Breaking Down the Devastating Ending of The Scandal

It’s not easy to adapt a classic novel across cultures, but The Scandal does it beautifully. Like The Handmaiden before it, the Netflix series transposes a story originally set in the Western world—in this case, the frequently adapted 1782 French novel Les Liaisons dangereuses—into the setting of 18th century Joseon. Under Jung Ji-woo’s masterful direction, the story of two aristocrats who toy with the lives of others for fun moves seamlessly into the rigid, Confucian society of the East Asian kingdom. 

There, Son Ye-jin (Crash Landing on You, Decision to Leave) stars as Lady Cho Yun, a deeply intelligent woman whose potential is hindered by her sex. Bored within the limitations placed on her, Lady Cho suggests a game with her cousin Cho-won (The Colony’s Ji Chang-wook), a writer and consummate libertine. If Cho is able to seduce An Hui-yeon (Mask Girl’s Nana), the widow who vows to remain chaste following the death of the husband she never met, then Cho will sleep with Cho-won after years of denying him. However, if he fails to do so, then he must impregnate So-ok (Shin Yoon-ha), the aspiring concubine of Lady Cho’s husband, Lord Yoo (Lee Ji-hoon). 

As the game develops, things get messy, leading to a conclusion that is as devastating as it is inevitable.   

What is The Scandal based on?

The Scandal is based on Les Liaisons dangereuses, the 1782 French epistolary novel by Pierre Choderlos de Lactos. The book’s many adaptations include a 1988 film starring Glenn Close, John Malkovich, and Michelle Pfeiffer. It was also the basis of 1999’s Cruel Intentions, which transposes the action to contemporary Manhattan and stars Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillipe, and Reese Witherspoon. 

In 2003, Korean filmmaker E J-Yong directed an adaptation set in 18th century Korea. Called Untold Scandal in English, the film stars Lee Mi-sook (Queen of Tears) as Lady Cho, Jeon Do-yeon (Possible Love) as Lady Jeong, and Bae Yong-joon (Winter Sonata) as Cho-won. While The Scandal Netflix series does not follow the exact same plot as Untold Scandal, it is quite close. In this way, The Scandal is an adaptation of Untold Scandal as much as it is an adaptation of Les Liaisons dangereuses.

The Scandal ending, explained

In the final act of The Scandal, Lady Cho’s scheme spirals out of her control. In an attempt to seduce Hui-yeon, Cho-won convinces her to run away in the middle of the night. Everyone thinks she has finally done the respectable thing and killed herself to join her dead husband, and begins celebrating her extreme virtue. Her mother-in-law, the Left State Councilor’s wife (Kang Ji-eun) pressures Lady Cho into writing to the King to request that a memorial gate be built in Hui-yeon’s honor. 

Unfortunately for most of the powerful people in this story, Hui-yeon is not actually dead. Also, now that she has further interpreted the religious teachings from the secret Catholic gatherings she has been attending, she now believes that it would be wrong to take her own life. When she and Cho-won sleep together, she falls in love with him, finally believing his months of vows that she is also the one he loves. Hui-yeon realizes that she wants to live. 

Meanwhile, Cho-won has been tasked by the King with finding Hui-yeon’s body so that he can rule on the memorial gate request. When he brings these updates to Yun, she outlines the easy solution: Hui-yeon must be convinced to kill herself, wrapping up this situation in a nice, tidy bow. However, Cho-won has begun to develop feelings for Hui-yeon. He decides to run away with her, asking his servant Chil-seong (Kwon Do-gyun) to prepare a ferry for them to leave Joseon. 

The situation is a heartbreaking echo of the plan Cho-won once had with Yun. Years prior, when the two were young, they decided to run away together, rather than allow Yun to marry someone who wasn’t Cho-won. They booked the ferry, but before Yun could sneak out of her home, she found her father crying. When she asked what was wrong, he lamented the fact that she was born a woman, and therefore she could not reach the heights of her massive potential. The conversation convinced Yun to stay and marry Lord Yoo. Cho-won was left waiting for Yun at the ferry port until daybreak, and then yelling for Yun as she married Lord Yoo. Following the heartbreak, Cho-won fell into the life of a notorious playboy, never fully giving up on Yun. 

Worried that Cho-won will face harsh repercussions for lying to the King, Hui-yeon flees to Lady Cho’s in the middle of the night, not knowing Yun’s role in her predicament. When Cho-won finds her there, Yun asks him outright: Who do you choose? In that moment, Cho-won decides he cannot go with Hui-yeon, as he had planned. Even if he loves her, he realizes he is not willing to let go of Yun. A heartbroken and betrayed Hui-yeon runs into the night without her gat to disguise her as a man. 

Lady Cho believes she has won, and that she still has Cho-won’s complete loyalty. However, after he leaves, he finds Hui-yeon and gives her the gat. He tells her the truth, and she tells him that she will live with the resentment she now has for him. They part ways. Meanwhile, Lady Cho realizes that Cho-won has gone to Hui-yeon, and worries that she has lost him. She tears apart her wardrobe in anger before asking her servant to help her look pretty. 

Later, Cho-won brings the official report on Hui-yeon’s supposed death. Written by Lady Cho, it outlines how a papermaker saw a woman fitting Hui-yeon’s description jump from a cliff into the raging river below. The King decides to grant Hui-yeon’s memorial gate in recognition of her exemplary virtue as a lady, but later calls Cho-won into a private meeting. He knows that the report was false because the details of a torrential downpour the night before the death do not match up with his other reports. Cho-won is shocked, either set-up by Lady Cho or felled by her showy arrogance in coming up with the vivid imagery of the report. The King tells Cho-won that he shall never again be welcome in his presence.

In a letter to Yun, Cho-won spares his cousin of this particular outcome, instead saying that the report moved the King to tears and was a resounding success. Lady Cho asks her servants to bring in celebratory drinks and food. She doesn’t yet understand that her schemes have lost her Cho-won forever.

Does Cho-won die in The Scandal?

Cho-won dies in the final episode of The Scandal. After breaking Hui-yeon’s heart and realizing that Yun will never choose him, Cho-won goes to the Mapo port, where he had previously prepared a ferry to bring himself, Hui-yeon, Chil-seong, and Eun-sil to Yanjing (the historical name for Beijing). However, before the ferryman can bring him all the way across, Cho-won jumps off of the boat into the water. The ferryman looks for him in the darkness, but can only see his gat, floating in the water. Cho-won is gone.

Does The Scandal have a happy ending?

Definitely not. As in the novel on which it is based, the cruel machinations of Lady Cho and Cho-won could never lead to happiness. They could only ever lead to the confirmed status quo of their miserable lives as lords and ladies. Yun gets what she ostensibly wants: a continuation of the comfortable life she leads as Lady Cho. However, without Cho-won, she has neither a way to get her writing to a broader audience, nor a confidant in her games. The final shot of the character sees her alone, at her writing table, “left with nothing but longing.” Longing for a love that she will never see again, and for a life she didn’t choose, with no one left to write to. 

Hui-yeon is not doing particularly well, either. She is alive, and committed to her Catholic faith, but she has to live life in the margins. When Eun-sil, her former servant who believes her to be dead, comes to a secret Catholic service of which she is a part, Hui-yeon has to take off into the night to keep from being discovered. She travels to Cho-won’s old home, where she sees a stack of letters Lady Cho has continued to write to her cousin. Cho-won’s loyal servant comforts her, and beckons her inside for a warm cup of tea because it is what Cho-won would have wanted. She cannot, however, offer Hui-yeon the comforting lie that Cho-won is still alive; it’s clear this woman who has known Cho-won since he was a child believes he is dead.

So-ok is doing comparatively well. She has become a concubine for Lady Cho’s husband, but she has continued her love affair with In-ho (Chani), the Left State Councilor’s younger son. When So-ok becomes pregnant, it’s pretty clear to everyone but Lord Yoo that the baby is In-ho’s. For now, So-ok is happy, but there’s an implication that it will not always be like this. What will her future look like? In-ho is unable to claim his child as his own, and So-ok is stuck as a member of Lady Cho’s household. Throughout The Scandal, we see examples of youthful characters able to withstand bitterness solely through their naivete. What will be waiting for So-ok when the ignorance of her youth fades?

Much of the narration for these things left unsaid is given in the form of pansori, a traditional Korean art form that includes a single singer and a drummer. In the final episode, we learn that the pansori describing much of the plot is actually diegetic, as Lady Cho and other members of her household listen to the pansori singer describe their lives through the thinnest veil of fiction. This is a brilliant nod to Les Liaisons dangereuses’ status as one of the earliest and most famous examples of roman à clef, a French term translating to “novel with a key.” It is used to describe works of fiction that are about real-life events, and featuring real-life public figures, overlaid with the facade of fiction. 

What is The Scandal ultimately about?

Like its source material, which famously depicted the French nobility as corrupt shortly before the French Revolution took hold of the country, The Scandal is interested in critiquing the ruling class, giving the series a complexity missing from many romantic historical dramas. Following Cho-won’s jump into the water, the man ferrying him across says aloud to the night, seemingly somewhat facetiously: “Do you know how hard it is to be born a nobleman?” The line serves as a judgment of Cho-won and Lady Cho’s life choices, which, in their carelessness, caused so much pain for those around them. 

In the end, the couple that seems the happiest is also the poorest of our main characters. Prior to his death, Cho-won paid for the freedom of nobi Chil-seong and Eun-sil, who fell in love with one another while serving Cho-won and Hui-yeon, respectively. In the final episode, we see them happy with a baby, and with a steady income. In some ways, they serve as a representation of what Cho-won and Hui-yeon, or perhaps Cho-won and Yun, could have been, if they were not noble. But, in other ways, there is no comparison. A self-involved superiority, born of their social class, is integral to who Cho-won, Yun, and even Hui-yeon are as characters. That—as The Scandal argues through its constant, background depiction of the vibrant, working class life going on around these noble characters—is the point.