Beef Season 2 Ending Explained: Who Won The Beef?

Credit: Netflix

Beef Season 2 did not end on a bed of roses for its main protagonists. The Netflix show took us on a wild ride that explored the dark side of long-term incompatible relationships, along with the honeymoon phase of a fresh one. The intergenerational beef between the boomer couple (Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan) and the Gen Z couple (Charles Melton, Cailee Spaeny) went from blackmail and extortion to international espionage heights.

The ending of Season 2 of Beef saw the whole gang team up to take down Chairwoman Park in Seoul, South Korea. With nefarious plans to pin her crimes on them, the billionaire club owner held the protagonists, Josh, Lindsay, Ashley, and Austin hostage until one of them decided to take the brunt of the crimes committed. So who won the beef?

Chairwoman Park Comes Out on Top as Capitalism Wins

Youn Yuh-jung as Chairwoman Park in Beef Season 2 | Credit: Netflix

Oscar Isaac’s Josh decides to take the blame for all the problems that plagued the protagonists, going to prison for crimes committed by Youn Yuh-jung’s Chairwoman Park. Carey Mulligan’s Lindsay is left to pick up the pieces of a failed marriage and career. The Korean country club owner comes out on top as a lonely woman who “appears” to have learned the lesson that money isn’t everything.

Her confession to the protagonists in the finale, where she admits that she sees everyone as disposable/replaceable, shows that she’s far too deep into late-stage capitalism to give a damn. The sombre reflection atop the grave came after Cailee Spaeny‘s Ashley became the new country club general manager while Charles Melton’s Austin held their child. Is this a win for the Gen Z couple?

Beef Season 2 was a deep dive into why relationships work, or more importantly, why they fail. Josh and Lindsay are separated, but clearly hold affection for one another, years after Lindsay remarried and had kids of her own. Doomed to repeat the cycle of the boomer couple, Ashley and Austin stay together despite the many troubles their relationship faced throughout the season.

Unfortunately, the only person who never faced any repercussions or felt any consequences is Chairwoman Park. Lindsay has a new life, but only after a terrifying ordeal where her ex-husband was sent to jail. Ashley and Austin remain under the thumb of Chairwoman Park after Austin decides to give back the incriminating USB that could’ve flipped the game. Either way, Josh would’ve been sent to jail for embezzlement because everybody in the country club was aware of his crimes.

The ending was not a shiny or perfectly tied ribbon for the protagonists, begging the question of what the real lesson showrunner Lee Sung Jin wanted to leave us with.

Beef Season 2 Ending: Less Beef, More Cheese

Beef Season 2 had a promising start, quickly getting to the meat of the plot where the Gen Z couple holds Josh’s career in their hands because of an incriminating video. Everything went downhill after this, with Ashley driving herself deeper into the hole she created.

Unsatisfied with her life and status, she decides to go ham on Josh by uprooting his relationship and career in any way she possibly could. One could argue that Ashley’s character arc was more villainous than any other because, after all, a beloved dog died as a result of her vengeful actions.

Beef Season 1 thrived as a great drama/thriller between two people on an intimate scale, allowing for psychological exploration through its signature aggression. Season 2 took a more passive approach to this, but with the many subplots added to the show, was it really about a beef anymore?

Season 2 lost its plot halfway through, becoming more of an espionage thriller attempting to tell a story about relationships. The subplot between Park and Kim was not given enough time to develop, and we were only given exposition through dialogue. This took away from what the highlight of the show was: Josh vs. Ashley.

Where the show shone was whenever Josh and Ashley had an interaction, feeling both tense and passive-aggressive in the best ways possible. Mimicking corporate environments, the cast and crew nailed what it felt like to have a boss-employee dynamic in this day and age.

The escalation of threats and interpersonal rivalry was taken to dark territories in classic Beef fashion, and the show could’ve benefitted from more of that. Meandering into international spy thriller territory turned the show into something else altogether, taking away from intimate relationship moments and into commercial “blockbuster” territory.

Season 2 of Beef saw capitalism win at the end of the day, feeling like the whole exercise to get on top of the food chain was futile. Perhaps this was the lesson that the creator wanted to tell us all: a bleak future for everybody but the elite.

What did you think of Beef Season 2? Let us know in the comments.

Beef is currently streaming on Netflix.