Tomorrow ending explained: This Kim Hee-seon and Rowoon-starrer is all about closure

The finale episode of the MBC drama Tomorrow aired on Saturday, and the main theme of the episode is to help the main characters in the show — Koo Ryeon (Kim Hee-seon), Park Jun-gil (Lee Su-hyeok), and Choi Jun-Woong (Rowoon) — find closure.

For starters, the episode begins with Koo Ryeon’s transformation. The next victim to come up on Koo Ryeon’s list is someone she had known all her life when she was a mere mortal.

During the Joseon period, Koo Ryeon was accompanied by a handmaid who was also her best friend. At present, in Tomorrow, this very friend is reincarnated as Ryu Choi-hui and ends up feeling suicidal.

Choi-hui is a young girl who is an accomplished actor. As a result, she is trolled and criticized incessantly, and the negative comments affect her. In addition to this, the actor also suffers due to rumors that are spread about her.

All of this crescendoes in the actor’s head, leading to her breakdown in public. In an attempt to run away from the noise in her head, Choi-hui hurries out into oncoming traffic. Despite Koo Ryeon’s best efforts, and because of Park Jun-gil’s interference, she gets hurt.

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Koo Ryeon’s journey to self-realization in Tomorrow

Choi-hui getting hurt sets Koo Ryeon off on a self-destructive path. Koo was someone who once believed that interfering in humans’ life was a mistake, and now she does not care about it at all. She attacked the trolls and beat up people who spread false rumors about Choi-hui as she relived her past in the finale of Tomorrow.

Koo was a victim of getting trolled herself. Rumors about her had spread far and wide, for she was a woman who had returned to Joseon after she was taken away by a group of invaders.

A bunch of such trolls had literally pelted stones at Koo Ryeon and her handmaid in Tomorrow, as a result of which her handmaid had died. So in the present, Koo Ryeon takes a dangerous path to ensure that history doesn’t repeat itself. The only one who can stop her is her team member Jun-woong.

In fact, the reason why he had to work at Jumadeung (Afterlife) in Tomorrow, while he stayed in a coma in real life, is to help Koo Ryeon and Jun-gil come to terms with each other about the life that they had shared long ago.

Jun-woong is aware of Koo Ryeon and Jun-gil’s tragic past. The fact that they were a loving couple who were separated due to society and that Koo Ryeon decided to join Jumadeung to ensure that she remembers her loving husband is revealed to Jun-woong by the director.

He uses this to get Jun-gil’s favor and ensures that Koo Ryeon saves Choi-hui so that she wouldn’t have to live with the guilt. He succeeds and also helps Koo Ryeon realize that the person that she had to save, the one that the director had spoken to her about, is none other than herself. She realizes that the only one who can save her from feeling guilt, pain, and loneliness in Tomorrow is herself.

When Koo Ryeon realizes this, a sense of peace descends upon her, and she is also able to face Jun-gil. Their past conflict in Tomorrow is also resolved after Jun-gil understands the kind of trauma that Koo Ryeon could have experienced. This helps the two of them heal from the scars of the past and move on to the future. Just when this conflict gets resolved, it is time for Jun-woong to complete his six months in Jumadeung and return to his mortal life.

He returns with no memory whatsoever of his time as a temporary grim reaper, but his instinct to spot individuals struggling with suicidal intentions remains. At the end of Tomorrow, Koo Ryeon, Jun-gil, and Ryung-gyu decide to wait for the time when they can accompany him on his afterlife journey.