Dead-End Job Ending Explained: Does Byeon Hyeok-jun Accept the Last Job?

Created by Han Jun-hee, Netflix’s ‘Dead-End Job,’ also known as ‘Kkuralba,’ in Korean, takes us to a side of the supernatural that isn’t quite explored very often, and that, too, from the perspective of a temp worker. Byeon Hyuk-jun, a thirty-year-old man at the brink of a personal and professional collapse, finds a way out of trouble in the form of a shady-looking job offer. For a single night shift at an ordinary-looking convenience store, he can make as much as 50 times the ordinary wage, an offer too good to be wasted. What this begins, however, is a cycle of seeking and avoiding chaos that traps Hyuk-jun into a world that he can barely understand, one that turns out to have many shades of horror and the extraordinary. SPOILERS AHEAD.

Dead-End Job Plot Recap

‘Dead-End Job’ begins with the protagonist, Byeon Hyeok-jun, contemplating suicide while standing at the edge of a bridge. Unemployed and knee-deep in debt, he hardly has anything to look forward to, but right before the jump, a card captures his attention. The Spider-Staffing company, as it’s named, promises jobs at rates a lot higher than the minimum wage, and while a part of Hyeok-jun thinks it’s a scam, he can hardly resist the urge to check it out. The boss, who goes only by Mr. S., begins with a rather unbelievable proposition: a single night shift at a convenience store for 50 times the usual wage. More desperate than cautious, Hyeok-jun tries it out, only for a monstrous rat-like creature to attack him at night and forcibly welcome him to the secret realm of the supernatural.

Through sheer grit and spirit, Hyeok-jun is able to ward off the creature till dawn, following which his shift ends and the money reaches him, as promised. Though he understands just how out-there such a job can be, Hyeok-jun also cannot help but depend on this newfound source of income. And just like that, he becomes a supernatural temp worker, sometimes working as a driver for a murderous mime, and other times doing construction work in a haunted building that eats people. In the process, he also meets a woman named Eum Yoon-joo, who claims to be an investigator, and somehow knows all of Spider-Staffing’s trade secrets. Instead of allying with her, however, Hyeok-jun only digs himself deeper into the hole, until a failed gig suddenly lands him in a pocket dimension prison of sorts, with no way out.

Faced with Hyeok-jun’s disappearance, his sister, Ji-Yoon, eventually finds both Spider-Staffing and Yoon-joo, before coming to a difficult conclusion. Enlisting as a temp worker herself, she teams up with Yoon-joo to find a door to the pocket realm, which brings Hyeok-jun back to the real world, but traps his sister instead. As this cycle is repeated once again, he manages to rescue Ji-Yoon from a bio clinic gig before making a much bigger discovery. Their father, who disappeared when they were little, may have been offered these temp jobs too, and hoping that he might be in one of these pocket dimension realms, alive, Hyeok-jun takes on one last job at a supernatural amusement park that seemingly has a door that links to the other world.

Dead-End Job Ending: Will Byeon Hyeok-jun Accept the Last Job?

‘Dead-End Job’ ends its first season with a cliffhanger, as Byeon Hyeok-jun realizes that the supernatural world he thought he left behind is still there, itching for his presence. After finishing his last gig at the amusement park and making it out in one piece, he momentarily believes that the balance of yin and yang has been restored, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. That is because the interstice between these two realms, the black and white hallway we always see, is not a natural occurrence in the first place, but something created by people like Mr. S to traverse the land of the living and beyond. To that end, Spider-Staffing Company can itself be interpreted as a rift in the balance that has to be mended, and Hyeok-jun eventually comes to this conclusion as well.

The clue that helps Hyeok-jun figure out the truth about Spider-Staffing is when he finds its burnt remains on the news. It bears the same marks of burning as any of the other locations that Hyeok-jun has worked at, all of which had a brush with the supernatural. In reality, there never was a third party employing him and paying him those enormous sums, but rather, Mr. S. himself. In the grand scheme of things, he too is a cog in the machine, and the final scene reveals that a new boss has already replaced him. This boss claims to have access to an even deeper level of truth about the two realms, one that can only show up after the balance is disrupted, which is something Hyeok-jun is sure he is guilty of. To access this truth, however, one likely needs to become an employee of Spider-Staffing itself.

The final scene of the show, in which Hyeok-jun is asked whether he wants to take that leap of faith, is also meta in a sense. By leaving things open-ended, it essentially asks the audience the same question, with their yes being represented as a rising demand for a second season. Clever strategy aside, this also gives us time to theorize what the truth about the realms might be, as so far it does seem to bear the marks of an artificial design. Eum Yeon-joo, for instance, already knows what all the levels of this game entail, so to speak, almost as if it’s something she has experienced before. And yet, she needs a human being to open the door to the other world, which might be something the new boss is doing as well. While we don’t see Hyeok-jun’s choice at the end, it is plainly apparent that he will take that leap, after all.

Is Eum Yeon-joo a Ghost? Where Does She Go?

Among the more chilling revelations in the show is the fact that Eum Yeon-joo, someone we initially consider to be an ally, is a supernatural entity herself. However, the idea that a supernatural creature has to be evil is itself a false binary drilled into Hyeok-jun’s head very early on, and by the end, it is thoroughly questioned. While we don’t know whether Yeon-joo is straight up a ghost, or something akin to Jolly Pierrot and the other creatures, her backstory most certainly leans towards the former interpretation. It is implied that Yeon-joo may have never managed to get out of that locker room during the union protests, following which she died and turned into a ghost that haunts modernity and all of its failures.

To that end, it is very important that Yeon-joo was a factory worker striving for a union in her past life, as the suppression of that labor movement directly connects to the harsh working conditions of the present day. Hyeok-jun, just like many others, is a victim of this very system that pushes people to the brink, provides no assistance, and only barely provides a means of living. Where people like Mr. S. capitalize on Hyeok-jun’s suicidal ideation, Yeon-joo sees things with a lot more pessimism. Her opening of the door, then, is an attempt to usher darkness into the world as a way to overwhelm its existing ways, and though this is a choice that only promises to bring more chaos and no respite, it’s hard to put all the blame on Yeon-joo, knowing what she went through.

Who is the New Boss? Is Mr. S Dead or Alive?

Though we never meet the new boss who replaces Mr. S., that itself might be a part of his character concept. Now that it’s established that Spider-Staffing Company is itself an end and not the means, Mr. S. is technically Hyeok-jun’s employer, and not just a mere power broker. Across all episodes, we learn that the contracts issued are already influenced by the spiritual entity that Hyeon-jun has to deal with, such as how the convenience store has a fake rule about two employees that Mr. S. never corrects, or how he knows that Jolly Pierrot is the event manager, but never warns him about what is to come. All of this suggests that these missions might be a contract that Spider-Staffing makes with the supernatural creatures, essentially offering them a sacrifice to keep the greater threats at bay.

Though Mr. S. seems very comfortable exploiting the vulnerabilities of his workers, if it means serving the so-called greater good, his ultimate fate flips the script on that notion. For once, he is not only forced into the field as an active combatant, but also dragged to the depths of hell on the other end of the door. While characters generally don’t die after reaching the interstice, this door may as well be the real deal, and his being replaced makes it very likely that he is dead. One unique thing about the new boss, though, is that he doesn’t seem to have the omniscience of Mr. S., seeing that he talks to Hyeok-jun as though he has limited information. A new, twisted dynamic might just be in the works for the two of them, and we will have to wait and see how Hyeok-jun takes it.

Can Byeon Hyeok-jun Bring His Father Back?

A running question throughout the latter half of the season is whether Hyeok-jun’s father, Byeon Min-su, a former temp worker under Spider-Staffing, is still alive and trapped somewhere. While we do get half an answer in the finale, it is ultimately a tragic one, as Min-su seems way too embedded in the supernatural world to come back to the real one. This isn’t depicted explicitly, but via the symbolism of his shadow being chained to what appears to be hundreds of evil spirits. However, here we are met with two possibilities: the first being that the man’s own body and soul have been taken over by the creatures, or the second, that they are merely tethered to him. This is important because the latter comes with the possibility of him being potentially rescued down the line.

Though Hyeok-jun has to bid his father goodbye on his way back to the real world, what makes this even more tragic is the fact that Min-su, even after all these years, can only worry about not making enough for his family. As he hands his son a handful of notes, too worn out to be distinguishable, all Hyeok-jun can think about is how his father was wronged by everyone, especially Spider-Staffing, who exploited his desperation. This might just be one of the many reasons Hyeok-jun says yes to the final offer, as he realizes that his enmity was never with the supernatural creatures to begin with, but with the very platform that embodies everything wrong with the modern-day work culture.