“The Escape Of The Seven” Season 1 Ending Explained

SBS’s weekend drama “The Escape Of The Seven” has wrapped up its run for its first season, here is a recap of its finale and its ending explained!

“The Escape Of The Seven” episode 17 recap

The episode begins with Mone watching what was happening with Do Hyuk and his father, then she sees Do Hyuk near her house. She takes him in and treats him. she then installs a spy app on Geum La-Hui’s phone and listens to all of her conversations with Matthew Lee.

We see how they pulled off what they did to expose Matthew Lee and Geum La-Hui.

Mone and DO Hyuk find out where the money is buried, its in a kids’ playground. He goes there to check it and finds the secretary of his real father waiting there for him. Cha Ju-Ran came then to steal the money as they predicted, so the secretary confiscated the van and drove it to Mone, Do Hyuk and Yang Jin-Mo’s location.

Back to Matthew Lee and Geum La-Hui who are fighting and their fight is being livestreamed. They go out to face the press after being exposed and attempt to deny everything they’ve been arguing about.

While Song Ji-Sun is monitoring the kid audition with Go Myoung-Ji, Go Myoung-Ji finds out Matthew Lee and Geum La-Hui were both exposed. She is then confronted by Song Ji-Sun who reveals who her sister is, she didn’t reveal anything because Mone promised to do that herself.

When Matthew escapes the press and goes to the hospital, he finds out that Chairman Shim Yong had escaped.

Meanwhile, Mone goes to see Yang Jin-Mo and her daughter and they both argue. Mone says she’ll reveal that the daughter is K’s daughter, and the daughter overhears them arguing. Yang Jin-Mo refuses that because it means she’ll live as the daughter of a psychopath. The daughter runs away and calls her grandma.

Meanwhile, Do Hyuk is accompanying Chairman Shim Yong to the emergency press conference. There, he reveals that Matthew is indeed Shim Jun-Seok and he’s pretended to be Lee Hwi-So and then attempted to conceal his identity as Matthew. He also says he’s crazy. He reveals Matthew is Secretary Gu Kang-Jae’s son as he had replaced the two kids when they were babies. Do Hyuk is his real son and the heir of the group. He reveals all of this while he’s deeply injured and ends up collapsing as he’s saying that his son is innocent.

Geum La-Hui takes all the hard drives and escapes barely before police reach her, she tries to go back to her place but cannot do that. She then attempts to reach out to Cha Ju-Ran and the other two for support and they all refuse her request.

Matthew is pissed he’s been cornered, so he calls Mone and tells her to expose where Do Hyuk is and everything will end. He also scolds his own father and tells him he needs to die for him.

They end up getting Matthew into their hiding place and nearly have the opportunity to kill him, but he threatens to kill Mone with a glass piece as Do Hyuk is about to shoot and then, Matthew’s people show up and arrest all of them.

Cha Ju-Ran, Go Myoung-Ji and Nam Chul-Woo are all on the run, but they cannot smuggle themselves out of this place, then Cha Ju-Ran calls Geum La-Hui for help. She dupes them and drugs them and then takes them to where Matthew wants them to be. But she then also gets trapped with them.

Meanwhile, Secretary Gu Kang-Jae goes to where Lee Hwi-So and Kang Ki-Tak are and plants bombs, he then detonates them and kills himself too. Before that, he calls his son to tell him he loves him.

Luckily, Lee Hwi-So and Kang Ki-Tak took the boat and ran away before the bombs went off.

Now, all the seven people are trapped inside a building. Matthew sends his men to ‘hunt’ them with guns, they ask them to run away and slowly traps them and makes them go to the rooftop.

Barely surviving what he set up, Matthew is there waiting on the rooftop. As Do Hyuk rushes towards him, he shoots him in the stomach. He then tells the rest if they don’t want to die, they must join hands with him. slowly but surely everyone does.

Matthew then says they’re all in this together and if anyone betrays any of them, the punishment is death. He set off the bombs and since three minutes have passed, they all leave in a helicopter and leave Do Hyuk to die.

Luckily, Lee Hwi-So and Kang Ki-Tak arrive just in time to rescue Do Hyuk. Lee Hwi-So even thanks him for what he’s done to help his daughter. However, Lee Hwi-So tells Kang Ki-Tak to take Do Hyuk and leave, a huge building structure that caught on fire falls on him injuring him.

Then Kang Ki-Tak sees how bad the situation is, he jumps from the rooftop with Do Hyuk.

The team of the seven watches as the building collapses due to the bombs.

The end.

“The Escape Of The Seven” season 1 ending explained- FAQ

Did you like “The Escape Of The Seven” ending?

“The Escape Of The Seven” ending- review

This was a very expected ending. I just can’t wait to see how the screenwriter spins it that somehow even though Do Hyuk jumped from like a 40-story building, he survived.

Not that I expect it to make sense because it’s a Kim Sun-Ok drama but because I think it’ll be hilarious whatever reasons she comes up with.

Expecting sense in a Kim Sun-Ok drama is an odd to thing to do so I just stopped that, but this time, its not me, but a large number of Korean viewers who seem to have a lot to say about the general direction of her work, the writing and such. But the thing is, the criticism levied at her writing has been discussed among the critical circles, so… its not news, its just that this time its outrageously in your face and the competition happens to have had a much better tighter script.

This also does not mean her work does not have an audience because that’s a lie, it does. A lot of people enjoy such types of works and there is nothing wrong with that. Its just that for Koreans, this time this time slot had a better thing on, so it was a matter of choice.

She had the chance to make this different based on her reputation for success but she went with a very similar base plot, very similar to the Penthouse which she ran to the ground, eventually. I understand her choice, but I don’t necessarily agree with it. I mean, its easier to play it safe especially if you know it worked in the past so I kinda get it.

If you guys haven’t been following, the drama’s ratings have been bad, not bad bad, but bad for Kim Sun-Ok. Its probably her lowest rated drama in some time. Her past couple of projects have been very successful and even if they were criticized, they always brought people in. Penthouse recorded over 20% in viewership so the fact that “The Escape Of The Seven” was struggling to escape the 5 to 7% barrier is very much a concern for SBS.

The 2^nd season is scheduled for a long time from now, so how do they expect people to remember until then?

I definitely think they had higher expectations hence the choice to make it a seasonal drama before it even aired and to make the gap between the seasons this HUGE. Too bad Namgoong Min came in and rescued MBC of its rut and eclipsed any chances they had at what was surely hailed an expected success.

I do think they might have a shot in March of 2024 depending on the competition, but if MBC does not have a strong contender for that slot at that time, I think they’ll do better. After all, that SBS time slot is famous and has mostly done well until now.

“My Demon” will take over and I am pretty sure SBS will pick its most promising projects for this weekend time slot, let us see how it goes.

It’ll definitely be interesting to see how it plays out.