TVING’s newest drama “duty after school” has released its first part on friday, here is a recap of the its ending and information about when part 2 will air.
UPDATE: “Duty After School” Part 2 Ending Explained
“Duty After School” part 1 episode 6
The drama starts with the team stumbling upon a high school student who is very shocked by the situation. They re-group and take the survivors and go to shelter 8 only to find out that everyone has been killed there.
They search the premise and find no aliens in the building, the students who got rescued said they waited for help and did as the adults told them to but all of their friends ended up dead.
Lee Choon-Ho and Won Bin discuss how the shelter is in the outskirts and the smaller spheres should not have been able to find it.
One of the students they saved was very traumatized by the situation, she goes out at night and is followed by Yoo-Jung who then finds out she’s trying to commit suicide, she tries to talk her out of it. Then she snaps at Lee Choon-Ho once he arrives and blames him for what happened. She shoots at him but Won-Bin interferes and gets shot in the shoulders instead. He survives.
The students are upset by what she did but understand she’s very traumatized and upset about how everything turned out.
After Won Bin gets treated, Lee Choon-Ho tells the kids to prepare because they’re leaving tomorrow. He’s disobeying orders and the students discuss if he’ll be served the death penalty as a result.
Na-Ra and Chi-Yeol are on duty and Na Ra discovers the spheres far away and she finds out they’re somewhat communicating with each other. They tell the team and find out they’re headed in the direction of another shelter since it will have lots of people they can eat.
They decide on not abandoning the other shelter, so they conduct a plan. They will lure the spheres into the biggest shelter building and load it with explosives. Once they’re inside the building, they will trap them and kill them.
They begin making sounds and luring them in but they travel faster than they had anticipated. The team is working on making sure the explosives are in place but they have less than 10 minutes before they arrive.
Some of the students are already there in the other building but some of them including Won Bin and Lee Choon-Ho still have more explosives left to put in place, thus, Lee Choon-Ho volunteers and tells the students to stop trying to put them in place and to escape, he’ll follow them. They reluctantly do so.
Lee Choon-Ho puts them in place but the aliens are already there, he tries to escape and fights them off, he even jumps from a higher ground doing so, but then, he runs out of ammo and finds out he’s now trapped.
The rest of the team members including Won Bin arrive at the safe location and wait for orders from Lee Choon-Ho.
Lee Choon-Ho locks himself up in a room while the aliens try to break in. he then gives them the orders via walkie talkies to detonate the place as he cannot escape anymore.
The students begin to tear up and refuse to do so, everyone starts crying. Lee Choon-Ho again says this is an order and says to do it. He turns off his device. Won Bin tries to push the button but is unable to do it so Yoo-Jung ends up doing it.
The building explodes with all the creatures in it.
The end.
When will “Duty After School” part 2 air?
According to TVING, it will air some time this April but the exact premiere date has not been set yet. The 2nd part will be only 4 episodes long.
Does “Duty After School” part 1 have a happy ending?
No, it has a very sad ending. The platoon leader Lee Choon-Ho ended up sacrificing himself and died along with the many aliens they trapped in the building to kill in order to save the lives of other people in the nearby shelter.
Does Lee Choon-Ho die?
Yes, he ends up sacrificing himself for the team.
Did Park Eun-Young [lim Se Mi’s character] die?
Yes, she died in episode 2 of the drama fighting off the aliens so the students have enough time to escape.
“Duty After School” part 1- initial thoughts
this was very sad…. Leader Lee is dead >.<
My understanding is that the production team used the bigger older actors as the face of the promotions of the drama despite them dying off early on. From the get-go, it was clear this will be somewhat centered on the younger cast themselves.
For the death of Lee Choon-Ho, I thought it was done poorly. I would have much rathered him dying saving one of the students fighting them off than him staying behind to connect some explosives. Because if you think of it, he could have left it and gone with the team instead of staying behind, once one part explodes and catches on fire, the rest will follow and the building will crumble. The last ‘connection’ to the explosives didn’t need that push Lee Choon-Ho aimed for.
But I get it, they needed that ending to justify the 2nd part which will be only 4 episodes long.
The 2nd part looks grim. The students need guidance and their military training is bad, not at the fault of their own, so killing off the platoon leader will definitely make matters worse.
I suspect Won Bin also won’t survive for much longer considering he’s injured and needs help.
Like I said, the future looks grim. They either find another leader to lead them, or they will likely die one by one. It seems the aliens have not been beaten and can even communicate with each other looking for sources of food, which means the 2nd part will either end with some form of miracle and the aliens disappear or the students die, or they find a functioning shelter and strive towards rebuilding a society.
For starters in terms of script, I’d say its fine. Its filled with conveniences whenever its needed but it captures what would likely happen if the government just started recruiting high school students. It does a good job demonstrating how the system, the leaders and the government keep their people in the dark until the very end sacrificing the entire human race in the process.
The metaphors are done well.
In terms of performances, its 50-50, some of the young actors do a good job, others do a barely ok job. I won’t fault the kids for picking what could likely be their big break but the key student characters should have been played by either former child actors or actors who had more talent.
The girls definitely did a better job across the board and the boys were mixed at best. Some of their facial expressions barely sell the drama, the facial expressions fail to capture the severity of the scenes they’re enacting.
I don’t watch high school dramas for this reason but this one had a very interesting plot hence the exception.
I wouldn’t say I look forward to part 2 that much because I am afraid it won’t end with 10 episodes. With such type of production that took nearly 10 months [from August 2021 to May 2022] to make and has been in the post-production phase for another 9 to 10 months, if a 2nd season was to happen, it’ll likely be a while.
I might be going ahead of myself, but I hope to God, it ends with part 2. It’ll be interesting to see if they can wrap up the very messy situation with only 4 more episodes. I can see it happen but I can also picture them aiming for a 2nd season.
The script is not very well written, partly because I think it’s adapted from a web novel. It seems like the focus is on the emotional development of the students, but how they “shaped up” was introduced too late into the drama, and the adult actors were probably given too much prominence. It’s either going to be something planned as two seasons depending on how well it’s received, or it’s going to get a cliffhanger ending by the end of the next 4 episodes. I do not hope so, but I think the students are going to die off one-by-one.
epal
I hope leader should be coming back in part 2 because of the alien can’t be killed by splinter. According to the movie , that is impossible and leader who need to guide his team . He can be survive in collapsed building and he is a model role of this movie .furthermore, he know about sphere very well.
Uhh this comment gave me some hopes.
Do you think leader Lee chun ho really died in the end????
They ending was really traumatic , hope he comes back in part 2
killing Leader Lee was a so cruel and it’s disappointing! should’ve let his character lives!
I think the leader’s dying was so unfair and unnecessary because the other bombs where already in place and the goal was to kill as much as possible not kill them all at once so somehow him dying was in vain too there are still plenty other aliens still living , imagine how he was like a standing in parent for those kids and a strong hope / bound for them but now he is gone , it Dosent matter how they plan to end the series those kids have lost their last hope and they might start losing confidence in themselves which can lead to their deaths but I was hooked to the movie it was just very well written from the beginning and I cried in the ending
How about Jang Young Hoon? Never thought he would be the first to die? Or did he died already?
I think the leader dying was too predictable, I just knew he would die sacrificing himself. A little part of me wishes he survived despite everything but it would definitely be extremely miraculous. Because there aren’t that many episodes I haven’t gotten too attached to the characters but I do hope for at least a good-ish ending for them!
No need to for MR. Lee to die…. They have the whole day in the shelter. And rush putting the dynamite. And why did they turn on the sound when they were not yet done installing the dynamite.
And one of the student knows that spheres can be kill will cold substance
Until now I’m still confused about the whereabouts of the soldiers that they rescued in episode 5. I’m not really sure if I just didn’t notice them but it seems that they just disappeared throughout the ending. After one of them shoot the Sgt. nothing particular happened next.