Badland Hunters: Ending explained and Part 2 renewal possibilities explored

Netflix's latest movie, Badland Hunters, starring Ma Dong-seok (also known as Don Lee), Roh Jeong-eui, and Lee Jun-young, was released on January 26, 2024. The movie takes viewers to a Seoul that was destroyed by a powerful earthquake, leaving it desolate, parched, and devoid of drinking water, as Badland Hunters discover.

In addition to exploring life, duty, and family in this new world, the storyline of Badland Hunters, which centers on hunter Nam-san (Don Lee) and his allies seeking to save Su-na (Roh Jeong-eui) and her grandmother after they fall for a crazy doctor's claims of safe haven, builds to an exciting conclusion.

Disclaimer: This article may contain spoilers from Badland Hunters.

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Badland Hunters' ending explained—the most recent film on Netflix starring Don Lee

Badland Hunters shows the landscape of South Korea—possibly even the entire world—after a massive earthquake diminishes it to rubble. After the terrible earthquake years ago, South Korea has devolved into an open wasteland, with everything in civilization entirely wrecked.

People struggle to maintain their social cohesion in towns and villages when food and water supplies are severely limited. Two guys named Nam-san (Don Lee) and Choi Ji-wan (Lee Jun-young) hunt professionally, going into the wastelands and hunting animals to survive somehow and run a butcher shop.

In a "badland," a bandit attack poses a threat to Suna, a young lady. She and her grandma receive a visit from an unidentified woman who reveals herself to be a teacher and the head of a safe haven in Seoul. She says that, in a post-apocalyptic future, clean water and food are luxury items, and they prioritize the protection of families with children under the age of twenty.

The woman adds that a security unit is stationed there to deter gang attacks. In Badland Hunters, after getting a chance to live in a utopian apartment with her grandmother, Suna receives medical assistance from a distant source. Her grandma gets stabbed to death because the elderly are not allowed to live in the flats since they cannot support society or work.

When Suna arrives at "the apartment," which has food, drink, and clean rooms, she doesn't know that her grandma has been killed. Instead, she finds Yang Gi-su, a new godlike figure who is trying to bring mankind back, there.

She finds out that the students are housed on the eighth floor and that the parents are laboring below ground to clean the water. The students are merely alive since they are experimented on by Yang Gi-su (Lee Hee-joon).

Simultaneously, military Sergeant Lee Eun-ho assists Ji-wan and Nam San in their fight against mutant troops. She narrates the tale of discovering an apartment complex that was unharmed by an earthquake and establishing a camp with the survivors. She tells the story of how Yang Gi-su, who entered the apartment and became its resident doctor, met Captain Kwon in private and planned to murder several teenagers for his experiments.

Captain Kwon and his crew attacked Eun-ho when she tried to confront the doctor, but she was able to get out of there somehow. Both Nam-san and Ji-wan agree to join the woman, who intends to aid the folks back at the apartment. Nam-san feels protective of Su-na since she resembles his dead daughter, whom he couldn't save earlier in the earthquake.

Badland Hunters then shifted the focus to Yang Gi-su's vision, for whom a vaccination that prevents death will enable humans to live without water, establishing a new civilization and planet. His account includes a frightening scene in which we witness Yang keeping his daughter's head, shoulder, and heart in a box while the heart is still pumping.

His goal in all of this is to preserve his daughter's life. He starts testing kids to achieve this, and many of them don't make it out alive, while the others turn into lifeless robots. Additionally, they must repeatedly receive injections. In Badland Hunters, during his experiment on Su-na, Yang Gi-su takes fluids out of Su-na's neck and injects some into his body, which ultimately brings his demise.

Gi-su became mutated because Su-na had not consumed any water prior to his experiment. In the meantime, while fending off troops, Nam-san, Ji-wan, and Eun-ho enter the premises of the apartment to rescue Su-na and others. After a bloody and gory battle with the human soldiers and several mutated ones, Nam-san and Ji-wan make their way to the 8th floor to rescue Su-na, who is found tied to the experiment tables.

Meanwhile, in an attempt to escape, after giving the order to place his daughter's body into a suitcase, Yang Gi-su unintentionally breaks it, killing his daughter.

At the end of Badland Hunters, the guy is shot dead by Nam-san, and the area experiences its first rain after three long years of devastation and draught, signifying the annihilation of evil. Su-na, Nam-san, and Ji-wan make it back to their bus district, where they initially lived, and can be seen together as a contented family in the epilogue. She is seen running the butcher shop along with Nam-san and Ji-wan.

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The movie is directed by Heo Myeong-haeng and is a sequel of 2023 film Concrete Utopia. The movie is currently streaming on Netflix.