Duty after School: Part 2

I'm devastated by the ending. My heart is broken for these beautiful souls

I'm so heartbroken and I'm just so upset the ending had to be done like this. Why not give them all a happy ending?

The first reason why I started watching this drama was because of the cutest couple Kim Yoo Jung and Wang Tae Man. They're just the cutest, but I cried when I saw one Youtube comment under one of their videos and it said, "They'll never be able to confess to one another". I'm just really hoping we get to see both of them in another drama with full of romance and comedy.

After starting the drama, I began to love all of the characters. They all became one big family and it just breaks my heart that their last conversation together was about what each of them wanted after the war was over. They deserve the whole world, not the devastating ending. Writer & director, why?! They could've lived full lives and be happy and you destroyed that. You broke a lot of hearts after watching that stupid excuse of an ending.

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I see what they were going for?

What to say about a show like this? This is my first review here, and that probably says something as to how conflicted I was, I just had to share.

Wanna start with a shoutout to the visual effects teams, both the CGI and practical effects were flawless and it's a great-looking show. The actors were also really good for what they were given.

Unlike many other reviewers, I won't say "don't watch if you liked part 1" or "avoid at all costs", but I will say: part 1 and part 2 are almost like two different shows/timelines using the same/similar characters, so if you prefer to think of it like that to protect whatever part 1 means to you, I think part 2 is still worth a watch and maybe just think of them as separate beasts. One thing of note for me was that many characters made stupid, uncharacteristic decisions, some making a 180 personality shift from part 1. I also didn't like the chosen portrayal of mental health issues and their interactions with those from poverty-stricken backgrounds, which I feel might increase the heavy stigmas those vulnerable in our communities are already facing.

After this, I will spoil the ending (although most everyone already did), so be warned.

I won't lie and say the ending didn't frustrate me. It was so pointless, so meaningless. Not entirely unexpected, but not satisfying either. Not neat. Not "thematic".

But then I think of the kids from the science school. They had their own characters, their own stories, their own dreams, something they were marching toward. And yet in the story we saw, they appeared briefly and then were reincountered as a bunch of gruesome corpses on the path our heroes were taking. They died horribly, meaninglessly, off-screen. Their bodies were ransacked for loot and they were not buried or mourned by those that encountered them. Was that a fair ending? If we were watching their story, would it have been satisfying?

In real life, when an earthquake hits and 2000 people are buried in rubble, meaninglessly passing away, do they think that was how their lives were going to end? Did that factor into their plans for the future?

In a way, I think this ending was the most realistic ending possible. It was, as loss of life tends to be, brutal and unfair. We're upset because we were with some people on a journey, and that journey was cut short. There was no build up to a great climax, their lives just ended in the dumbest way, and nothing of value was learned or gained.

So yes, the ending was really annoying, absurd, divisive, nonsensical, and a hundred other words connoting something negative. However, looking back on it, I don't mind it so much. If the writers wanted to communicate the futile nature of war, they hit the nail on the head. If they wanted us to reflect on how unfair, wasteful, cruel, horrific, and unnecessary violence like that is, they hit the nail on the head. If they wanted to comment on how our "enemies" are not who we think they are, or that we shouldn't even be thinking of people as "enemies" in the first place, they hit the nail on the head. If they wanted to drive home the point that aliens were never the problem, humans were .... well, that one I find a bit on the nose.

What annoyed me more about the end of the drama, to be perfectly frank, was the complete lack of answers to my questions. One I asked several times an episode - what happened to Won Bin? One I asked many times as well - why would they do that? It makes no logical sense for someone to leave that there, or to do what they did. One I asked almost every scene - how is that still working? Shouldn't the batteries have run out long ago? Why are they wasting all those precious candles when everyone is in bed or in another room? Why are they playing so fast and loose with bullets all the time? They had 800 bullets in stock? They used that in 2 scenes, shooting all around the spheres and not hitting anything. Somehow they have all this ammo still! What are they carrying around all the time? They always say they don't have food or water, but their bags are full? Is anybody going to check on Ae Sol's wellbeing after what was an extremely traumatic assault that everyone witnessed? They are all comforting Bo Ra for a flesh wound, and So Yeon after she fainted, but nobody cared about poor Ae Sol almost being gang-r'd?? How did those 4 at the end survive their multiple gunshot wounds with no medical supplies around and no help? And what happened to Won Bin?

So yes, no shortage of questions, frustration, pity for what might have been an excellent conclusion or continuation of an interesting story, but still I don't regret watching it. Whether they ran out of budget, time, or they couldn't get all the actors on contract to keep filming, whatever the case may be, it's just a shame the ending felt so rushed. I kinda wish it just ended with the bloodbath and we didn't see the couple of scenes after - that was a stupid attempt to give people a somewhat happy/hopeful ending after the brutality of the loss of life, but I didn't really need that. The lives cut short so meaninglessly and brutally spoke for itself. It wasn't a great show plot- or writing-wise, so I can't rate it higher, but for some mindless entertainment it wasn't a total waste.

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Should’ve left the writing to the professionals, the webtoon writers

It’s about time drama writers stop trying to modify webtoons. There’s a reason the creative community chose the wentoon, they released a story, a style of writing and it was embraced and accepted
Some things do need to be modified for the entertainment value of moving picture but the process, the development and the moral of the story should’ve been kept the same




I read a bit about how the ending was executed in the webtoon and it made more sense

Here their biggest downfall in both seasons was lack of coherent development
Everything conveniently went downhill, they just happen to run in different directions, they just happened to have missed the signs
But I was fine until they went berserk with the changes and many things changed
Again the changes from the 1st half made sense for the impact but the development lost all their handwork

I get the exam guy going nuts, kids are emotionally unstable
He was bullied, looked down on, didn’t have the luxury of a steady home that he carried the burden of the future, he was alone and snapped

The way he snapped wasn’t done well, I thought he killed the cool kid, tbh that should’ve been his breaking point
And maybe he’d have seen the kids seeing the video at their final destination and so he lost his shit , sure when he went back he thought old looking girl was telling them everything and yes the one he 1st killed was his bully…
That’s what it goes back to, the bullies became cool, dependable and charming. Even bora. Soon they all bonded. Especially the way they were forgiven for lying
But for nerd guy, he was just alone alone alone

Now, the pre bully murder tbh was too disgusting and pointless. Sure he was upset old girl looked down on him but he didn’t have to assault her. This way, he wasn’t bullied into breaking point, he is not the victim, but everyone was right about him and he was a creep
10years in and he wouldn’t have become a dr or any type of office worker. He’d have become one of those creepy coworkers who’d end up in jail cuz he kept making moves on the female employees and ends up assaulting her….


In the other hand they made aesol kill him as a way of “she was the real type of outsa” and he was just a creep that was outcasted





Anyway what hurt the most was realizing the teacher, the team leader and some of the earliest kids(?) didn’t die, I’m not sure about the ending tho I did read it went with less casualties
So basically the old sacrifices went down the drain, and many died in the name of “a few weeks later they discovered a better weapon” so the kids didn’t have to become soldiers, they weren’t supposed to be sacrificed by the adults to just gain time.. and the adults + others just lived happily ever after? Well all wars are like that I guess….

But I feel like the enemy should’ve been the adults, the higher ranked soldiers and wobin for leaving the kids unattended, that guy deserved to die, team leader sacrificed for the kids and he just went back to base??
Basically they went Mist on us, it “didn’t have to go that way, if only they waited” I hate that as much as I hate the “it was all a dream”
Anyway I thought geek guy led the aliens to the kids, so the shock was ok but again the steps, the results… I cried more when they were all putting on makeup and laughing, kids should be pure, bullying is the main source of the trauma….

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not a bad ending imo

I have seen many people really hate this ending so i thought I would share my opinion. The acting was really well done. I definitely was a bit more annoyed at some of the characters in part 2 compared to part 1.

In my personal opinion I don't think this ending was unrealistic. I was a little more surprised at the fact that none of the characters went mentally insane sooner. I don't think it was a terrible way to end the series. Although the ending was very sad and unexpected, it perfectly shows how someone can go insane in situations like that.

What Young-Soo did was definitely not okay and horrible of him but weirdly enough I don't find myself hating him. The way I see it is he was so obviously not mentally okay and needed someone to help him. For instance, if we go back to the scene on the beach where he is trying to explain to them what happened, he was so obviously unwell. Not physically but mentally. And I think if at least one of them would stop and just ask him if he's okay and needs help, the ending possibly could have been avoided. Another way I believe this ending could have been avoided is if they would just stop splitting up. It was very clear that something would always go wrong anytime even just one person would separate from the rest. Yet they never seemed to learn from it.
To add on to Young-Soo, I believe the reason he was so obsessed with the CSAT, and extra points was because that was his only way to get into a college for free. And getting into a good college means getting a good job, and getting a good job means getting paid well, and for him, someone who grew up in poverty, having all that meant saving his family from poverty. Hence why the CSAT and extra points were so important to him.
Another thing I would like to add is that they did a really good job at portraying someone going mentally insane. Especially how you could see him arguing himself and trying to convince himself that what he did to il-ha(?) was just self-defense, and that he deserved it for always treating him badly. Same with how he would call So-Yeon(?) a witch, because she also used to treat him badly. One scene I personally enjoyed was the scene of them "talking about him" when he was in the hallway, and his ears ringing. I really love that they added that scene because it shows much further into how he believed everyone was against him for doing what he did at the amusement park.

A few things I didn't like about part 2 were:
1. What happened to the other commander guy? I forget his name but in part 2 nobody even mentioned him, and his picture wasn't drawn on the memorial either.
2. Like I said in the beginning, some of the characters really annoyed me in part 2.
3. I'm not the biggest romance fan so some of the romance in this was very cringy to me and I kind of wished they didn't add much romance. But i do understand why there was romance.

Sorry for the long review <333

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OPINIONS ARE DIFFERENT IF YOU DEBATING TO WATCH IT OR NOT, I WOULD SUGGEST GIVE IT A TRY

WELLhere i begin
I LIKED IT SO MUCH
The tense i felt when i was watsching the first part was so musch, literally i finished in one night. And the second part as well
I really liked when they were doing silly things like childs and not adults, and how it changed between laughter and action. The action had me at the edge of my seat, also i Cried and got goosebumbs. I like when the series gives me so many emotions .
There is something i didn't like ?Yes it is But i think i am pretty satisfied with the rest
The acting was reaaally good

Many of you will disagree with me but its okay. I havent seen anyting that good months now, i have dropped many seriew but this one kept me

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It had potential in the first part :(

the second part has many plotholes (?)

Where is Kim Wonbin, he was not once mentionned ?

How did the prisonners survive a month wo food/water and they are still in very good conditions ?

From where did the aliens come from and what do they want and how did they become THAT dumb in the 2nd part ? (the amusement park noise was hella loud 🥴)

Why every character developpement went back to what they were before. They showed in the 2nd part that they were mature and more logical and suddenly eveyone goes back to 0.

WHY KILL EVERYONE I AM TRAUMATISED ?????

I was so sad that the last survivers and even the other mates didn't know the reason they were killed ☹ (except the victim that realised before getting shot) this is personal I hate that bitch of young soo or whatever his name is.

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First part was mid, second one was worse, despite trying to make it up at the end

TLDR: II would say Episode 1-3>9&10>The rest. It ended being a shut your reasoning for a while and just enjoy fast action scenes. The best part is just seeing the kids interacting with each other in cute and funny scenes and remember that you were once like them. Overall script is just bad and it diminishes the original message the webtoon wanted to convey.

Now for a bit more of my thoughts:
I did a review on the first part where I pointed out the shows biggest problem, I would say this show genre is something like high teen, the good was the very flashy and entertaining action scenes with cute moments between the kids, but most of the script seems to be written by a high school senior on their wattpad. All of this changes were probably done to market the show better.
There's a lot of even bigger plot holes in this season than in the first 6 episodes, probably because there was a time skip but they didn't explain or summarize what happened during that time (Like what even where the kids doing on that location or where as Won Bin in all of this). The first 2 episodes of this season felt like some type of filler because i don't even remember what happened on them and i watched them a couple of hours ago.
Now i will talk a bit of the last 2 episodes, I think it was a good idea to make drama between the group but to be honest it felt forced, and that's because they wrote the kids to be alone in their operation while being in a military operation without a reason. The scenes in the last episode of the show were foreshadowed a bit, but because this was a 10 episode show for some reason they decided to cram everything in 2 episodes and the changes in dynamics and mental of the kids didn't have time to be explored. While they based on the webtoon ending for this, they made it a little too dramatic ,action packed and stretched out for my taste, the fake out of it being an alien attack wasn't sold enough for the real scene to be a twist. The changes they did while adapting the original story made it so the ending wasn't as impactful, Chi Yeol's monologue at the end had to be shown because the ideas he conveyed weren't explicit enough in the show, while in the original, these kind of thoughts were everywhere without having to be said explicitly.

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UTTER DISAPPOINTMENT

The producers could have stopped with the first part. Disappointing and unsatisfactory ending. I wish that " I could just undo watching the 2nd part ". Last but not the least , the actors and their acting was above par . Liked the cast but ... It all was taken away by the final episode.. It's shit. Stop at episode 9 if you wanna stay happy.

Positives :
One of the things that makes Duty After School stand out is its exploration of the themes of survival and loss. The students in the show are forced to make difficult choices in order to survive, and they all experience a great deal of loss. This gives the show a sense of emotional weight that many other survival dramas lack..

Negatives :
The ending of "Duty After School" is the final nail in the coffin. It's so over-the-top and ridiculous that it's almost funny. The show tries to be both serious and campy, but it fails at both. It's a complete mess.

Overall, "Duty After School" is a disappointing show. It had the potential to be good, but it's ultimately a mess. The plot is convoluted, the characters are underdeveloped, and the ending is a disaster. I would not recommend this show to anyone.( Especially the 2nd part ) Just forget that a 2nd part exists. That would do good.

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What happened?

Part 1 had its problems and was not bad as it had a real gripping ending, but part 2… what were the writers thinking?

I don't know how important CSAT exams are, but this exam is one of the driving plot points of part 2. What makes no sense is that humanity faces extinction and yet all these kid could think about was getting into college. I am sure there are more important things to worry about than college entry at a time like that. This becomes such a central plot point that one of the characters literally goes insane after finding out the 2023 CSAT exams were cancelled and were to be held in 2024. This leads to the drama ending not to a final showdown against the alien threat, but the final boss being this kid who has gone insane and had somehow activated god-mode in his final rampage.

The ending was anti-climatic and skips ahead to 2024 where humanity has wiped out 99% of the menace so had the threat under control. Okay... so we are supposed to imagine the final desperate struggle and not be shown it? Instead we were given teenaged angst drama with automatic rifles? Sure.

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A Commentary on Society-Destroying Meritocracy

My 4 categories are Acting/Cast, Writing, Direction/SFX/Music, Entertainment Value.

It became clear by the end of this series, that this is a social thriller depicting the damaging effects of living in a meritocracy. I wish I knew from the beginning...maybe then I wouldn’t have been so pissed off by the ending.
By the way, this review encompasses both parts.

Acting/Cast: There were certain characters that over-acted pretty consistently. I also didn’t like the acting style of the main student (the one in charge of filming interviews). Other than that, it was alright and for the most part the acting improves throughout the course of the drama. 5/10

Writing: The purpose of this drama is to criticize meritocracy by using the backdrop of an alien invasion. A meritocracy is “a political system in which economic goods or political power are vested in individual people based on ability and talent, rather than wealth or social class. Advancement in such a system is based on performance, as measured through examination or demonstrated achievement.” In short, it’s a system where a person’s performance in school is really the only thing that matters. This drama depicts the consequences of that type of society. This is a huge problem in South Korea in particular. It has created a society where a student’s peers are seen as competition, creating a lack of comradery between them. It also results in a divide between child and parent—with the parent’s love being conditional to their child’s academic achievement. In a metaphorical sense, citizens are thrown into warfare to fight within a brutal system at a very young age far before they are able to mentally handle it, which is something the drama did in a literal sense with these students. Such an extreme focus on grades results in a blindness to all other valuable aspects of life—fun, love, friendship, truth—which prevents one from truly experiencing a full life and finding happiness. They are seen as expendable soldiers, as illustrated in the drama, and are easily used as pawns due to this hyper fixation on grades to the point where common sense has gone out the window. These aspects of a meritocracy cause mental illness in those who are forced to participate—depression, suicide, psychopathy, low self-esteem, insecurity. The drama shows all of this and it’s inevitable conclusion: death.

With that being said, is this drama written well? Even though I understand what the writers are trying to convey, there are obvious issues throughout the drama. There are scenes that are so infuriatingly frustrating and there are scenes that don’t make much sense. For instance, all of the students have guns, but conveniently they suddenly don’t have them when they actually need to use them. We see one student kill an alien using a blunt object and brute force, but later, when it’s ten kids versus one alien, they can’t kill it because they don’t have guns. At one point, an important key falls behind a cabinet and they spend five minutes trying to stretch their arm to reach it and none of them thinks to grab something to make their reach longer. So, the kids are either really dumb or really smart depending on how the writers need them to be in order to make the scene work, but that doesn’t work for me. Because of these issues, I actually preferred part 2; the kids were more consistently intelligent in part 2 (except for the end). I liked the opening sequence for part 2. It really showed the change and positive growth of the students and how they’ve learned to work together. I also really liked the prison sequence in part 2. Even though it was frustrating as like other scenes, it was really powerful in showing character relationships and character growth. This sequence also serves to further reveal the darkness and corruption of humans and that the humans have caused the downfall of their own society (by implementing a maritocratic system); it was not the aliens who were responsible. The aliens were simply there as a sort of judgment day or ‘a reckoning’.

From this point on in the drama, the aliens are less of a focus. Instead, the psychology of the students becomes the focus. Now we are seeing the lasting effects of the maritocratic system come into play—corruption, manipulation, distrust between peers, and mental disorders. I read that viewers really didn’t like this part of the drama, but it was inevitable. The ultimate ending was also a problem for viewers, but that too was inevitable because of the meaning behind the script. I still didn’t like it. The gruesomeness of the ending was so far removed from the lightness, fun, and feelings of hopefulness of part one and half of part 2. In other words, the ending sequences of part 2 were disturbingly dark compared to the rest of the drama...traumatically dark. It was hard to watch. It was also frustrating because the students were all trained marksmen by this point, with guns in hand, and they still were unable to subdue the threat. This is why viewers were so angry, I think. This is why I was angry. Another reason is because endings like this one tend to make the entire drama feel like a waste of time. 4/10
       
Direction/SFX/Music: Hot take...I actually don’t like the alien design. I think they look very nonthreatening and it’s kind of ridiculous watching so many people be terrified of them. They are also killed very easily, which is something discovered pretty early on, but not really utilized. The first alien they encountered was really a tease because we never see anything as threatening as that alien for the rest of the drama. There were some minor things with the scene editing that I had an issue with in part 1. The editing and flow seemed better in part 2. I like the OST; it’s energetic and fun. 4.5/10       

Entertainment Value: This was a pretty entertaining drama despite it being so frustrating. I was always worried for everyone because the writers were obviously fine with killing off important characters. Also, I had no idea where they were taking the plot, so that kept it interesting. The ending pretty much ruined this drama. It almost felt like they didn’t know what else to do with the plot so they just set it on fire. But, looking at it as a condemnation of maritocracy, it seems like this was the intention from the beginning. Even though I didn’t like the ending, I can say that I probably won’t forget it. By the way, there isn’t really any romance in this drama, so that made it a little less entertaining to me as well. 5/10

Combining both parts into one, I gave this drama a 4.5/10 (4 stars and up are ‘enjoyable enough for a watch’). This drama is similar to Happiness in that it is also a social thriller that uses the metaphor of a sci-fi infestation to commentate on destructive aspects of South Korean society. Understanding that this drama is depicting a judgment on maritocracy and its long term effects will provide viewers with perspective on why the writers chose to have the plot play out in the way that it did. However, there are still a lot of issues with the writing that make this drama an aggravating watch and the ultimate ending may still make you feel like you’ve wasted your time. I do like the thought-provoking nature of the story through allegory, but the script isn’t written well enough for it to have as much as an impact that it could have had.

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