With a rollercoaster of dramatic standoffs, near escapes, and unexpected turns, the riveting new Netflix K-drama Money Heist: Korea – Joint Economic Area comes to a thrilling conclusion.
A grand robbery and hostage situation take place in a mint in the cult Spanish crime thriller Money Heist, which is set against the imagined backdrop of a soon-to-be-reunited Korean peninsula.
The suspenseful conclusion is filled with bungled plans and close calls, such as the Professor’s (Yoo Ji-tae) character’s identity almost being disclosed to police after a heart-pounding automobile chase with members of the task team commanded by the negotiator (Seon Woo-jin, played by Kim Yun-jin). In order to pull off the heist, The Professor has been seeing Woo-jin romantically, but she doesn’t know who her true love is.
After the Professor has sped through multiple greenhouses filled with tomato plants, the pursuit comes to an abrupt halt when his path is barred by task force vehicles. Before the automobile abruptly reverses, the negotiator tries to get a better look at the driver (the Professor), whose face is just slightly obscured by tomato splashes all over the windscreen.
After Woo-jin is permitted to enter the mint to present a televised hostage survival check to make sure the hostages are still alive, another tense confrontation between the task force and heist team takes place.
In an effort to convince the public that the heist team had killed a hostage, Woo-jin requests that the heist team confirm the existence of a specific captive (a policeman who covertly entered the mint masquerading as a hostage and was thought to have been shot dead).
Berlin (played by Park Hae-soo of Squid Game) responds that the man was found to be a police intruder and that they were acting in self-defense by shooting him, which sets off a yelling war between Woo-jin and Berlin.
Later, before a captive is revealed wearing a mask, he replies, “we’ll simply have to hear it ourselves” to resolve the argument. In a startling turn of events, the person’s disguise is removed to reveal that he is the policeman who Berlin had earlier shot. In an effort to follow the Professor’s directive not to damage any hostages, Berlin shot at the policeman but missed.
Later, after being upset by the robbery team, Woo-jin gets drunk with the Professor to vent to him. The Professor is seen torn as he realizes that he has fallen in love with Woo-jin as they go out on a stroll. When he remarks, “You just seemed fatigued,” and asks if she would think about leaving the mint case (which would render her useless for the theft), Woo-jin envelops her companion, moved by his kind words.
After finding the tip of a bill of money in her jacket pocket that looks to have been dropped off by one of the hostages, Anne, the negotiator then abruptly tells the Professor that she must leave (played by Lee Si-woo).
Earlier, she had made an attempt to slip the note into Woo-pocket, jin’s but Tokyo from the heist team saw her and pulled her aside. On the note, she had agreed to write a message claiming the policeman had died—before it was confirmed he was alive—and outline the heist team’s identities and their robbery plan.
The second time around, Anne seems to have been successful in slipping a little portion of the note into Woo-pocket jin’s since, after grabbing the negotiator’s arm and yelling that she had seen the policeman, she was again restrained by the robbery team.
The North Korean task force leader Cha Moo-hyuk (played by Kim Sung-ho), who was fired from the mint case but assured Woo-jin he was still determined to find the Professor, stops the Professor in his tracks as he is returning to his home.
After he had earlier breached security and entered the task force tent to warn Woo-jin about an important call he had received from her mother, he informed Woo-jin about his suspicions regarding her lover Park Sun-ho (the Professor).
In the final shot, Moo-hyuk greets the Professor as he turns around to face him outside the Professor’s house before the screen goes blank.
The heist team, who are last seen celebrating their most recent one-up against the task force at the captive survival check, has plenty of space to grow in the largely open ended climax.
Moscow, the member of the heist squad in charge of digging the hole through which the crew intends to flee with their loot, revealed that he had reached the soil level, marking the beginning of their escape route, which added to the festivities.
There are still unanswered concerns, such as the identity of the mystery USB stick that was given to a staff member watching the broadcast hostage survival check from a trailer outside the mint. In the conclusion, neither the sender of the USB nor the information on the memory stick were disclosed.
Could the Professor’s fastidious nature have contributed to his seamless strategy to make Moo-hyuk the target of suspicion? Is Woo-jin really the love of his life, or may removing Woo-jin from the mint case also be on his agenda? What portion of Anne’s letter did Woo-jin see?
Hopefully, the answers to these and many other questions will be provided in the upcoming episodes, the publication date for which has not yet been announced.