Vigilante Ending Explained: The South Korean action thriller live-action adaptation of Kim Gyu-sam’s webtoon (비질란테) wrapped up the journey of its first season on November 29 after the short course of the 8-episode-run that has left audiences desperately wanting more from the four leading actors of the show.
Starring Nam Joo-hyuk as Kim Ji-yong and the Vigilante, Yoo Ji-tae as Jo Heon, Lee Joon-hyuk as Cho Kang-ok and the second Vigilante fanatically supporting Ji-yong, and Kim So-jin as Choi Mi-ryeo, the hard-driven journalist who will stop at nothing to report the truth and is also particularly moved by the Vigilante’s cause of action, the show has been directed by Choi Jeong-yeol, created by Moon Yoo-seok and written for screen by Lee Min-seop.
The Disney+ original Kdrama series also finds Lee Seung-woo as Min Seon-wook aka Ji-yong’s friend, and Kwon Hae-hyo as the Police Academy Professor Lee Jun-yeop in pivotal supporting roles, while Lee Hae-young as Eom Jae-hyub aka the Vole, Yoon Kyung-ho as Kim Sam-doo, Shin Jung-geun as Mr Bang take on the roles of important antagonists. Joo-hyuk’s character takes the fight to these bad players rigging the justice system as he dons his black hoodie, assuming the socially conscious role of the fighter/saviour of the weak who couldn’t fend themselves and were wronged by the fractured legal system.
-Vigilante Kdrama Ending Explained Contains Spoilers-
Vigilante Ending Explained
Who All Died in the End?
Ji-yong’s friend Seon-wook died defending him against Kim Sam-doo, while Sam-doo himself was later shot down by Eom Jae-hyub. In the final fight between Mr Bang, Eom Jae-hyub, Ji-yong and Jo Heon, Bang was killed by Ji-yong while attempting to save Jo Heon as Bang was planning to sneak up on the police officer from behind. Ji-yong drove Bang’s dagger through his chest by twisting his hand around at the last minute, thus saving Heon. On the other hand, Heon started throwing heavy punches at Eom Jae-hyub once the police chief fired at Ji-yong’s leg. Jae-hyub ultimately took his last breath after being hit by the persistent and pounding fists of Jo Heon.
All the four main characters – Ji-yong, Jo Heon, Mi-ryeo and Kang-ok – survived the fight. However, the politician (Chief Secretary Seok Seung-cheol, played by Jeon Bae-soo) and Kang-ok’s elusive company chairman are still going strong, who will probably make for the primary antagonists of the potential sequel.
Was Ji-yong’s Identity as the Vigilante Revealed?
After the final fight, Mi-ryeo makes the most of the given situation and frames Ji-yong’s late friend as the Vigilante instead to protect him from the public gaze and keep his identity under wraps, preventing him from being on the big bad players’ hit list. She comes clean about how the Vigilante was in fact a student at the National University Student, but instead of selling out Ji-yong, she uses Seon-wook’s name.
Was Eom Jae-hyub’s Connection With the Crytocurrency Scandal Outed?
Choi Mi-ryeo does try to build a case against him and reports about his association with Kim Sam-doo and Sewool Resources. However, once the whole thing tarnishes police’s name and authority, the politician sees the only way out to clear up his name by feeding lies to the public. He addresses a press conference and comes forward with a fabricated story that Jae-hyub was an honourable officer who fought against criminals until his dying breath. He’s even posthumously promoted as the Commissioner General, and the whole truth and narrative Mi-ryeo and the others were fighting to report to the public falls flat due to the lack of consequential evidence against Jae-hyub particularly.
Why Was Kang-ok Fighting Against Kim Sam-doo?
While Lee Joon-hyuk’s character and his backstory are not fully explored in the season, and even the roots of his zealous fixation on and devotion to Ji-yong’s Vigilante are not investigated, he does reveal one essential bit of information in the end. Kang-ok had a bigger fish to catch on his side as he wanted to incriminate his company’s chairman using the evidence found against Sam-doo.
However, since he wasn’t able recover concrete evidence that would prove handy in this case, he knew it beforehand that the chairman would be able to slip out of harm’s way again, which means that Kang-ok has been playing the long game in his attempts to remove this figure from the hierarchy. Is he doing so to takeover as an even worse villain in his place, or does he actually have benign motivations backing this cause to rid the company of a lethal parasite? We don’t know that yet.
Why Was Choi Mi-ryeo Fully Invested in the Vigilante’s Cause?
In another one of the final scenes shared between Mi-ryeo and Heon, who observe Ji-yong grieving his friend’s loss from a distance, she comes clean to Heon about why she started supporting the Vigilante. She tells him that her father was a civil servant who’d been framed for doing dirty work in the past, which pushed him to the edge as he killed himself during the ongoing investigation against him at the time. No journalist stepped up to back his case then, which is why seeing the Vigilante in the present motivated her to work for his cause as he was also fighting the battles of the weak, who were never otherwise looked after by the system.
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Do Jo Heon and Ji-yong See Eye to Eye in the End?
In a way, the answer to this question is yes. Jo Heon still doesn’t approve of Ji-yong’s violent ways for he understands that the bad guys will have no trouble in erasing Ji-yong from the equation given the chance. Unlike him, these people from the other side had no conscience and considered people like himself and Ji-yong as nothing but disposable obstacles in their path.
However, seeing how the system and even bigger players such as significant politicians are in on the nefarious deeds, Heon comes to acknowledge Ji-yong’s words and the “void” in the justice system as he initially addressed it. Moreover, towards the end, when Choi Mi-ryeo pours her heart out to Heon about what happened to her father, she also affirms that both of them now have something in common – the Vigilante – and that he can’t disappear yet since they still had unfinished business to take care of.
Listening to this, Heon merely flashes her a brief and ruminative smile, and leaves without saying anything. In his language, this is as good as a nod of approval especially since he’s come to accept the greyness of the scenario and how easy it was for the line between right and wrong to blur.
What Happens to Ji-yong in the End?
As one of the significant moments of the finale, the National Police University’s students are finally appointed as officers. Seon-wook and Ji-yong’s friend is announced the valedictorian as he leads the swearing-in oath. Meanwhile, as the other students raise their hands for the oath, Ji-yong doesn’t. His fight against injustice seems far from over, and now that he’s in an even darker place than before, it’s quite likely that he will continue working as the Vigilante in the future too, but we can hope for Jo Heon, Choi Mi-ryeo and Kang-ok to support him in one way or another.
Professor Jun-yeop keeps an eye on him from the stage, hinting at him knowing more than he had been letting on or possibly pointing at his regrets following Seon-wook’s death. Though it remains unclear as to what the professor’s true intentions are, his past connections with Jo Heon somehow probably feed into his backstory as him being one of the best detectives in the field, as remarked by Heon himself, which could also turn to be a boon or a bane for Ji-yong in the future.
All 8 episodes of the first season of Vigilante Kdrama are now streaming on Disney+ Hotstar.
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