Na Kuk-Hee convinced Producer Bae to stop the broadcast. However, Sung-Hoon brings up the vacation home and how his dad received sexual favours from Yoon-Jung, so he’s not exactly a saint here. Sung-Hoon demands he ask for forgiveness but instead, he grits his teeth and tells his son he has no intention of doing so. ..
Sung-Joon shows up just in time as he holds a shotgun and shoots Sung-Hoon in the arm. He wants to try and make it look like a suicide to protect them all but Sung-Joon refuses. In fact, he tackles his father to the round and arrests him for attempted murder. As for Sung-Hoon, Sung-Joon holds his brother who admits that he never, ever saw Sung-Joon as family and only wanted him as an instrument of his revenge plan.
What happens to Chief Yeom and Sung-Joon’s parents?
Sung-Joon is angry and beats him down before eventually arresting Sung-Hoon. Eun-Ki happens to be outside and she shows him video footage from that meeting inside the restaurant. Unfortunately, it shows his parents complicit and knowing about Producer Bae’s murder. Eun-Ki is convinced that the whole world should know what’s happened, and as a result, it’s broadcast across the nation.
Chief Yeom is arrested for his part in this too. Yeom is confident they have no evidence… until Sung-Joon plays the voice recording incriminating him completely from an earlier chat he had, ordering Bae to be killed.
Next, Sung-Joon turns his attention to his mother, who tries to bargain with Sung-Joon and even suggests they work together to cover this up. He’s had enough. After sustaining a slap to the face for his troubles, police show up and Sung-Joon does the honour of putting handcuffs on Kuk-Hee and arresting her.
What happened to Yu-Na? Was she part of the plan?
Sung-Hoon is questioned by Eun-Ki, where he admits that Yu-Na and Tae-Ho weren’t actually part of the plan, with Yu-Na in particular not meant to be killed. Yoon-Jae was the one who did this though and Sung-Hoon was not happy when he found out. The explanation does nothing for Eun-Ki though, who decides to go out of her way to expose all the horrific incidents that occurred in Hope Orphanage all those years ago. She speaks to Sung-Joon first, who’s not doing so well and clearly struggling.
In prison, Yoon-Jae meets Crazy Dog, who is also incarcerated. The two men quickly become enemies, using makeshift knives to fight. Crazy Dog emerges as the victor, stabbing Yoon-Jae several times and leaving him with a bloody mess. As he begins cutting into Yoon-Jae’s mouth, just like he did to Ji-Eun, Yoon-Jae reaches up and stabs Crazy Dog in the neck. The two men both bleed out and die in the process. ..
Sung-Hoon, a young man, attempts to commit suicide with a pair of scissors he’s stashed away. He almost dies from excessive blood loss, but he’s still alive. However, he has cuts and scars all over his body from self-harming, which Sung-Joon finds out about when he’s brought to hospital. Sung-Joon grits his teeth and tells his brother to live until the end – that’s the only way he repents for his sins.
What happens at Sung-Hoon’s trial?
Prosecutors argue that Sung-Hoon killed Yoon-Jung in cold blood and they are trying to prove that he was motivated by revenge. They also allege that he was influenced by the fact that Attorney Park defended him and revealed the truth about Yoon-Jung’s death. However, Sung-Hoon’s defense team argues that he didn’t kill her after all and they even uncovered Yoon-Jung’s body too. They believe that this was the catalyst for him deciding to start his revenge and kill all involved at Hope Welfare Center.
The nurse tells the court how she was raped by the manager, Crazy Dog, and how she fell pregnant with Eun-Ki. She is scared to actually give a statement 20 years ago but now that most of the people have been arrested, she has the courage to step forward.
Sung-Hoon is not happy with the verdict and feels that he was never given a fair chance in the Welfare Center. He only called for a jury trial because he wanted a lighter sentence and to have Hope exposed to a larger audience. He apologizes for his actions but it’s clear that this is not going to change anything. Sung-Hoon is sentenced to life imprisonment. ..
How does Blind season 1 end?
Sung-Joon visits his brother in prison, hoping he can escape the past. As he walks down the hallway back to his cell, we flash to the past in Hope Welfare Center with Sung-Hoon turning from a child back to an adult.
As the final scene fades to black, we see Eun-Ki coaching a bunch of kids playing football. Suddenly, all of the kids in the scene are from Hope Welfare Center. Sung-Joon wonders what may have happened had Eun-Ki been there to help them back then.
The Episode Review
Blind wraps up with a poignant and emotional finale that manages to do a great job with its mystery and thrills right up to the very end. It was perhaps inevitable that Sung-Hoon would get life behind bars, but seeing both Crazy Dog and Yoon-Jae kill each other feels like a sense of poetic irony given the pair have been arguably the most evil out of the bunch of characters here. ..
The way Blind frames this idea of being mentally traumatized to the point of becoming a psychopath is really interesting. You can completely understand the motivations of Sung-Hoon and Yoon-Jae, although as Eun-Ki said herself, there is absolutely no justification for murder. This really rings through across the season and these later episodes have definitely done a good job of capturing this.
Sung-Hoon’s parents and Chief Yeom don’t really get much in the way of punishment onscreen, at least not in the way that we see it. It would have been nice to actually see them getting a trial and potentially be incriminated alongside Sung-Hoon, but that’s a minor point.
The Blind has been one of the best thrillers this year and while some K-dramas tend to fizzle out, this one has maintained an aura of being an action-packed mystery with tinges of tragedy throughout. The final scenes only exemplify that, and although there is justice, it comes with a lot of bittersweet lasting feelings about how badly these kids were treated.
The show’s title “Blind” is obviously synonymous with how us, as the audience, have been kept in the dark for most of the show’s run, but also to the people inside the story, with so many adults blind to the horrors these kids had to endure at Hope Welfare Center. All in all, Blind is easily one of the best shows this year and tops things off with a wonderful finale. ..
