Dear X was crazy, giving a finale so unhinged you couldn’t stop watching. Somehow, it’s even crazier than Penthouse and that’s saying something. Here’s what happened. [SPOILERS AHEAD]
At the height of her career, Baek Ah Jin wins Best Actress. But just as she delivers her acceptance speech on stage, a documentary exposing her true, manipulative nature drops online. To make matters worse, it’s none other than Yoon Jun Seo who testifies as the key witness, publicly revealing her crime as her father’s true killer. He arrives after her downfall to “pick her up” as always, but this time, he suggests they die together, driving their car off a cliff.
Ah Jin survives, breaking free from Jun Seo’s grasp and leaving him to die alone. The ending credits roll as a bloody and disheveled Ah Jin looks back at the crash site, laughing and crying.
Was It Good or Bad?
From the beginning, the narrative pointed toward tragedy. Dear X was not about redemption, it was ambition sharpened into destruction and it couldn’t end well for a woman who grew to care for no one but herself. Kim Yoo-jung absolutely devoured this role (please give her the Best Actress award), as it was not an easy character to portray.
And the men… there are so many! Having watched Kim Young-dae in Penthouse, I was excited to see him here, but his character, the man who “betrays” and “loves” Ah Jin to the end, is not easy to like. While he is portrayed at the one with a conscience, his actions can be selfish. Meanwhile, Kim Do-hoon’s Kim Jae Oh ends up being the complete opposite, literally making the ultimate sacrifice as he walks into his own death just so Ah Jin can use it as leverage against her husband. In the end, it’s for nothing, she loses everything anyway.
From Kim Ji-Hoon to Hwang In-Yeop and Hong Jong Hyun, their star-studded appearances as the boss, boyfriend and husband in Dear X all made an impact, good or bad (especially for the latter, a chaebol who never got his comeuppance). Maybe for a show this dark, it’s fitting that some sins go unpunished.
