Summary
The ending of The Glory is undeniably a mess, but it manages to tie up virtually every loose end while also suggesting that there might be more to come in the future.
This article contains major spoilers for The Glory Season 1 Episode 16, including an open discussion of the ending of The Glory Part 2.
The finale of The Glory might charitably be described as “all over the place”. Some might call it a complete mess, although there’s undeniably a great sense of catharsis and even some touching emotions in the midst of the many, many loose ends it feels the need to tie off. Either way, though, a great deal happens within it, and the extra-long runtime feels necessary to house not just a conclusion to the first season but also, in some ways, a setup for the second. We’re here to explain it all.
Given the unusual structure of this episode, we won’t be going through it chronologically, necessarily, but we’ll be summarizing how each of the key subplots panned out and what happened to the core characters.
The Glory Season 1 Episode 16 Recap
Who killed Myeong-o?
This might seem like an obvious question since we’ve been operating on the assumption that Yeon-jin killed him this whole time. She herself even believes that, and ultimately so do the authorities. This episode reveals, though, that it was actually Kim Gyeong-ran who delivered the final blow to Myeong-o.
Gyeong-ran was the victim the gang settled on after Dong-eun, and they kept her around as something halfway between an employee and a slave. She had lived a life of complete fear, never daring to rise up against her oppressors, but Dong-eun obviously inspired her. To my knowledge, though, nobody knows about this except Dong-eun, whom Gyeong-ran confesses to.
How does Yeon-Jin get arrested?
In the process of her confession, Gyeong-ran gives Dong-eun the murder weapon, which she has kept hidden. Since Dong-eun and Yeo-jeong have already done the heavy lifting in terms of planting Yeon-jin’s DNA on Myeong-o so the police can match it to the DNA found on the lighter recovered from the scene of So-hee’s death, this evidence is the final nail in Yeon-jin’s coffin. Dong-eun plants it at Siesta and gives the police an anonymous tip, which leads them right to it.
When Yeon-jin is sent a video in which the murder weapon is visible in the background, she rushes to Siesta and stumbles upon the police CSI team investigating the scene. She’s arrested there and then.
How does Jae-jun die?
With Yeon-jin more or less dealt with, Dong-eun sets her sights on Jae-jun, and she enlists Hye-jeong to do it. Now mute after being stabbed in the neck by Sa-ra, Hye-jeong is desperate for revenge, so she agrees to swap Jae-jun’s glaucoma eyedrops for a more toxic replacement. While this is certainly a contributing factor in Jae-jun’s demise, though, it isn’t quite the end of the story.
Blinded, Jae-jun ends up getting T-boned while in his car, and after stumbling into a construction site, hears movement nearby. He’s eventually pushed from the top of the site into a pool of cement by a man who isn’t clearly identified but is obviously Do-Yeong, who leaves for the UK with his daughter Ye-sol.
The Glory Part 2 Ending
Do Dong-eun and Yeo-jeong end up together?
Episode 15 ended on a bit of a cliffhanger with the revelation that Yeo-jeong knew about So-hee and Dong-eun’s mission even before they were formally introduced. This is true, but there’s nothing especially sinister about his motives. He decided from the jump that he would do anything for Dong-eun, up to and including becoming her executioner, because he believed so strongly in her mission due to his own experiences having lost his father to a sadistic murderer named Yeong-cheong.
Dong-eun asks Yeo-jeong to help her until “the end”. When her mission is complete she interprets the end as committing suicide, however, Yeo-jeong’s mother implores her to keep living so that she can help Yeo-jeong live his own life. He’s still in the hell of grief, and she doesn’t believe he’ll be able to survive it without Dong-eun. So, she agrees, and in an inversion of the dynamic we’ve seen throughout the season, she becomes his executionor, and helps him to take revenge on Yeong-cheong.
So, Dong-eun and Yeo-jeong do end up together. It’s implied that they complete their revenge mission and then move on to pastures new, which one imagines is even more revenge. They’ll need another pair of hands for that, and The Glory ends with Hyeon-nam receiving a text from Dong-eun telling her that she’s once again in need of an assistant.
You can stream The Glory Season 1 Episode 16 exclusively on Netflix. What did you think of the ending of The Glory Part 2? Let us know in the comments.
