*Warning: This article contains major spoilers for Beef season 2.*
Beef season 2 comes to a chaotic conclusion in its eighth episode, as the warring couples converge on Seoul, South Korea, at the behest of billionaire Chairwoman Park (Youn Yuh-jung).
Country club managers Josh (Oscar Isaac) and Lindsay (Carey Mulligan) were drawn into a feud when their younger employees, Ashley (Cailee Spaeny) and Austin (Charles Melton), attempted to blackmail them with footage of an alarming argument.
However, their targets wouldn’t go down without a fight, sparking a cycle of retaliation that spanned from petty to pernicious, including two particularly shocking instances of drinks being grossly contaminated.
By episode eight, both couples are forced into an uneasy alliance as their lives became forfeit to a larger plot by Park, who was left scrambling to shore up her position after a patient died under her husband’s care.
If you want an overview of how the Beef season 2 finale unfolded, read on for our full explanation of the ending – including some thoughts from Isaac, Mulligan and Melton, plus the meaning of that symbol in the final scene.
Beef season 2 ending explained
Beef season 2 comes to an end in Seoul, South Korea, where Lindsay, Ashley and Austin are summoned as the formidable Chairwoman Park (Youn Yuh-jung) attempts to wrap up her husband’s crisis once and for all.
Dr Kim (Song Kang-ho) had accidentally killed someone in a surgical procedure botched by his uncontrollable tremors, with Park going to great efforts to cover up the wrongful death through bribery.
To that end, Josh became a useful tool, as it just so happened that he’d started embezzling from her club at around the same time, unwittingly setting himself up as the perfect fall guy for her plot.
Josh follows Lindsay and the others to South Korea, fearing that she may be in grave danger, but only causes more trouble by calling attention to them in the midst of an (almost successful) escape attempt.
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As the two feuding couples are mournfully marched back to the Chairwoman’s facility, they are separated into rooms with adjoining walls, through which the partners manage to finally express how they’ve been feeling.
Lindsay is still scheming on how to get out of their predicament, but Josh appears to have resigned himself to his fate, having come away from a psychedelic drug trip with a need to face up to his responsibilities.
“I heard a podcast that said the average human only has 960 months to live,” he reflects, in a tacit acknowledgement of his anxiety around ageing and mortality. “Isn’t that crazy?”
Lindsay responds: “Well, we haven’t wasted it.”
Josh tearfully agrees, knowing the sacrifice he’s about to make.
Why does Austin betray Eunice?
During this same period, Ashley is also still attempting to strategise, while Austin senses that the writing is on the wall for their relationship and tries to break away.
He theorises that she doesn’t love him at all, but simply fears abandonment, which is the true reason for the impulsive actions she’s taken to keep their relationship alive.
Ashley appears, on some level, to agree, as the tough words prompt her to finally hand over the USB drive filled with incriminating information about Chairwoman Park; the very same one that she claimed not to have stolen just hours earlier.
Austin flees the building, intending to link up with Park’s exiled assistant Eunice (Seoyeon Jang), with whom he’d plotted to bring down the corrupt billionaire. But something quickly changes during the taxi ride to the police station.
After she hesitates to proclaim that she ‘loves’ Austin, his chirpiness fades and it becomes clear he’s having second thoughts.
Ultimately, he betrays Eunice (perhaps fatally) and hands the drive to Park herself instead, in exchange for lucrative promotions for himself and Ashley.
It’s quite the heel turn, even from a character whose soft demeanour has often disguised his manipulative side, which has reared its head multiple times throughout the season.
This must rank as Austin’s most selfish choice, however, as it places his own comfort and long-term prospects above Eunice’s immediate safety. (We do, after all, know that Chairwoman Park isn’t above having people killed to preserve her status.)
Sensing that she may not feel as strongly for him as he thinks he does for her, Austin retreats to the safer ground of his flawed-yet-familiar relationship with Ashley, exposing that he’s just as fearful of abandonment as he alleges her to be.
What’s changed after the Beef season 2 time-jump?
Having agreed to take the fall in order to get the others off the hook, Josh is arrested by Korean police, but as he’s dragged away Lindsay manages to steal one last kiss – and promises that she’ll wait for him.
Accompanied by the swelling original score by Finneas O’Connell, it’s a romantic pledge that, for a moment, seems as if it may actually be honoured.
The constructed story becomes that Dr Kim (killed by one of Park’s goons) and Josh (sworn to secrecy) were lone actors in an embezzlement plot to cover up the former’s gross negligence – freeing Chairwoman Park from any blame or repercussions.
Eight years on from the madness of the Beef season 2 finale, we learn that Austin’s deal with Park elevated himself and Ashley to the positions that Josh and Lindsay once held.
In fact, their life has become near-identical: running the country club, making friends with the same elite members and generally appearing to be the perfect couple. But as soon as they’re alone, it’s clear that the relationship is rotting from the inside.
Rather than heed the warnings of Josh and Lindsay, they’ve followed them down the exact same path. “Despite what generation you’re born in, we’re more alike than we are not,” said Melton about the ending, in an interview with Radio Times.
As for their former bosses, Lindsay didn’t wait for Josh as she’d promised while hopped up on adrenaline, but instead ended up with one of the affluent gentlemen she’d been texting throughout the season.
For his part, Josh thrived in prison, becoming as deft a smuggler and trader as he was a leisure club manager. Upon release, he seems remarkably content with his ex-wife’s decision to move on.
“I’m really glad that everyone I love is happy,” he concludes on a local news interview, and Lindsay seems genuinely moved as she watches from her lavish home – before her new family comes rushing in.
On the reaction to this bittersweet outcome, Isaac told Radio Times: “Hopefully [viewers feel] some pathos… like they’ve really gone on a journey with these people that they’ve both judged harshly and found some compassion for.”
What does the symbol mean?
Beef season 2 ends with an abstract image of its main characters living out key periods of their lives in a large circle resembling a clock, with segments separating each relationship.
Time has, above all else, been the key driver of this season, with Josh and Lindsay finding themselves haunted by their lost youth, while Ashley is singularly focused on a very particular future for herself and Austin (which he seems less enthused about).
Throughout the season, the four main characters have also imagined themselves as other people in surreal moments, as they attempt to envision the lives they could have lived – or may yet still, if they take the gamble of changing things.
At the centre of this clock is Chairwoman Park, visiting the grave of her first husband, whom she met long before Dr Kim and loved far more. There, she reflects on the nature of mortality.
“Even all the money in the world cannot buy time, ever passing,” she muses. “Seasons, ever changing. This great, even beautiful cycle of life, leaves us no choice but to accept it gladly.”
Therefore, the symbol seems to be a representation of time’s cyclical nature, showing how relationships rise, falter and often fail as the same mistakes and behaviours repeat through generations.
You can clearly see this in Austin and Ashley’s story, which uncannily echoes that of Josh and Lindsay, while Chairwoman Park professes to be filled with regret – just as her own late mother was before her.
In ending their relationship when they did, Josh and Lindsay may have gained a chance to break free of this vicious loop. Or will old habits emerge once again?
Mulligan told Radio Times that she “really loved” creator Lee Sung Jin’s exploration of “people struggling with time” as a central theme of Beef season 2.
“Whether it’s time that’s passed, or time that they have, or what they’ll get in the time that they have coming,” she said. “How we cope with that is a big part of [the story] and that’s universal, obviously.”
Beef season 2 is available to watch on Netflix. Sign up for Netflix from £5.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream.
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