Breath in. Breath out. Breath in…

I DON’T LIKE THE ENDING OF SWEET HOME. There, I said it. After binge-watching the entire season and crying my eyes out, I had to sit down and try to understand my feelings toward it all. I concluded a day after finishing the show that I was not satisfied, and I can finally say what my biggest problem is. 

You see, Sweet Home’s first season is easily in my top 10 TV Shows of all time. The series stood out from all the post-apocalypse stories with the simple but powerful tool of having fantastically written characters. I easily fell in love with them, and they became dear to me, so much so that their untimely demise ultimately brought the biggest heartbreak. And although season 1’s story was condensed in one building – which I rarely enjoy in any genre – it managed to work flawlessly.  

Then season 2 rolled in, and while it was ultimately still a great season, it lost a little bit of its touch. The characters weren’t as nuanced as one would have hoped for, and they made the controversial decision to have the first season’s three main characters be a part of it at the beginning and end only, disappearing through the middle. Yet, the season still managed to be thrilling and brought something new to the Sweet Home story. 

So… I said in my Sweet Home articles before that I hoped that season 3 would be the last, and my wish came true. What didn’t come true is a satisfying end. But let me talk about it more as I break down the series with HEAVY SPOILERS. 

Season 3 starts where season 2 ended. Hyun-su (Song Kang) wakes up with his body taken over by his monster version, and Dr. Lim (Oh Jung-Se) meets his creation Sang-won stuck in Sang-Wook’s (Lee Jin-Wook) body. We progress from here, following three main storylines once more. Hyun-su’s story of trying to stay human despite the monsterization which ultimately comes down to an inner fight between his darker side and the version of him we’d come to know in season 1. The second storyline follows Sang-won’s desperate search to get free from Sang-Wook’s body. The third storyline – once again – focuses on the Crow Platoon members – mostly on Sergeant Kim Young-Hoo (Kim Mu-yeol) – and the survivors in the Stadium. 

Hyun-su’s first selfless deed comes when he decides to go after Yi-Kyung (Lee Si-young), who was turned into a monster by her daughter in season 2 and thrown into a sinkhole. While Hyun-su succeeds in turning the woman back into a human, Yi-Kyung is unstoppable and goes after her daughter right after she wakes up. Hyun-su, on the other hand, is once again taken over by his monster side and strikes a deal with Eun-Yoo (Go Min-Si) that if she manages to bring out the “good” Hyun-su, he will stuck around. If not, he will leave them behind. Their mini crew completes with walking green flag Park Chan-Young (Jin Young) and the little bit crazy Ha-Ni (Chae Won-Bin). I hope I don’t even have to mention that they ultimately parted ways mid-way through, even though the dynamic was working magnificently between them. 

Dr. Lim learns that his very first test subject, Sang-won, is alive and well and lives in Sang-Wook’s body. On top of that, we also learn that he is the long-lost fiancée of Yi-Kyung and, therefore, the father of the kid who can turn people into monsters (played by Kim Si-A). This is where my first plothole problem comes in. In season 1, it is Jung Ui-myeong (Kim Sung-Cheol) who portrays the monster who can become a parasite and take over another’s body. He gets into the dying Sang-Wook’s body and can’t get out of it for some reason. THEN, as he is trapped in Bamseom’s research department, he finds Sang-won barely alive in a tank. It was never once said or implied that the parasitic monster is actually Sang-won himself. Yet in season 3… Sang-won was the parasitic monster all along. Yay. Sure, they framed it in a way that served his character perfectly. We quickly learn that while Yi-Kyung was passed out from the pain the rapidly growing baby caused Sang-wook to get out of his hiding place and add a tiny part of himself to the baby. His big plan? Getting out of Sang-Wook’s problem-riddled body by jumping into his daughter’s. His ultimate help is the one who caused him the most pain: Dr. Lim.

So after Sang-Wook gives Dr. Lim an ultimatum to take them back to the Stadium so he can find his daughter, we also learn that the Crow Platoon’s soldiers who ended up in Bamseom looking for their fellow comrade are at the mercy of the special infectee’s. The only one surviving the whole ordeal is Sergeant Kim, who finds none other than Eun-Hyeok (Lee Do-Hyun) oni his way out. How did Eun-Hyeok get into captivate with a completely deformed face after showing up reborn at the end of season 2? I do not know. They don’t make that clear. But through him, we learn that the neohumans – aka the final stage of monsterization – are capable of being reborn after every death, basically making them immortal. They are fast, quick learners, and completely emotionless. So, if you were looking for an emotional reunion between brother and sister with Eun-Yoo and Eun-Hyeok, well, tough luck buddy. No such thing happens. This ultimately didn’t bother me, as the whole reunion was emotional for the reason that Eun-Yoo was so determined to get through to her brother. It brought back what made the first season so strong; their moments together were some of the best this season. It made it all the more emotional that Eun-Yoo started the monsterization process. Before parting ways with her brother and Hyun-su, he asked Hyun-su to make sure that she never becomes as emotionless as her brother. Broke my heart on multiple levels. 

The stadium parts of the story got weaker since season 2. It didn’t help that they only just now realised that other than Kim Yeong-Su (Choi Go) and Miss Cha (Kim Hee-Jung) also survived the devastating events of season 2. They failed to deepen the connection between these two survivors, in which Miss Cha, who lost her daughter in season 1, basically became the mother figure for Yeong-Su. If they had spent more time focusing on them instead of introducing completely forgettable characters we would have gotten an even more heartbreaking story here. 

By the time their relationship reaches its crescendo moment, it ultimately leaves very little impact on us viewers. 

However… I know I’ve been basically just listing my problems so far, and that won’t change now either. I will tell you the biggest sin they committed here: the final episode and Sang-Wook’s ending.

Listen. Sang-Wook was the best character in season 1. The thug with a heart of gold. By the end, he even sacrificed himself, and while it broke my heart, I was ultimately “happy” with the decision to bring him back, even if it was thanks to the parasitic monster taking over his body at the last minute. I was happy to see him back, even if he played a more evil part. 

However…

Even though I predicted that Sang-Wook would die in the end, this was not how I imagined it happening, and I was not happy with it at all. 

You see, Sang-won (the parasitic monster) walks into fire, finally gets out of Sang-Wook’s body and takes over his daughter’s at the end of episode 7. That already broke me that they let go of Sang-Wook so unceremoniously, but… BUT! In episode 8, in the final face-off between Hyun-su, Eun-Hyeok and Sang-won, Eun-Hyeok gets Sang-won out of the girl’s body. He first slips away and poses another, which they also get him out of, and THEN… Then… he steps out of the fire in Sang-Wook’s body one last time. My question is: How is Sang-Wook not burned to ashes, including his clothes? But that’s not what really pissed me off. What pissed me off is while Hyun-su and Eun-Hyeok are debating who should sacrifice themselves to get rid of Sang-won once and for all, it turns out that Sang-Wook was actually still alive and aware of everything that was happening. This only happened ONCE in season 2, where he tried to regain his body, and never again was it implied that Sang-Wook can still be in there somewhere, closed in his own mind. It would have explained it so well when Sang-won was unable to get out of his body because Sang-Wook was actually strong enough to hold him back to not possess someone else. Instead, they decided to put all of that into the final moments of the fight. While it is fully emotional to see Sang-Wook ultimately sacrifice himself to destroy the worst and most dangerous monster that came out of this monsterization, I so wish that they had put more of this storyline in the entirety of seasons 2 and 3. How fantastic it would have been to see Sang-Wook try and take control back over his body. It would have deepened his whole storyline so much more. Instead, as he sacrifices himself, we see a montage of all the inherently good things Sang-Wook did in season 1, and then he drags himself back into the fire, stopping Sang-won from escaping his death. Done. Yes, I cried, he was my favorite character, but I felt empty as well because the opportunity they missed with this storyline was huge. 

Big deep sigh… 

In the end, many from the stadium survive the whole ordeal. They get out of there and we join them again as Hyun-su helps gather more of the survivors. As they go out looking for a new home, they come across a bunch of neohumans wandering aimlessly, and they decide to take them in and work with them. We get a bunch of pictures with narrations, and the whole thing closes off with a callback to season 1. Hyun-su is back on the roof of Green Home where it all started, with Eun-Hyeok by his side as they look up at Eun-Yoo smiling. The new world is the Sweet Home. 

This ending was not what I expected at all. I don’t know if my frustration with it all comes from my expectations toward it or from something else. 

Although I spent the entire review complaining about the things that annoyed me, I will still say that I cried more times than I could count. There were still beautifully done moments, and ultimately, we’ve got somewhat of a happy ending to it all. The acting was top-notch, Song Kang was born to play Hyun-su, and he balances the character’s two sides beautifully. It was great to get back Lee Do-hyun as Eun-Hyeok, even though I wanted to punch him in the face more often than not this time around. 

I think, my biggest problem is that Sweet Home lost its way by the end. Season one was all about the characters; they were well-written, memorable and lovable. Their deaths were impactful. By the end, only three Green Home survivors are left, and they remained the best characters this show has to offer. If the creators had spent more time focusing on characters in this season as well, I think the end would have been more satisfactory, but because they brought in so many new faces in season 2, this task would have been impossible to manage. And alas… 

While I am happy that Sweet Home closes its story down with the message of accepting each other as we are and finding peace within ourselves, I also think there was more here that was left unsaid. 

Seasons 1 and 2 remain top-notch TV for me, but the ending of the series will go down as a disappointment all together. So, with a very heavy heart, I have to give 7 out of 10 soup rating to the final season of Sweet Home. 

Thank you to all the creators, cast and crew that brought this story to life. You will have a very special place in my heart. Forever.