Beef Season 2 Ending Explained: Why Does Austin Get Back With Ashley? Do Lindsay and Josh Reunite?

Created by Lee Sung Jin, Netflix’s black comedy series ‘Beef‘ enters its second iteration with a new story about vengeance, this time focusing on two couples. Josh and Lindsay Martin are the stars of Monte Vista Point Country Club and want nothing more than to impress the new owner, Chairwoman Park, and keep minting money. However, that ambition is threatened when lovebirds Ashley and Austin visit their house and record something they weren’t supposed to see.

As the Martins struggle to get hold of the video, Ashley and Austin begin carving out their own space in the country club, reveling in the shift of power dynamics. However, what that one clash inevitably leads to is a chess game of vendettas that range from petty to serious, and every iteration promises to bring in more chaos than before. By the end of the season, this revenge drama ends up colliding with a much larger conspiracy, and both couples find themselves struggling to live to fight another day. SPOILERS AHEAD.

Beef Season 2 Plot Recap

‘Beef’ season 2 begins with Josh and Lindsay Martin hosting a party at the Monte Vista Point Country Club, where Josh works as a general manager. Though the duo seems to be in perfect sync that night, their journey back home reveals an entirely different side. As fate would have it, Josh forgets his wallet at the club, which means that Ashley and Austin, two newly engaged employees, have to drive to his house and drop it off. Once there, they catch Josh and Lindsay having a near-violent argument where every bit of past animosity is dug up and repurposed. Ashley and Austin even get a recording of the couple charging at each other with golf clubs, only to stop when everyone’s eyes meet. Before things can escalate any further, Ashley and Austin rush out, promising to leave this confusing mess in the past, but life has other plans.

The next day, Austin anxiously revisits Lindsay and asks if she’s being abused, which prompts her to get Josh to have a conversation with Ashley. Though the matter seems to be settled right there, Ashley is soon diagnosed with ovarian torsion, which can become fatal and requires an expensive surgery. With no health insurance and a measly income, Ashley decides to use that recording to blackmail Josh and Lindsay into getting her a promotion. While the plan works, the Martins remain infuriated and try to one-up Ashley in their own way. While Lindsay tries to overwhelm her with work, Josh finds her to be the perfect scapegoat for an embezzlement scheme. At the same time, the billionaire owner of the club, Chairwoman Park, runs into a problem when her husband accidentally kills a patient during surgery.

Though Chairwoman Park is quickly able to deduce Josh’s embezzlement scheme, she chooses to capitalize on it by funneling cover-up money for the murder case. At the same time, Ashley gets Austin hired as a full-time trainer and physiotherapist at the club by lying about his credentials. During this time, he ends up falling for Park’s assistant, Eunice, much to Ashley’s horror. When her torsion comes back, Josh purposefully withholds her treatment, not realizing the severity of things. As a result, Ashley loses her ovaries and, in retaliation, collects proof of the embezzlement, accidentally getting the Martins’ dog killed. Things come to a boil when the proof reaches Chairwoman Park, and she sets out an elaborate scheme to kill anyone who can blow her cover. As everyone boards a plane to Korea, our four main characters are faced with a choice: either take a stand or submit to the chairwoman’s whims and return to how things are.

Beef Season 2 Ending: Why Does Austin Get Back With Ashley? Do They Take Over Monte Vista?

At the end of ‘Beef Season 2,’ Austin returns to Ashley and resumes their toxic relationship, despite knowing that its very foundations are flawed beyond repair. In many ways, his return to the status quo reflects the meta of this conclusion, in which characters sink deeper into the holes of their own creation. Though Austin is presented with a way out of this entire misery, it comes with the additional cost of potentially ruining everyone else’s lives. A detail about Austin’s childhood also plays into this, as his mother recalls that his desire to impress others comes from years of being physically abused. In a somewhat similar way, his choice to keep quiet about Chairwoman Park takes off the burden from him, allowing everything to remain as is and sparing him the heat.

Just as surprising as Austin’s choice is the timeskip that follows, as we jump eight years into the future to find out that Ashley is the new general manager of Monte Vista Point Country Club, with Austin presumably taking charge of the wellness center for good. The show very consciously redoes the entire first scene of this season, down to Ava and Troy inviting their friends to Vegas. Except this time, the leads in question aren’t Josh and Lindsay, but Ashley and Austin. And just like the last time, it soon becomes clear that their relationship is far from alright. Though the duo is now parents, the version of themselves they show to the world is markedly different from the one we are made privy to the moment they sit in their car. The ending even nods to this by having Austin stare into the dark, almost as if he knows that he is trapped in a cycle of his own own.

Before their official breakup, Austin proclaimed to Ashley that her obsession with him didn’t stem from love, but a compulsive need to preserve the idea of a family. While this connects to her past trauma of her parents divorcing when she was a child, it also shields Austin from a great deal of responsibility. His real failure is in recognizing Ashley’s vulnerability, only to not do anything about it, especially when it comes to being detached and falling in love with Eunice. Though he starts the story seemingly in love with Ashley, that affection breaks the moment their power dynamic shifts. To that end, the ending takes on a particularly grim form, where the fractures in their dynamics are buried very literally by the narrative, and a timeskip teasing a history that is almost doomed to repeat.

Where is Eunice?

Austin’s last-minute switch-up doesn’t just affect him, but more importantly, it leaves Eunice’s fate hanging. The last we hear from her is when she confesses her love to Austin and promises to make it to the station. Given how he changes his mind at that exact moment, it is possible that he simply comes to realize that his feelings for Eunice are about as shallow as they once were for Ashley. To that end, his decision to turn around can be interpreted as either a purely selfish decision or one backed by the misguided belief that he is helping Eunice by cutting her out. In either case, however, it is implied that he ceases contact with her right there and instead becomes loyal to Chairwoman Park. In that case, the fact that we don’t hear from Eunice ever again might as well be a confirmation of her death.

Chairwoman Park has a proven track record of killing just about anyone who threatens her existence, and with Eunice currently at the top of the list, a dark fate for her is almost inevitable. The fact that there is a whole eight-year timeskip after this scene leaves things doubly ambiguous, as though it’s possible that Eunice went undercover and things gradually cooled down; the more likely scenario is that she was left stranded at the police station with no evidence for her claim and was intercepted by Park’s team. While it’s possible that Austin bargained for her safety just like he did with the rest, we know that Eunice isn’t one to rest without justice, which makes the decision all the easier for someone as ruthless as the chairwoman.

Does Lindsay Remarry? Will She and Josh Reunite?

While Ashley and Austin’s story ends with a subtle tragedy, Lindsay and Josh’s side of the show takes on a markedly wistful character. By the final moments, we learn that Josh spent a full eight years in prison for embezzlement, whereas Lindsay chose to restart her life from scratch. Stepping away from the world of the rich, she moved to the countryside, eventually remarried, and now has a child. In contrast, Josh seemingly becomes everyone’s favorite person in prison, as his contacts and sheer charm mean he can pull and return favors whenever he wants. For that same reason, he gets to know about Lindsay’s new life ahead of his release, and while we can see a hint of sadness in his eyes, he swallows it up, realizing that Lindsay did the right thing.

Though Josh spends much of the series making missteps, the turning point comes after his hallucinogenic trip, where he witnesses an uncanny blend of everyone he’s ever slept with, only for that amorphous figure to turn into Lindsay. While Austin interprets this as a spiritual symbol, Josh advances a step further, recognizing it as a sign of his subconscious yearning. Though he signs the divorce papers and goes to prison, it appears that a part of him will always love Lindsay. As he gets out of jail and gives an interview, Lindsay watches with mixed, heavy emotions, the only thing she can truly reflect on at that point being how much things have changed. While she and Josh may meet up once again, it is unlikely that they will ever return as a pair, for they know where that road ends.

Why did Austin go to Chairwoman Park? Where is the USB Drive?

An enduring mystery left unanswered in the season finale is Austin’s decision to hand over the USB drive to Chairwoman Park, despite having everything he needs to arrest her. While it is possible that he is simply afraid of how many strings she might pull and what that might mean for him, Ashley, and others, there appears to be a deeper psychological element at play. Change is the one thing almost all characters of the show are resistant to, as doing that requires more than just a recognition of their flaws. We see this play out best in the arcs of Austin and Josh, both of whom are presented with ways to change the story and own up to their flaws. While Josh does exactly that and goes to jail, Austin becomes a narrative foil, choosing to submit to a higher power and alleviate his responsibilities, once again.

While both Josh and Austin technically unleash the same ploy to secure the lives of those they care for, what differentiates these two is the element of self-sacrifice. Though Austin internalizes the idea that he is always doing things as others say, be it his partners or his bosses, in reality, there is an element of self-preservation to it as well. Austin’s complacency in sustaining the cycle becomes crystallized in the form of Monte Vista Point Country Club, which remains unchanged no matter how many years we skip ahead, or how many hands exchange its ownership. To that end, the show fittingly delivers an anticlimax for its two Chekov’s guns, the pen drive and the cloud copy of the video recording, both of which lose their potency in the face of bigger powers.

What Does the Final Scene Mean? Is it Real?

While the entire second season doesn’t budge from realism, the final scene turns out to be a piece of creative visualization, one with Chairwoman Park at its center. Standing at the grave of her ex-husband, she contemplates how no amount of wealth and power brought her supremacy over the one thing she fears: time. In a way, her past complements the two main relationships of the show, as it involves the same struggle for power between two partners, ultimately ending in some form of severance. Recognizing these parallels, she comments that time isn’t exactly flowing forward or backward, but merely observing us from a higher perspective, where all interpersonal relationships seem to reflect one another.

Fittingly enough, Chairwoman Park’s final monologue finds its extrinsic representation in the form of a literal mandala, which we see from a birds-eye view. Traditionally, Mandalas represent the cyclicality of time, as well as the wholeness of space, and the show matches that symbolic richness by placing all the families we see in the season within the circle. While the scene isn’t real in how it’s framed, all the individual conversations and glimpses we see are real, and take place across numerous points in the show, regardless of whether they are on-screen. This all-encompassing circle, as such, becomes a stand-in for the cycle of life, which in ‘Beef’ is both a blessing and a curse.

Read More: Does Burberry the Dog Die? Who Killed Him?