Summary
Sweet Home follows the trend of virtually all Netflix Originals by blatantly teeing up a sequel, but the finale was a decent payoff for the nine preceding episodes.
This recap of Sweet Home season 1, episode 10 contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous episode by clicking these words.
The finale of Sweet Home begins where we left off, with Hyun-su emerging from the elevator with his new friend, only to be greeted by the gun barrels of his old friends. He explains his new buddy is like him and encourages everyone to chill out, which they do. For now, anyway.
Hyun-su’s new friend gives him some backstory on volunteering for various experiments to remove the infection from him, all to no success. He’s looking increasingly bonkers but is dressing his story up in rather grandiose terms. He believes that humans and monsters can’t coexist, and to prove his point, the residents burn up the goo monster that helped Yeong-su in the vents.
The others are skeptical of Hyun-su’s new mate Ui-myeong, and Eun-hyeok even says that the report guide sounds like a good deal. Allegiances are being tested here. It’s only made worse when Ui-myeong tells Eun-hyeok and Yi-kyung about the military’s final solution, Operation Golden Hour, a plan to indiscriminately wipe out everyone and everything.
Meanwhile, Du-sik begins to turn.
When Sang-wook finds Yu-ri having an asthma attack, he tries to leave with her and Ui-myeong stops them. Hyun-su intervenes and says he’ll leave with Ui-myeong, so it doesn’t matter if the others go and report them. He gives the car keys back to Sang-wook and he carries Yu-ri outside, but Ui-myeong opens fire on them and starts indiscriminately mowing people down inside. He has lost it completely, insisting nobody can leave, and he seems too powerful for any of them to take him on.
Of course, now comes the moment we’ve all been waiting for — Hyun-su turns into a monster with a wing of pulsing spikes, like a Final Fantasy villain or a Resident Evil tyrant. He demolishes Ui-myeong easily, but Du-sik is able to return him back to his human form, and Hyun-su breaks down in tears.
Outside, Sang-wook and Yu-ri touchingly die together, hand in hand.
When Hyun-su wakes up, he’s looking much more like he did in the first scene of the first episode, when we were introduced to him in the flash-forward. He can’t remember anything.
After ensuring that Su-yeong and Yeong-su know to look after each other with the help of a couple of medals, Mr An dies in his sleep. He’s buried alongside Byeong-il. But while digging, Yi-kyung finds a basement door to the underground tunnels Mr. An was looking for. He found them after all. At that moment, it starts to snow.
Also at that moment, the pure monster form of Ui-Myeong makes off in the armored vehicle, and before long the military is outside. The last remaining outlaw, having ventured into the tunnels, detonates their explosive booby-traps, leading the military to open fire. The rest of the residents take shelter in the tunnels, but Hyun-su disappears, having decided he needs to go outside. Eun-hyeok follows him and promises Eun-yu he’ll return.
On his way out, Hyun-su crosses paths with Eun-hyeok, but he has made his decision. This is the scene we saw in the opening of the first episode. Hyun-su makes his way towards the soldiers as the others venture through the tunnels. Eun-hyeok doesn’t go back, and Yi-kyung is forced to drag Eun-yu screaming through the tunnel as the Green Home collapses around Eun-hyeok and his nose bleeds.
As he walks towards the soldiers and eats bullet after bullet, Hyun-su’s memories come back to him. He walks into the light.
In the tunnels, Bom, the little dog, leads everyone to the exit. A ladder takes everyone to street level, where they’re surrounded by soldiers. They’re loaded onto trucks and told they must survive by Yi-kyung. It looks like Season 1 is to be continued. And this is all but confirmed when Hyun-su wakes up in the back of an armored vehicle driven by the monster formerly known as Ui-myeong, now wearing the body of Sang-wook.
