Sumith Prasad
In Netflix’s action series ‘The Brothers Sun,’ the masked attackers who try to hunt down the Sun family utter the chant, “the riddance of evil must be thorough,” whenever they kill someone or right before they get killed. The chant, along with the red ribbon, is one of the first things the members of the Jade Dragons encounter while trying to unravel the mystery behind the people who attack them. Eventually, Eileen “Mama” Sun discovers that the attackers are the members of a rebellious group named the “Boxers.” The chant perfectly conveys the mission and ambition of the gang that seeks the absolute destruction of the Jade Dragons! SPOILERS AHEAD.
The Boxers’ Mission
The Boxers are a group of rebellious individuals who teamed up together to destroy the Jade Dragons in Los Angeles, California, and Taipei, Taiwan. When the Jade Dragons first formed, they stood against oppression and dictatorship in their country. They emerged from the voiceless to become their voice and represent the powerless. The oppressors of the time might have viewed them as the rebels of their generation. During the youthful years of Big Sun, the Jade Dragons became immensely powerful to challenge their oppressors. However, instead of representing the powerless, they became the new oppressors.
Through narcotics, money laundering, human and sex trafficking, etc., the Jade Dragons became the personifications of evil. The powerless, who believed that the rebels among them would speak for them, remained oppressed. The Boxers are the offspring of these oppressed individuals. They see the Jade Dragons as the embodiment of evil and they want to get “rid” of the triad to be freed from the mob groups’ oppression. The chant, “the riddance of evil must be thorough,” makes it clear that their mission is to eradicate the Jade Dragons and make the lives of the people who have been suffering due to the latter better.
The Boxers hunt down the Jade Dragons because they do not want to remain silent when their loved ones get killed by the triad. The thirst for vengeance becomes their motivation and they inform their mission to their enemies through their chant. The Boxers are people who are not organized like their enemies. They are a group bound together by their wish to see the termination of their enemies and the chant can be seen as the thread that ties them together. Despite the differences in their respective region, experiences, and ways of life, the Boxers unite under a single chant that describes their purpose.
The Boxers’ Ambition
In the show, the Boxers’ most significant target is Mama Sun. What makes her unique is that she is the only person who knows the real identities of all the Jade Dragons and their operations. The Boxers target her because they want to terminate every Jade Dragon. They aim for not only getting rid of the evil but also its complete eradication. The rebellious group does not want their actions to be limited to murdering one, two, or even a handful of Red Poles of the Jade Dragons. They aspire to kill all the heads of the triad to make sure that the evil won’t remerge to continue to oppress their people.
That’s the reason why the Boxers remind themselves to be “thorough.” They do not accept partial fulfillment of their mission. Although their ambition may seem a mountain too high to climb, the series does show why they aspire big. Even after the deaths and arrests of almost all of the Jade Dragon leaders, Mama Sun emerges out of nowhere to try to become the Dragon Head and lead the triad. She replaces her husband Big Sun in Taipei to rule the crime scene of the region. Even after the elimination of almost all of the Jade Dragon leaders as threats, there won’t be any decrease in oppression since Mama Sun will continue the operations of the dead and arrested heads of the triad.
The Boxers aim for “thorough” elimination because one is enough for evil to retain its supreme glory. Due to Mama Sun’s survival and potential emergence as the Dragon Head, the Boxers don’t succeed in becoming thorough with their actions, which also marks the failure of their mission for now.
Read More: Will Big Sun Die in The Brothers Sun?
