Breaking Down the Epic Ending of Sweet Home, Netflix’s First Popular K-Drama

Sweet Home, the first Korean drama to enter the Netflix Top Ten in the U.S., just wrapped up its third and final season on the streamer. Adapted from a webtoon written by Kim Carnby and illustrated by Hwang Young-cha, the story follows the residents of Green Home apartment complex following the outbreak of the monster apocalypse. The ongoing disaster sees ordinary humans transforming into diverse creatures, with each person’s monsterization informed by their deepest desires. While not inherently evil, these monsters are often dangerous to each other and the surviving humans, eking out a dystopian existence in this new world order.

When Sweet Home debuted on Netflix in December 2020, it struck a chord with viewers living through the real-life rapid transition of society due to an infectious outbreak. However, when Season 2 followed three years later in December 2023, many fans were disappointed by the expansion of the show’s world that pulled the focus away from many of the original characters. In July 2024, Sweet Home came to a close with a final, eight-episode season. Despite the disappointments of the previous season, there is much about Season 3 that justifies the continuation of the series. Let’s break down why this drama is worth finishing…

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Cha Hyun-su, Sang-won, and the other Special Infectees

Cha Hyun-su (My Demon’s Song Kang) is Sweet Home’s central protagonist. At series’ beginning, he is a severely depressed teen orphan whose plans for suicide are waylaid by the outbreak of the apocalypse. Instead, he tries to help the other residents of Green Home survive. Interestingly, Hyun-su almost immediately begins turning into a monster. However, he is unique in that he is able to fight the process.

By the end of Season 1, Hyun-su has settled into his identity as a “Special Infectee,” the Korean Military government’s term for the rare people who have a measure of control over their monsterization. For Cha Hyun-su, this mostly means he can whip out a massive, bladed wing when the situation calls for it. As we learn in Season 2, he is also able to turn monsters back into their human forms, as he does with fellow Green Home firefighter Seo Yi-kyung (Lee Si-young) after her daughter turns her into a monster to save her from dying—but more on that later.

The other significant group of Special Infectees emerge as the series’ main antagonists in Season 2. We meet a body-jumping, psychopathic Special Infectee who calls himself Jung Ui-myeong (Kim Sung-cheol) at the end of Season 1. He takes over the body of Green Home’s thug-with-a-heart-of-gold Sang-wook (Lee Jin-wook), inhabiting it for much of the rest of the show. We eventually learn that he is the monsterized version of Sang-won, Yi-kyung’s scientist fiancé and one of the first people to research the monsterization process. 

Originally a nice guy, Sang-won is driven mad after he volunteers himself as an infected test subject for coworker Dr. Lim (Oh Jung-se). In his pain, he develops the ability to move into others’ bodies and take control. As we learn in Season 3, Dr. Lim uses vials of Sang-won’s blood to turn a small group of other test subjects into Special Infectees. When Sang-won breaks back into the Bamseom research facility, they become his minions.

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The monster girl called Yi-su

Sang-won is obsessed with finding a powerful body to inhabit. This leads him to monsterize his daughter Yi-su (Kim Si-a) when she is still a fetus inside of her mother, Yi-kyung. When Yi-kyung gives birth to Yi-su in Season 2, her baby is part human, part monster. This leads to much of the interpersonal drama in Season 2, as Yi-kyung struggles to accept her daughter for who, and what, she is. Yi-kyung initially leaves her baby to be raised by Hyun-su, which means Hyun-su and Yi-su have a special connection. 

What is Yi-su, exactly? Something special. She ages very quickly, and is tween-sized by the end of Season 2. Yi-su has the ability to turn humans into monsters with only her touch, which is what she does to her mom in Season 2. When Yi-kyung is mortally wounded in a fire, Yi-su turns her into a monster, and Hyun-su brings her back to her mortal form. Yi-kyung eventually dies at the hands of her former fiancé, Sang-won, while she is trying to protect Yi-su from falling into his clutches. 

While Yi-kyung and Yi-su had a complicated relationship, a still-learning Yi-su is devastated when she loses her mother for a second and presumably final time, finally understanding what death means.

What are Neohumans?

If that wasn’t enough creature lore to keep track of, the third season of Sweet Home introduces a third kind of “monster”: neohumans. Neohumans are the final evolution of the monster process. When a monster is killed, they are pulled into a husklike cocoon called a “heart.” Neohumans are reborn as shiny new versions of their original human selves, with a superhuman ability to learn and regenerate if killed. While they have all of the memories of their human past, they are reborn with none of the emotions associated. This is not treated as inherently negative, with an implication that these neohumans can learn to feel again.

We learn about neohumans from Lee Eun-hyuk (Lee Do-hyun), a major character in Season 1. He was a resident of Green Home, where he lived with his younger sister, teen ballerina Lee Eun-yu (Go Min-si). The Lee siblings have a complicated, often hostile relationship, but ultimately love one another. 

Though Eun-hyuk seemingly dies at the end of Season 1 when the Green Home building is demolished, Eun-yu never gives up hope that he is alive somewhere as a monster. When Eun-yu finally sees Eun-hyuk again in Season 3, he rebuffs any attempt at closeness. Despite secretly carrying around a photo of the Lee family, Eun-hyeok is slow to feel, still learning the ways of his neohuman self. Eun-hyeok’s apparent ambivalence devastates Eun-yu, and triggers the monsterization process. In her hallucinations, she returns to a memory of Green Home with her brother before his transition into a neohuman. Her ultimate desire is to feel safe and loved, as she did with her big brother.

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Sang-won’s ultimate demise

Hyun-su and Eun-hyeok often butted heads in Season 1, but they reach a tentative alliance in Season 3 to go after Sang-won. Hyun-su wants to protect the remaining human survivors, who have holed up at a destroyed Stadium under the protection of the Crow Platoon’s Military men. And Eun-hyeok understandably sees Sang-won’s murderous, power-hungry tendencies as a threat to the future of neohumans.

Meanwhile, Sang-won has made progress on his plans to take over his daughter’s powerful body. Initially failing, Dr. Lim has told him that the key to jumping bodies is pain; Sang-won must be in such life-threatening agony that he looks for a new shell. He has the residents of the Stadium build a massive bonfire. First, he throws Dr. Lim into it, furious that Lim has been hoarding a final vial of Sang-won’s blood. Then, he walks into it himself. The resulting pain allows him to take over Yi-su’s body. 

When Hyun-su and Eun-hyeok arrive at the Stadium, things get complicated. Eun-hyeok is fully ready to carry on with the plan to eliminate Sang-won at whatever cost, but Hyun-su is desperate to keep Yi-su safe. Yi-su has other ideas, though. She is able to temporarily wrest control back from Sang-won, letting herself get speared by Eun-hyeok, which forces her father from her body. She dies in Hyun-su’s arms, telling him that she wants to be with her mother. (Though, later, we see a brief shot of her coming back to life.) 

Hyun-su is devastated. Prior to the start of the series, he lost his parents and sister in a car crash. The resulting pain has fueled so much of his behavior throughout the series, as he desperately works to keep as many members of his found family safe from the same fate. He goes to find and kill Sang-won.

However, it is not Hyun-su or Eun-hyeok who ultimately do the deed. With Yi-su out of the picture, Sang-won desperately jumps bodies. He ends up back in Sang-wook’s body. This is perhaps the most confusing aspect of the finale, given that Sang-wook seemed long gone—both in body and spirit. Perhaps he has been reborn as a neohuman. Perhaps his monsterized body was strong enough to regenerate. Most likely, the Sweet Home writing staff found it the most emotionally satisfying to have Sang-wook, a reluctant hero for the people of Green Home in Season 1, come back one last time to save the day, and ignored plot logic to do so.

How does Sweet Home Season 3 end?

Those hoping for a happy ending for Sweet Home mostly got it. Despite all the bloodshed, there seems to be hope for the survivors—human, monster, and neohumans alike. With Sang-won officially defeated, Hyun-su and the surviving members of the Crow Platoon evacuate the survivors. In the search for a new, safe home, the wayward band comes across a group of neohumans. As we learn from a Hyun-su voiceover, the two groups learn to live together. The assimilated community means that the surviving humans don’t have to live in fear of their probable, eventual monsterization. Even after turning, they will still have a home.  

In the final scene of the series, we see Hyun-su and Eun-hyeok meet up on a rooftop, where they also see Eun-yu. Eun-yu appears to be neohuman, like her brother. The scene is a callback to a moment in the very first episode of the show. In that scene, Hyun-su is contemplating stepping off the roof of the Green Home building to his death. Before he can, he notices Eun-yu practicing ballet. Watching Eun-yu dance across the rooftop reminds him of some of the joys of living. The two characters spend the rest of the series figuratively dancing around one another romantically. 

Though we never see Eun-yu and Hyun-su get together, the show ends with both Hyun-su and Eun-hyeok smiling at Eun-yu as walks across a Seoul rooftop, listening to music through a set of headphones. “As this endless hour continues,” Hyun-su tells us in voiceover, “we all require somewhere to wait, and somewhere to come home to. So, as we wait, we’ve decided to call this place Sweet Home.” Hyun-su has finally found some peace.