo decides to stay indoors and away from the monsters, but he sees that a couple of children who live a floor below him are in danger. This is what pushes him out of his comfort zone. For a boy who did not like stepping out of his home, and who was diagnosed with anti-social behavior caused by a traumatic incident in his school, he steps up to the challenge, and over the days he improvises. He ends up using a mop with a sharp knife tied to one end as a weapon against the monsters. However, he meets a man next door who is capable of turning even the most mundane things into a workable weapon and who helps him transform his mop into a saber. He then heads out to help the kids, succeeds, but ends up getting the disease. While most gave in to their desires and transformed into monsters, Hyun-soo decides to hold out.
He stopped himself from becoming a monster, and as he held out, he became a weapon that neighbors still unaffected used to ensure their own safety. Initially, they care less about him. However, over time, one of the girls who has a crush on Hyun-soo called Eun-yoo (Go Min-si) ends up empathizing with him and also helps the others see how they are wrong in treating Hyun-soo like a monster when all he has done is save them. As Hyun-soo gets closer to the neighbors, it is ominous. Because they then begin to make promises and every time someone does that in a survival show, we know their fate is death, or worse. This is exactly what happens between Hyun-soo and his mentor like neighbor Han Doo-sik, and this is also what happens between siblings Eun-yoo and Eun-hyeok (Lee Do-hyun). Eun-hyeok, a drop out medical student, is the only one who has kept it all together since things began to go wrong. If not for him, the neighbors in the Green Home may not have survived, but he had ensured that they all banded together to help each other survive.
However, in the end, none of that mattered because he wanted to ensure the safety of everyone else including his sister, so instead of heading out to the safety home underground, he ended up staying in the building that came crashing down around him. Did he die? He may have, but then, healing unlike humans is one of the side-effects of the disease so he might as well return after holding out on his desire like Hyun-soo.
Then there is Hyun-soo himself, who has progressed well into the disease. While he is able to hold out instead of transforming into a monster, another diseased man creates a conflict within Hyun-soo that results in a blood bath and quite a few deaths as well. This ends up pushing Hyun-soo into the pits and he transforms into a grotesque scary monster himself. He manages to stop the other monster from attacking his friends any further. This other monster portrayed by Kim Sung-chul is one that tries to convince Hyun-soo into giving up the remnants of humanity that he has within him.
However, he fails. This is what results in a confrontation between the two during which many of the neighbors in Green Home end up dying. Hyun-soo stops the monster but in the process, because he believes that he hurt his friend, he is unable to face the truth and his memory disappears when he wakes up. On the day that Hyun-soo had decided to die, he tries to surrender to the military to let them use him to experiment and find a cure. However, the monster that hopes to build an army with other monsters who held out like himself and Hyun-soo, kidnaps him before the military get their hands on him. Which is how the show ends. With Sung-chul's character kidnapping Hyun-soo while in the form of Pyeon Sang-wook (Lee Jin-wook). Sang-wook had been one of Hyun-soo's trusted neighbors, who had unfortunately died while trying to save a Green House member. So this turn of events indicates that there will be a season 2, which will tell us how things panned out for Hyun-soo with the monster accompanying him and the remaining survivors who were taken away by the military. Could they really have gone to a safe house? We will have to wait and watch out for a season renewal.
All episodes of 'Sweet Home' can be streamed on Netflix.