Goodbye Earth: Netflix’s Korean Asteroid Series’ Ending Explained

Goodbye Earth, Netflix’s latest K-drama, crams a lot into twelve episodes. So, if you want to know whether the asteroid actually hit and what happened to the major characters, here’s an explainer for the ending of Goodbye Earth

Goodbye Earth: Netflix’s Korean Asteroid Series’ Ending Explained

The impact isn’t shown, but one of the final shots shows the asteroid entering Earth’s atmosphere, so it wasn’t a near miss. And while the show talked about “safe zones” overseas, chances are it would lead to the end of the human race, if not all life on Earth.

The show ended with Miss Jin arming herself with a gun and a couple of tasers and heading to a shipping yard to take down a gang of child-trafficking criminals. These were the same criminals responsible for the deaths of her students, as seen in Episode 1 of Goodbye Earth.

It was clear she didn’t expect to survive, imagining a dreamlike future where all her former pupils survived. And while she shot a couple of the traffickers, she got into an armed stand-off with one member of the gang. The screen went black, and we heard a shot as her husband, Yun-sang, raced toward the docks on his bike, sobbing.

So, what happened to the other characters? I’ll share their fates in a moment, but if you thought the show felt disjointed at times, it wasn’t your imagination – Goodbye Earth‘s episodes were re-edited, cutting out whole scenes.

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That happened because actor Yoo Ah-In was meant to be the show’s lead, playing Ha Yoon-Sang. But after he became involved in a drug scandal, the show was edited to make Ahn Eun-Jin, who plays Jin Se-Kyung, the lead. So, in Episode 3, we see Yoon-Sang has a glowing red light stitched under his skin, and it’s never really explained.

Here’s what happens to the rest of the cast during the ending of Goodbye Earth:

• Woo Sung-jae gave up being a priest but stayed as a church layperson.
• Kang In-a left the army, and after an uncomfortable hug with her mother (it’d be a stretch to call it a reconciliation), she rode off on her bike. The final episode also confirmed she was gay, though it was seemingly neglect that led to her non-relationship with her mother.
• Colonel Choi, In-a’s commanding officer, was wounded in Episode 10, and we never see him again, so we can assume he died.
• Park Sang-Woo, leader of the techno-cult, went back to a normal life with his son.
• The three children stayed together, and the criminals never came back for Ha-Yul, though one shady discharged officer was still harassing her, wanting to trade her for a trip out of Korea. They’re shown evacuating, though that appears to be part of Se-Kyung’s flashback/dream sequence.
• Chae Young-Ji survived and the show teased a possible relationship with one of the soldiers who saved her. However, her brother, Chae Young-Han, died from an unspecified illness.
• Do Jung-A, Young-Ji and Young-Han’s child-trafficking mother, died when the military plane carrying her crashed in the Pacific. She was killed along with many other would-be escapees.
• Father Baek, who stole the church’s money for his own ticket to safety, missed his flight. He returned to the church but seemed confused, either suffering from some kind of disease or faking it to avoid taking the blame.

So, the ending of Goodbye Earth sees the asteroid about to hit the Earth while lead character Se-kyung (Miss Jin) gives her life to enact retribution on child traffickers. It’s not a happy, upbeat ending, but I doubt anyone expected it to end well.

Goodbye Earth is streaming now on Netflix.