Do you remember the feeling of binge-watching the entire series and getting emotionally attached to the students of class 3-2? We all thought we were in for a heartwarming ending, but no one could have predicted the traumatic finale that left us reeling.
Korean dramas are known for their gripping storylines and emotional endings that leave fans satisfied. However, sometimes the ending of a drama can be controversial, and this is the case with “Duty After School.” The drama, which aired in 2023, received mixed reviews from fans and critics, with many expressing frustration over its ending.
As mysterious “spheres” cover the sky, high school seniors are forced into a “real war” to fight against the unknown creatures, unleashing a dynamic and desperate struggle for survival that will captivate you from start to finish.
What sets this drama apart is its vivid portrayal of survival and growth. You’ll be taken aback as you witness how these high school seniors exchange their pens for guns, all for the sake of receiving “extra points for college entrance exams”.
One of the most charming aspects of Duty After School is the ease with which we connect to the characters in such a short amount of time. Take Wang Tae Man, for instance. Despite his poor hygiene habits, he quickly became one of our favorites. And who could blame us? Haven’t we all been in a situation where brushing our teeth wasn’t an option, and we had to resort to chewing gum? Then there’s Deok Joong, who always seems to be hungry, even during the toughest of times. And let’s not forget about Kimchi, who struggles to confess his feelings. We’ve all been there, right?
But it’s the writer’s effort in creating deep and complex characters that truly sets this drama apart. You’ll grow close to them despite their constant conflicts and find yourself rooting for their blooming friendships and romances. Lieutenant Lee and So Yeon’s relationship will have you on the edge of your seat, while Bo Ra and Ae Seol’s friendship will warm your heart. And don’t even get us started on Il ha, the character we couldn’t help but have a soft spot for.
Just when you thought you’d seen it all, “Duty After School” delivers a twist ending that will leave you reeling. Despite surviving the worst, the characters meet their untimely end at the hands of their own, leaving us with a profound sense of grief and loss (ah, SHIBAL!!!!)
But, here are some ways which I think this series could have had a better ending.
Alternate Endings for Duty After School
The Webtoon Ending:
In the webtoon, we are shown that crazy Young Soo killed three students, including Jang Soo and two other characters not featured in the drama. Although Jang Soo was dear to our hearts, maybe this ending would have been better than having them all dead. But perhaps, the writer thought that having them all dead would make a more significant impact, which, in reality, it did.
It’s All a Dream!
In the final episode, when Kimchi thought it was all a dream, it could have been a better ending if it was all just a horrendous nightmare of someone rather than having them killed mercilessly by a crazy psycho. Although this ending may not seem plausible, it would have been more satisfying to the audience.
(Maybe then our Want Tae Man and Class President ship would have sailed.)
Young Soo’s Suicide:
As Young Soo used to look at Il Ha with intense feelings, many of us knew that eventually, this maniac would attack or even kill Il Ha. However, using the scene where Young Soo sees an illusion of Il Ha calling him a murderer, the writer could have made Young Soo regret his actions, feel repulsed with himself, and eventually commit suicide. The audience wouldn’t have felt any remorse for that jerk’s death.
The War Continues:
If they had stayed and continued the operation, maybe Young Soo wouldn’t have become crazy enough to kill all his classmates. Perhaps, once they had seen the science students from the other school dead, they would have returned to their mission and continued fighting for their survival. This alternate ending would have been more satisfying than having their friends kill them.
Killed by the Spheres:
It may sound harsh, but having the spheres kill a few characters is less traumatic than having their own friend killing them. After surviving outside the classroom, it is more depressing and frustrating to see them die inside of it. This alternate ending would have been more satisfying to the audience.
Anyway, how did you feel about the ending of the drama? I would love to hear your thoughts and comments on how it could have been better.
I’d probably prefer the ending where Young Soo suicides. It would’ve at least saved the rest of the kids and perhaps we didn’t have to deal with the aftermath. He did look like he would explode one day and that day being the most terrific one. I would’ve also loves to see Kim Chi x Na Ra ship sailing 💗 Overall, a nice blog. ☺️
The writer actually gives us choice, either a red or a blue pill. I trust the writer till the very last minute no matter how hard it was. Incredible!
The writer actually gives us a choice either to trust him or to believe in the bright dream. It’s either a red or a blue pill. Amazing.
Excellent article. Keep writing!
I found the ending to be not satisfactory honestly but hey there are some things I liked a lot like the character development especially Ha Na.
Quite a lot happened and you have covered the story quite well!
Thanks for your great article
What a great blog!
I would have preferred the “killed by spheres” ending. The unique take on an alien attack was the thing that made me love the series, but they were a supporting cast member in the ending, I was left feeling disappointed. However, the first 6 episodes are still awesome!
I love this version of ending better than the actual one .
Wow you did better job than the drama writers!!! Thank you for writing this article it really made me feel better about the ending since i used my imagination .
Great article! tbh I’d take any (and I mean it – ANY) other ending than the kdrama one. heck, even being killed by the spheres would be better cuz at least it’d make sense. we could still grieve the characters and be proud of them even if their deaths would sadden us because (given their personalities) most of them would probably die trying to save their friends. it would also be consistent with the undertone of the story – the classmates who weren’t that close became almost like a family because they had to face danger together and were ready to do anything for each other.
the whole part 2 feels too rushed to me, as if the writers & the producers didn’t want to do this story anymore and just tried to end it quickly and go work on something else. I’ll just keep the good impression part 1 left on me and wipe part 2 out of my memory.
great review..
I believe that the series had a lot of potential like others of the genre that were successful, but the script did not work well and did not develop the story of the characters.
The webtoon ending is so good it made me sad they didn’t follow it
I don’t entirely hate the ending they gave us. It was the aftermath of the event I hated. They rushed it without giving us a chance to grieve the loss of our favourite characters. That was what made it awful for me
The epilogue was in a way to say sorry to the viewers for that tragic ending …..
If anything its the bond they had with each other
I liked how the story went in the first part. However, the ending was weird because it does not make any sense that their classmate killed most of them by himself. First, there is not enough context to understand why and how he started to develop sociopathic tendencies. Second, his character still has emotions, he gets emotional multiple times, so he can kill of an act of emotional reaction but not all his classmates. He does not show strong psychopathic behavior, because if he does it, his killing strategy will be cleverer than that. So, i root to the “The War Continues” scenario with most of them will be killed by the spheres while some will survive. Thank you for the amazing review. You did a great job.
I think the webtoon ending would have been the best. If Young Soo only killed Jang Soo out of jealousy and maybe Ilha survives the attack on him and kills him saving the entire class. But I think ending the season at ep 9 would have been the best. As the student were going to Seoul not knowing what awaits for them there and having a trust issue among themselves. Maybe the writers could have checked the response from the fans and altered their ending or gone with the webtoon one. I felt that either the writers were too realist with their ending or they wanted the viewers to remember this drama. As sad ending always leave a mark. And that is one of the best sad ending out there. But it is what it is. They did leave the mark but at what cost.
I honestly was so shocked at the ending, I wasn’t expecting it at all, these alternate endings would’ve made so much sense, especially the webtoon ending, I expected some of the students to die but then that 개새끼 killed all of them, my mouth was just left open😭😭
I really didn’t like the ending, but for me DAS is still one of the best survival drama. Its just, the writers could have done better. Tbh the ending doesn’t make sense to me. If I were to choose an alternate ending, the one where the spheres killed them. That would make it at least 50% better than the real ending.
reading your ideas for an alternate ending made me dislike the ending given to us by the production team. but still, it was good for me and what i mean by good is the CGI, acting, and cinematography, as for the plot—if there are no 2 parts, i bet the drama would get negative ratings
Really good blog post! I felt so annoyed with part2’s ending I’m so glad you wrote this 😀 I personally didn’t like the ending because it just felt so useless that they all fought so hard to stay alive only to be killed by a classmate who went insane. I guess the futility of their death in the original ending was supposed to be impactful but way too depressing…
Out of your endings, I would have preferred Young Soo’s suicide or the last option that they simply lost to the spheres.
Moral of the story – humans are scarier than aliens
ACTUALLY first after watching the last episode i was frustated by the end.
BUT after some time thinking about that I understand why writer goes with this end.
This end is whole new idea as a audience i have never seen this type of end which is not easily to digest as we were hoping some nice things will happen in last.
BUT live is not nice to everbody.
love the blog.
HOPE YOU WILL CONTINUE TO WRITE THESE TYPE OF BLOGS
This is a very nice review . Short and to the point where you explained bits of the plot.
To be honest I would had prefered thw deaths from the webtoon or the writters to had changed a bit the ending but even so I still enjoyed this dtama evwn if the ending was heartbreaking and made a lot of people to hate it.
Aww, Tae Man. I hoped he would live but sadly had same fate like moat of his friends.
Sometime humans are more of a danger than anything else.
love your review blog!
I personally like the “It’s all a dream” alternate ending, since kimchi already “knows” what’s going to happen maybe he can prevent it from happening, from the start, like changing to another method or way to fight the spheres. I’m also kinda sad they didn’t follow the webtoon’s ending, even though one of my favorite character dies, it would’ve been better than the drama’s ending.
Great article.!! Keep going.
Good one.. i liked it.. especially your own explanation upon the drama and all i like that… continue writing like this..hope you become popular one day..
agreed
It was a great review. You have your own ideas about the drama. I loved it.
As we know, part 2 has lots of complaints, starting with Wonbin Ahjussi who disappeared, some of missing line, until finally the students die ridiculously at the hands of their own friend.
Many also say that in part 2 there’re too many unnecessary scenes, especially in prison. Even though this prison scene was made to give an explanation about the relationship between Bora and Aeseol, why can she be so mean to No Aesol and that incident makes them close.
So where are the adults, the government, the military? Yes, that’s them, incompetent 🙂
They take advantage of school children, civilians because yes they are the easiest to control. Just give CSAT lures, parents automatically obey. There have been many dramas that discuss how important CSAT is.
The thing that annoys the most is what people say, it’s been hard to fight the balls but how come they died at the hands of your own friends??? Yes, it’s a shame this isn’t a drama about the balls, this isn’t survival from an alien attack but survival from the absence of an adult role.
So in my opinion it’s very natural why they don’t discuss more about the balls and the aliens. About parents and shelter too. Because the focus is on how these children survive without the presence of adults. And that’s the part that I like the most 🙂
Very good review. Actually I loved the ending, it was such a shock for me. Young Soo was very complicated character, with kind of trauma and it just grew inside him until that happened. I don’t blame anyone about this, but if he had someone to listen.
Well, the blog is great and your thoughts over ending was great..
Frankly speaking kdrama writers start with hopes and desires but what happens in end is a mystery which I have realised from 2016..
When I was wondering why this happened to a story that had so many ratings, what I thought was that we were watching the story in the wrong corner…. We watched this with expecting a feeling like All of us are dead, but that’s when we thought that we missed one of the most important points of the story. We watched the story based on the alien spheres. But the kids in story were not thinking it that way. For those children, whether they have the spheres or not, it doesn’t matter to them whether the world is destroyed or not. Wanted to face the exam called CSAT. Those children went to military service because of CSAT, when their friends died one by one, when their parents didn’t know whether they were alive or not, even when the lieutenant who was their bodyguard died, but those children did not want to leave this mission because of CSAT, if you look closely, all of them died at the last moment. That also becoz of CSAT That’s why…. If you look at the story on the basis of CSAT, thinking that the spheres is actually a just in your mind , the the beginning, middle, and end are balanced….
But actually this is alien survive story so i hate this end.. and i agree with you with other endings may be cool specially having them killed by aliens maybe it looks cool… even if in part 3 lee come back i dont feel anything becoz we lost other kids ,just kimchi and 3 others with new faces kind of sad.. but letz see wht will happen..
Any way your riview is actually cool, and good one itz completely go with my thinking.. best of luck and keep writing good luck ❤️❤️
Tbh I am disappointed with the drama’s ending. I felt I wasted time. I could have accepted it if there is more substance to YS choice. I know it’s all he has but the characterization is just a little lacking for me.
Nice article! Everything is on point! I feel kind of ambivalence towards the ending though despite being aware of the ending (I was a big fan of the webtoon before it got adapted to a kdrama). I remember liking the ending a lot as I read the webtoon but the kdrama just not really it haha the director chose to wipe out everyone whereas the webtoon has few more characters left but anyways keep up with the great work!
The ending in webtoon is much better but as always the kdrama directors don’t gave us that ending but it was not all bad . Though I’ll prefer webtoon ending .
Keep writing blogs ✌🏼
A really good vlog! Keep writing.
I would take any other ending than the drama one. Young Soo lost his mind, but I can’t believe the students who killed so many spheres have such poor reflexes. I know they were shocked at first, but I don’t believe him killing so many trained students. Those who read the webtoon told he killed 3, and that would be a way better ending. And even in this ending we only saw Kimchi, what about the other 3 students who survived? I would also take the sphere or the one where kimchi dreams ending over this one.
Honestly either having them die from being killed by the spheres or YoungSoo killing himself would’ve been better. They’d left the responsibilities of being a student and had to force themselves to become “adults” in a short time. And the did a fantastic job at surviving and making sure everything was going smoothly or somewhat functional. Only to end up being killed by a classmate! That was unfair. Why have them survive and go through so much loss and pain just to end in an unfortunate situation.
Whenever there is a recap of drama, I’m really overwhelmed with joy because I want to write too, but I can’t write with “beauty”… So thank you for your effort and please do not hesitate to make more of it.. Fighting!!
I would have preferred the webtoon ending so much. Though Jang soo is gonna die, at least the other students can survive.
The ending of the drama for me wasn’t as bad as what everyone says. It kinda reflects some level of realism in my opinion. If I try and picture a high school shooting for example, it would be sudden and unexpected kinda like what the drama ending gave. Here we saw a lot of foreshadowing of Youngsoo’s breaking point and those who knew the webtoon ending kinda expected it, but it still came to a shock to all of us on its execution.
It’s not satisfying, but these random kinds of shootings from mentally ill people are never supposed to be satisfying,
This is why although the current ending leaves much to be desired and I am not a fan of it, I personally don’t believe it is a “bad ending” from an objective viewpoint.
The webtoon ending would probably have been a better way of doing it but since so many readers already expected it , it wouldn’t have given the same impact as the current one.
I personally hate it when dramas make everything we just watched all a dream lol. It’s like making all that emotional investment into the drama a joke.
Young Soo’s suicide wouldn’t seem very believable to me. He seemed too far gone and with his prior behaviors, while solo suicide would’ve been preferable for me, I feel he definitely would’ve taken a few more lives first before realization hits.
I definitely would’ve liked it if the war continued. Seeing their camaraderie continue to develop and romances too would’ve been nice but that’s just me preferring the romanticization of dramas over reality XD.
I definitely agree with you that having the Spheres kill them would’ve been better than their own classmates kill them. This is shown when they find out SooChul (I believe) died due to Spheres and not one of them.
Better endings (except the dream ending) than the ending of the live-action adaptation. For me, they made a mistake with that live-action adaptation, they did not have to depict the school shooting from the US, it was disrespect and just wrong in so many levels.
In any case, I shared your post in my SNS accounts and on my blog.
I loved Duty After School. The first part was top 10 and the second part was good as well though I could have done without the school mass shooting as I live in the US and it seems to have become part of our daily lives unfortunately. I’m hoping for a part three with at least an extended story but I’m not counting on it, though there are still spheres in the sky towards the end. They said they had developed new weapons that wiped out 90+% but if you remember they were susceptible to cold as well but they adapted to the changing conditions with the winter which they talked about. There is definitely room for a third part but can’t see it being a dream, I think it would be more of a continuation. Great writing and theories, I totally enjoyed 😁
I love your ideas about the alternate endings!!!
Personally, I like the killed by the Spheres ending idea because it would have been less harsh than their own friend/classmate killing all of them.
The ending of the drama was so sad but Im so angry for young soo (is that his name??) killing all of his classmates. I get that he was crazy about the CSAT but why did he have to kiss so yeon then kill Il Ha and then everyone else 😭😭.
I also watched duty after school and I think that it’s a great drama, very emotional that kept me anxious and suspect. Also, I love that article!👏
Excellent blog and nice to read !
Personally i not so satisfy with this drama end, but… yeah, still can enjoy the whole story
Everyone must find this blog, and join the community that we can share, and discuss together ❤😊❤
In my opinion, this final was trash, we can’t save anything good for this end, I prefer a final where all or half of them could go home and see their parents. There’re a lot of gaps that they didn’t give a shit to fill up.
A guess we just have a second part with 4 episodes because they couldn’t think of a good end for the show. ( sorry if there’re a lot of words wrong, I don’t speak English fluently and I’m learning this language by myself ) ☺️
As the finale didn’t meet my expectations, I really want it to end differently. I wished they all were united and fight those spheres until the students overcome keeping all their personal conflicts aside . So I think winning against the spheres would’ve been the best and satisfying ending.
Haven’t gotten around to watching this, was looking into the reviews.. to see if it would be worth it..
Will definitely give this a try, a great review as always.
I felt like there should have been better ending. It was so heartbreaking and it’s like the sacrifice of Chunho was all in vain because most of them died in the end. And come on, what happened to our beloved Wonbin?!?
Overall a nice vlog. Its just sad that the ending just didnt turn out what I expected
a great review. Still haven’t watched the series but will soon because of this article
I’m from south korea and I think your version of endings suggested here are much better than the actual ending. I’ve seen a lot of people here suggesting that “bad ending” (in any way) is pretty much implied from the beginning, so I guess Youngsoo killing himself or majority of them getting killed by sphere would’ve been realistic. (Dream ending would’ve be criticized a lot because Koreans really hate dream endings in any cases lol). OG ending sucked so bad, I didn’t even know that it was ending from the webtoon. Your versions are so much better.
“It may sound harsh, but having the spheres kill a few characters is less traumatic than having their own friend killing them.”
IS WHAT I’VE BEEN SAYING. THANK YOU!
Nice blog btw. MagicCoffee brought me here. Cheers!
The ending was shocking. VERY shocking. Would’ve preferred the alternative ending.
I like the first season hence I expected season 2 to be a happy ending but it was just that’s we never have thought hence I am happy that female lead and male lead alive but feel bad for the rest still can’t i over this
Disappointed that the writer didn’t follow the webtoon ending. But I liked that we have more Kimchi-Nara moments hahaha
Interesting
The ending was traumatising
And I’m still there
These alternate endings seem better
You did great
They portrayed really well that humans are worse than monsters