Spoilers for Beef season 2 ahead.
After Ali Wong and Steven Yeun stole our collective cultural consciousness in the surprise Netflix hit Beef, it was unclear how it was ever going to be replicated for Beef season 2.
What I can definitely promise is that after bingeing its eight episodes, your head will be left positively spinning. So let’s break down the Beef season 2 ending and everything that happened in its absolutely wild finale.
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Beef season 2’s story: the important stuff
From the beginning of season 2, we’re following three sets of characters with three sets of problems, all of which end up converging into one delicious mess.
We start with country club employees Ashley (Cailee Spaeny) and Austin (Charles Melton). They’ve just got engaged, and hardly have any money between them. After a charity event at the club, the pair are tasked with taking manager Josh’s (Oscar Isaac) wallet to him, catching a violent fight between him and his wife, Lindsay (Carey Mulligan), through the window.
Despite filming it for the police, the pair agrees not to get involved, despite subtle threats from their bosses. However, this changes when Ashley learns that she has torsion in her ovaries, needing life-saving surgery if she wants to stand a chance of having children.
They decide to blackmail Josh into giving Ashley a better job at the club, who, in turn, gets Austin a full-time role. It’s clear that both are out of their depth, despite being convinced they can mastermind their way to getting health insurance. It works, but at a cost.
Then there’s Josh and Lindsay themselves, who put on a united front but are suffering severe marriage issues behind the scenes. The two frequently confess to hating each other, with Lindsay refusing to get a divorce because Josh has spent all of her inheritance money on his dying mother.
Because of his mother’s death (and seemingly other undisclosed irresponsibility), Josh is haemorrhaging cash. Each considers an affair and is paranoid about the other’s actions, but nothing serious ever comes of it. Instead, Josh hatches a plan: use a loophole in the country club’s finances to siphon off money without anyone realizing, leaving newly-appointed Ashley to take the fall if things turn bad.
Lastly, there’s The Chairwoman (Youn Yuh-jung), the club’s new owner, directly from Korea. A billionaire who controls just about anything and anyone, she’s only bought the club to “clean” illegal money used to hush up a death at the hands of her husband, Dr Kim (Song Kang-ho).
He’s a surgeon in Korea, with a patient dying at his practice (though The Chairwoman’s lawyers claim that this was a side effect of routine surgery). The Chairwoman’s plan is to have him quit and run the hush money through the club as a legitimate business venture.
When she finds out what Josh is extorting money from the club, it immediately plays into her hands. At its core, we have these three groups playing off against each other to try and keep their hands clean, but more importantly, gain leverage to get what they want.
As you can imagine, this routinely gets messy. Josh scuppers Ashley’s chance to save her ovaries after she collapses in the hospital while waiting to get checked out for a swollen knee, while also making her health insurance deductibles too high to be of use.
In retaliation, Ashley breaks into his home and puts some of her blood into his orange juice, but accidentally leaves the back door open, which leads to Lindsay’s beloved sausage dog, Burberry, being killed by a fox.
Austin forges PT credentials to get a job at the club after taking a shine to The Chairwoman’s assistant Eunice (Seoyeon Jang), with new tennis coach Woosh (BM) trying to have an affair with a flighty Lindsay.
The VIP trip to Seoul
In order to fully understand what happens in the Beef season 2 finale, we have to examine the club’s VIP trip to Seoul as a whole (unintentional rhyme), which begins in episode 7.
In a bid to control the country club staff, The Chairwoman invites Lindsay, Ashley, and oblivious club member Ava (Mikaela Hoover) on a VIP girls’ trip to Seoul. What we later learn is that this is also to deflect from The Chairwoman having Woosh killed, who moments before had tried to blackmail in exchange for a Vice President role in one of her other companies.
Eunice meets with The Chairwoman the next morning to discuss final arrangements. However, when The Chairwoman leaves her phone behind unlocked, Eunice discovers the truth behind Woosh and the surgery patient’s deaths. While Ashley, Lindsay, and Ava board the plane, Eunice heads to Austin for advice.
He encourages her to back up the phone to a USB before giving it back to The Chairwoman in Seoul, convinced they’ll be able to go to the police to reveal her wrongdoing. Eunice asks Austin to go to Seoul with him, catching up with the rest on board.
The flight is where things start to unravel. While Ava remains asleep and is none the wiser, Austin tries to help Eunice back up the phone, convinced she’s being watched by a hitman. Austin admits that he was going to leave Ashley prior to boarding the plane, telling Eunice that he now has feelings for her instead.
Ashley overhears their conversation and loses it. Austin pulls her to one side, explaining that he’s had enough of the secrets she’s trying to hide, including killing Burberry. Lindsay overhears and, in turn, wipes the rim of Ashley’s drink with substances from the toilet seat.
By this point, the phone has passed from Eunice to Ashley to Lindsay, who has flushed it down the airplane toilet. Eunice and Austin try to explain the gravity of the situation, putting them all in danger by the time they land in Seoul.
Episode 8 breakdown
At the start of Beef season 2 episode 8, we learn that Josh has been duped into meeting a fake Tinder match, who is instead a Korean agent sent to kill him. Josh is hung by the neck on scaffolding, which breaks just in time for him to stab the agent in the throat.
Panicking, he flees to a friend and country club member, Troy’s (William Fichtner), seemingly convincing him to follow Lindsay and Ava to Seoul in Troy’s private jet with no explanation. While Troy steps out to sort plans, we overhear that he actually turned Josh’s fraudulent country club invoices into the police, with the entire club knowing about the money he’s stolen. Josh leaves and gets a flight to Seoul without detection.
Meanwhile, the rest meet with The Chairwoman, unaware that she’s tried to have Josh killed. Eunice gives the USB to Austin and tells him to swallow it, escaping from the guards by throwing herself into a passing van. Dr. Kim is present and automatically assumes that Austin is hiding something. Their group meal passes without drama, and they are dropped off at a hotel.
Once in their rooms, Lindsay listens to a voicemail from Josh explaining what happened. She tries to get help from Ava without alerting the extra security in the hotel hallway, but Ava wants nothing to do with her — Troy has phoned to tell her about Josh’s embezzlement.
In a nearby room, Austin tells Ashley that he isn’t in love with her anymore, while Ashley reveals that she has a viable embryo after her ovarian surgery. The two contemplate having a baby, with Austin hiding the USB in his bag.
By morning, it’s nowhere to be seen. Austin accuses Ashley of taking it, which she immediately denies. The quartet is taking to the Korean branch of the skincare range that’s been introduced at the club, which is where Dr. Kim had previously practiced. Ava goes in for treatment without issue, but Dr. Kim secretly calls the rest over.
Through a severe language barrier, the group learns that Dr. Kim has been secretly working with the police to get The Chairwoman jailed, finally putting right years of wrongs. Just as this is realized, she appears, with Lindsay punching her in the face to escape.
They take down several armed guards while trying and failing to rescue an unconscious Ava from the procedure room, making it out onto the street. It’s only when Josh loudly flags them down from across the road that all four are help captive by The Chairwoman.
Each locked in a separate room, the couples explore their relationships. Lindsay and Josh once again look like a united front, agreeing to pin the blame on Austin and Ashley.
On the flip side, Austin and Ashley feel like they’re on the verge of breaking up, with Austin desperate to do the right thing. Ashley reveals she’s been hiding the USB on her the entire time and gives it to Austin, who escapes through the skylight.
He hails a taxi and phones Eunice, telling her that he’s on his way to the police station with the evidence. His smile turns sour as a speech from The Chairwoman — about how relationships function for transactional self-interest under capitalism — plays on his mind.
He asks the taxi driver to change directions, instead of handing the USB back over to The Chairwoman at her home. Josh decides to take the blame for everything else and is sent to prison just as Lindsay rekindles her love for him.
We fast-forward years later, where Josh has served his sentence, and he learns that Lindsay has moved to the country and remarried, and also now has a child. Ashley is now the general manager of the country club, having had a baby with Austin.
The final scene follows exactly the same format as the opening scene, with Ashley and Austin now inheriting the unfulfilling lives that Josh and Lindsay started with.
Season 3 predictions
Beef season 3 hasn’t been confirmed, and it’s anybody’s guess what it could be about. But the series is clearly functioning as an anthology.
This means that it could be continued for years, because each season has a completely separate story (much like American Horror Story).
We could also see a continuing change in tone and style, given that season 1 and season 2 are so different.
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