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If you binged all ten episodes of Netflix and A24’s new comedy/drama show, Beef’s ending might have surprised you and made you think: what the hell just happened?
According to the film’s synopsis, Beef follows the aftermath of a road rage incident between two strangers. Danny Cho (Steven Yeun), a failing contractor with a chip on his shoulder, goes head-to-head with Amy Lau (Ali Wong), a self-made entrepreneur with a picturesque life. The increasing stakes of their feud unravel their lives and relationships in this darkly comedic and deeply moving series.
Without giving spoilers, Beef creator Lee Sung Jin explained the last two episodes in a press conference. “[Danny and Amy] escalate and the two trains collide. We tried to get deeper emotions past the basic rage, sadness, happiness and we tried to figure out why they are the way they were. Why does reality kind of suck most of the time? We tried to get some deeper spots while also having a very well-placed fart joke in the mix.”
So what exactly happened during Beef’s ending? Read more below, but warning SPOILERS ahead.
Beef‘s ending explained
Image: Andrew Cooper/Netflix © 2023
What happened at the end of Beef? During the last five minutes of the show, we see Danny and Amy trek out of the wilderness of Los Angeles and finally get a signal on their phones after going through some existential crises the night before when they had a scuffle. Things start to seem okay and the two make up. Amy offers to get him a lawyer but he declined, and she rests for a bit for her ankle.
Amy’s husband George finds the two in a tunnel from “Find My iPhone” and sees Amy knelt down holding on the Danny and George calls for them when suddenly he shoots Danny. The scene cuts to Amy visiting Danny in the ICU and her crawling into the bed with him. It’s unknown if Danny’s going to make it but at the last second moment, his arm moves up to embrace her back.
In an interview with Elle, Lee opened up about how he left the ending very vague. “I leave it open to interpretation how people want to view that moment, but I just knew I wanted to create a mood, and that mood was something that felt very nostalgic and familiar and like home in a lot of ways.”
The music choice was also very purposeful to the story’s plot. “And I think the Smashing Pumpkins ‘Mayonaise’ song helps a lot. I’ve been wanting to use that for quite some time. It was in the outline, and I’m so glad we actually got it. I think all those things combined really created this feeling that I was chasing and what that feeling means, I think, is open to each viewer. I’m really curious what people are going to think by that final moment.”
As for the sudden cut to the credits, Lee said, “That was always written into the script. I just wanted that little extra something that makes you wonder what’s going to happen next, or what does this mean for Danny? What does it mean for Danny and Amy that he’s moving? I knew that just rhythmically, almost as a song, I knew that there needed to be just something that gets cut off right before credits.” The closer was “fun to write and then fun to see it executed,”
Image: Andrew Cooper/Netflix © 2023
The showing of an embrace can signify a romantic potential between the two and Lee saw it coming, but he still doesn’t know if it was headed in that direction. “I think any time two people have that deep of a connection, it’s easy to extrapolate that. But I honestly don’t know. I’m very curious what would happen to Danny and Amy once they leave that room. I have my own feelings on the romantic side of their relationship, but I certainly welcome all interpretations.”
He continued, “I did want these two characters in the finale to be completely unattached. To see what happens once every single aspect of their life has been stripped away from them. And so the only place to really do that is out in the middle of nowhere, and there is…almost like a vision quest or a ‘psychedelic trip in Joshua Tree’ sort of feeling to being out in the middle of nowhere. That was fun.”
The actual premise of the show is based on a real experience that Lee had encountered with road rage a year and a half before writing the TV show. “It was a typical road rage thing where the light turned green and I didn’t go fast enough,” he said in the press conference. “It was a white SUV BMW. They honked at me and said a bunch of things and raced off. And for some reason that day, I was like, “Eh, I’ll follow you.” I didn’t really have a plan and in my mind, I was justifying it. I was on my way home, and I happened to be behind the person. And I’m sure for the it felt like I was tracking him the whole run of the 10 highway. I thought there was something there about people who are very stuck in their subjective views of reality, and they’re projecting assumptions onto the other person. And yeah that was a core of the idea. So I’m very thankful for that incident.
When getting the script, Ali Wong (who is also an executive producer with Steven Yeun) was “blown away.” “The thriller element blew me away. I just haven’t done anything like that before. As the show has progressed it became so suspenseful. I read every script page right away just with so much anticipation.” Steven Yeun expressed the same sentiment. “You read the dialogue, and and it felt like, ‘Wow, this feels so real.’ It’s such easy but difficult vernacular that it’s written in a way where it was like Sung Jin was there in the room as a fly on the wall and he overheard those conversations. When you get dialogue like that, you know this is gonna be so fun.”
Beef is now available to stream on Netflix.
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