Popular webtoon series Sweet Home even inspired a Netflix series of the same name written by Kim Carnby and drawn by illustrator Hwang Young Chan. It is an apocalyptic horror webtoon that was published first in 2017. The webtoon has been a great success and continues to attract many fans and readers, so let us quickly dive into its story and ending.
With a total of one hundred and forty chapters, the webtoon revolves around the story of a teen boy who is forced to postpone his suicide plans as he finds himself stuck with the residents of his building, trying to survive a strange monster apocalypse.
They call it monsterization and soon learn that it affects those who have their deepest and desperate desires hidden deep within them. They turn into a monstrous reflection of the same. The main leads of the story include Cha Hyun Soo, a newly orphaned and troubled eighteen-year-old with no will to live.
Yoo Ji Soo is a badass bass guitarist. Pyeon Sang Wook, a former police officer who looks more like a scary gangster, Lee Eun Hyuk, another eighteen-year-old, ends up becoming the natural leader of the residents. He is also Lee Eun Yoo’s older brother, a former ballet dancer, and a foul-mouthed teenager.
The webtoon has a long list of supporting characters, including the rest of the residents of the Green Home apartments, Cha Hyun Soo’s parents, his school friends and bullies, who feature during his nightmares or monsterization process, and lastly, some other outsiders sprinkled all over.
The webtoon is a superhit and actually has fans excited for the show as well, which has confirmed the release of a second season. But despite that, the webtoon was a success on its own as well, with the English version of it garnering about 2.4 million subscribers from all over the world.
Critics have appreciated the webtoon for not just being a compelling read but also having such suffocating and horrific art that seems to go well with the theme of the story.
Sweet Home Webtoon Ending Explained
Fans who have seen the series would not find catching up with the webtoon all that difficult. So, we start the webtoon with Hyun Soo’s parents getting killed in a car accident and him moving into a dingy apartment place, where he is the single occupant of room 1410.
The fact that the place looks unkempt does not matter, considering Hyun Soo plans on dying very soon. But before he can put his plan into action, he realizes that the entire world has gone to hell and that people, including his neighbors, have started turning into monsters.
The internet calls it “monsterization,” and it does not take long for these monsters to start killing people in Green Home as well. Thankfully, with the help of Han Du Sik, a tech genius of some sort, he manages to get his hands on a makeshift electric spearhead to kill the monsters.
With a spearhead in his hand, he sets off on a mission to save two kids in the apartment and, on his way, ends up meeting with Yoon Ji Soo, Jang Jae Heon, and Im Myung Sook. After much struggle, all of them gather in Du Sik’s room, though Ji Soo, Jae Heon, and Hyun Soo decide it best to visit the ground floor.
They encounter a monster once again, and it knocks Hyun Soon unconscious, but as he opens his eyes, he finds himself on the ground floor, with Eun Yoo and Eun Hyuk around him. He fell to the ground floor and woke up just fine, and even managed to reject his inner desires that wished to turn him into a hollow monster.
The Ground Floor Life
The residents on the ground floor unanimously decided it best to lock Hyun Soo away for their safety, not before getting Du Sik and the rest down in hopes of getting his technical assistance with the help of Sang Wook. They meet two more residents, Ahn Gil Seop, an old man who does not intend to die anytime soon, and his caretaker, Park Yoo Ri.
Du Sik, Hyun Soo, and Sang Wook reach the ground floor safely while the rest remain in their room upstairs. Du Sik starts fixing things around, including the lift, which leads to Jae Heon’s death but also helps bring Gil Seop and the troop down.
The residents decide that they will soon have to leave the building once the food runs out, so a team including Hyun Soo, Sang Wook, Ji Soo, Gil Seop, and Yoo Ri take the car that Du Sik fixed to get a look around. But their mission fails the moment they bring the car out as it attracts monsters, which end up killing Gil Seop.
A school bus comes to their rescue, with Byung Il stepping out of it along with a few others, all of them criminals and gang members. These outsiders also end up living with the residents, and the power dynamics in the building soon change. Turns out the outsiders also have a half-monster with them, just like Hyun Soo.
They spread all over the building to check for monsters and plan on throwing the residents out and taking over the building for themselves. Yi Hyun and Hyun Soo, while searching for monsters, reach the room where Myung Sook had turned into a cocoon. Yi Hyun, despite Hyun Soo’s attempts to stop him, lights it on fire, causing all of the monsters to move in their direction.
An Escape Attempt
On the ground floor, Eun Hyuk and Sang Wook also fight monsters, and Sang Wook takes shelter in the middle of four cocoons and shockingly finds a naked woman stepping out of one of them. With the monsters running out of the building, the residents run up to the terrace, and with the help of the long rope, they zipline towards a mountain just a few meters away.
Eun Yoo and Sang Wook distract the monsters as the rest escape. Hyun Soo finds Du Sik sacrificing himself in the parking lot, and at the same time, his hallucinations hit him again. Hyun Soo sees exactly what the monster apocalypse is and what it does to humans. Despite his desires teasing him, he rejects them and fights to remain the human that he is.
Sang Wook and Hyun Sik also reach the parking lot and, unfortunately, decide to kill Du Sik. On the rooftop, the survivors struggle with the monsters, which leads to Ji Soo running to her room and playing her bass guitar to distract the monsters. As the monsters run for her, the women and children are the first to escape.
Hyun Soo turns into a half-monster and runs to save Ji Soo, and the two run to the rooftop. Eun Hyuk decides it best to stay in the building and not follow the rest because of his moisturization process, which began a while back. So, finally, it is just Eun Hyuk, Sang Wook, Hyun Soo, Ji Soo, and Yi Hyun who are left to fight the monsters.
A Last Fight
But with Jeong Seop coming back alive, this time in his strong monster form, the team’s defeat is confirmed, and this is when Hyun Soo decides to stop fighting his demons and gives in to become what he desired the most, his favorite character from Maria from the Sky. Hyun Soo is much more powerful than Jeong Seop, and he ends up knocking him out with just one blow.
Ji Soo does her best to talk to Hyun Soo in hopes of bringing him back, but it does not help. So, after sending the rest on the zipline away from them, Eun Hyuk also decides to give in to his monster form and tries to save Hyun Soo. But he ends up turning into a clump of mass, all tangled and messy, that completely sucks Hyun Soo in, leading to their deaths.
Soon after, rain falls, and their cocoons become visible. Out of the two cocoons, one of them breaks, and Hyun Soo hatches out of it. He walks all the way down and finds Ji Soo’s phone with the guitar track that she had played for him still on it. He sheds tears and bawls his eyes out as he listens to it.
The Ending Explained
The epilogue takes us to a post-apocalyptic world, with harsh winters having hit South Korea and snow covering every inch of land. Hyun Soo’s figures become more apparent to Ji Soo, who walks out of the military camp where she and the rest of the refugees had been staying.
With a thin, torn layer of clothing on his body and completely barefooted, he slowly steps towards the camp as Ji Soo and the rest of the residents run out to meet him.
While the writers killed a lot of our favorite characters, we have to give it to them for writing Hyun Soo’s character so well. Just because we are still upset with Eun Hyuk and Du Sik’s death, Hyun Soo’s growth and arc almost made up for what was lost.
Hyun Soo giving in to his desires, becoming the strongest monster, and then stepping out of the cocoon as a new human sits well with his story, considering he started off wanting to die and with the loss of his entire family but ends the show with, a strong will to not just save himself but also to help save others.
His character completed the circle, and with the residents and Ji Soo rushing out to hug him, he definitely found a new family, a new purpose, and, most important of all, a new life.
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