The Twenty-Five Twenty-One ending is a bittersweet completion of the 16-episode romantic arc between Na Hee-do (Kim Tae-ri) and Baek Yi-jin (Nam Joo-hyuk). One of the best Korean dramas streaming on Netflix, Twenty-Five Twenty-One is a one-season show that premiered in 2022. Set in the present day, Hee-do’s daughter Kim Min-chae (Choi Myung-bin) finds her mother’s old diary, and it’s from this diary that the story is told in flashbacks, jumping back and forth to the present.
In the previous episodes of the K-drama, Hee-do and Yi-jin’s lives are shown, first as they begin to fall in love in high school, then through an unseen breakup that pushes the pair far from each other. Both end up living successful lives, and Na Hee-do goes through a few relationships before ending on one that seemingly gave her a daughter, though who Min-Chae’s father is, is carefully obstructed from the audience. It’s a K-drama that will hook viewers from the first episode and the season finale satisfyingly illuminates the couple’s breakup, reunion, and the significance of the diary.
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Baek Yi-jin And Na Hee-do Break Up
The Lovers’ Lives Are Moving In Opposite Directions
Seeing as Yi-jin and Hee-do are not together at the start of Twenty-Five Twenty-One, it’s assumed they broke up sometime between their whirlwind high school romance in 1998 and the present day. Episode 16 finally reveals exactly what happened that night and it’s heartbreaking. Yi-jin has been slowly drifting away from Hee-do, more concerned with his budding career as a journalist than with his relationship. For her part, Hee-do has been hyperfocused on her fencing career and making the Olympics, so the couple have not been able to see each other often.
The problems in their relationship come to a boil one evening, and they get into a fight and hurl insults at one another before breaking up and storming off. Soon after, Yi-jin stumbles upon Hee-do’s diary, the same one Min-Chae is reading in the present, after Hee-do leaves it on a bus and the driver returns it to Yi-jin, seeing his address scrawled inside the cover. Yi-jin reads the diary and sees just how much Hee-do loves him. He rushes to meet her but, together, they both realize the same thing simultaneously.
The reasons for their breakup were real. Yi-jin is going to America to pursue his journalism career and Hee-do will stay in Korea, set on representing the country in the Olympics. However they may feel about each other, the reality is that their lives are going in two very different directions, and unless one is willing to make the sacrifice, the relationship will never work. It’s a sad truth they come to, but they do so, apologizing for what they said during the initial breakup, and at least part ways without having hurt the other.
Kim Min-chae Discovers Her Mother Na Hee-do’s Lost Diary
Yi-jin Left A Special Note For Hee-do
Despite having found her mother’s diary back in the season premiere, Min-chae does not reveal this to her until the series finale. Since Hee-do and Yi-jin’s breakup, she has won numerous medals at the Olympics and started a family, while he becomes a news anchor and moves back to South Korea. He coincidentally ends up working for Hee-do’s mother back in their hometown. After Min-chae finishes the diary, she brings it to her mother, 20 years after she and Yi-jin broke up. Hee-do opens it up and finds a final page that she never wrote.
It turns out that after Yi-jin found the diary all those years ago, he added a page of his own filled with all the strong, loving emotions he felt for Hee-do and also the regret for the fight that led to the breakup. Instead of returning it to her, however, he gave it to a shopkeeper who forgot all about it until Min-chae found it. Hee-do reads his words and is brought to tears recalling her strong feelings for her former love and happily confirming that the feelings she had felt so strongly were reciprocated.
Baek Yi-jin & Na Hee-do Do Not End Up Together
Hee-do Has A Husband, A Daughter, And A Life Already
Hee-do returns to the same location where she and Yi-jin ended their relationship in 1998. Standing there alone, she now realizes what a waste of time their arguments had been and how much, as evidenced by the diary entries, they loved one another. Instead of remembering the hurtful things they said to one another, she imagines what would have happened had they said the things they had written in the diary instead.
It’s finally revealed that Hee-do does in fact have a husband, and she walks away from the site of her and Yi-jin’s breakup, presumably to return to her family. However, Twenty-Five Twenty-One ends before it shows what she does next, leaving her future up to the viewer.
The Real Meaning Of Twenty-Five Twenty-One’s Ending
The Story Is Not Over For Yi-jin And Hee-do
There are some who may consider Twenty-Five Twenty-One a great K-drama with a cliffhanger ending that ruins the series, but it’s an honest ending. 20 years have passed since Yi-jin and Hee-do broke up. They have both lived full lives since then. Getting back together is not as simple as reading some loving words written in a lost diary two decades ago. While the words certainly change Hee-do’s perception of what was said that night, it does not change the fact that the reason for their breakup was not emotional but situational.
Whether the fight happened that night or another night, it was always coming with the ambitious personal lives each person saw for themselves. Had they both said the loving thoughts they wrote that evening, days, months, or years from now, they would still need to contend with Yi-jin being beholden to wherever his stories took him and Hee-do concentrating solely on fencing. No loving words could have solved that impasse.
However, those who thought the K-drama characters deserved better should keep something in mind. Just because Twenty-Five Twenty-One ended without Yi-jin and Hee-do getting back together, doesn’t mean they never do. There is still plenty of time for the pair to rekindle their relationship. Perhaps Hee-do and her husband drift apart and split amicably in their later years. Maybe Yee-jin stays in South Korea as a news anchor and is able to prove his love decades after the end of the series.
There is a relevant story from the Facebook page Humans of New York, a page dedicated to the odd, romantic, funny, and serendipitous stories of the city. In one curiously similar anecdote, a woman from South Korea falls in love with a man in America but moves back to Korea for her family, and the pair never hear from each other again. That is until 20 years pass by and the woman finds the man on Google. She writes him a long message detailing all her feelings for him and how she’s thought about him all these years.
He was of a similar mind. They had both been through marriages and had children, but now reconnected much later in their lives and ended up marrying. A similar story could be true for the couple in Twenty-Five Twenty-One. 1998 was not their year, nor was 2018, but no one is to say that 2028 couldn’t be, or 2038, or 2048, or any time when Yi-jin and Hee-do are both at a point in their lives where they can accept one another’s love.
How The Twenty-Five Twenty-One Ending Was Received
The Final Episode Of The Romance K-Drama Was Divisive
While Twenty-Five Twenty-One is one of the most beloved romance K-Dramas to arrive on Netflix in recent years, the ending of Yi-Jin and Hee-Do’s story was incredibly divisive among viewers. Few K-Dramas have ended on such a polarizing note, with audience opinions split almost down the middle on whether the Twenty-Five Twenty-One ending was a refreshingly realistic final installment, or an infuriating conclusion that rendered the entire show pointless. Online discussions about the final episode of Twenty-Five Twenty-One are passionate to say the least, and both camps have interesting takes on the ending.
Those who enjoyed the ending of Twenty-Five Twenty-One celebrate both the realism and authenticity of Yi-Jin and Hee-Do parting ways, and the fact it was foreshadowed earlier in the show. For the fans of the final episode, Twenty-Five Twenty-One wasn’t a traditional love story or romance narrative. Rather, it’s a story of two people who are obviously right for one-another, but meet at the wrong time in their lives.
Yi-Jin and Hee-Do’s story isn’t one of lovers destined to be together despite the odds. The ending of Twenty-Five Twenty-One instead made it clear that they are “the one that got away” to one-another – a common and familiar concept in many romance stories, and one that many viewers find incredibly relatable.
Fans of the final episode celebrated the authenticity that came with this conclusion, and many found the fact that Yi-Jin and Hee-Do never quite managed to work things out incredibly refreshing. However, this is also the reason that so many viewers found the ending to be unsatisfactory, disappointing, or irksome.
Twenty-Five Twenty-One may have subverted expectations by telling a story of two lovers without a happily-ever-after, but many fans simply wish that it didn’t. Many online have been vocal about feeling somewhat cheated by the final episode, and that they’d spent the entire show expecting and hoping for the more traditional happy conclusion present in most romantic dramas, Korean or otherwise.
Ultimately, opinions on the Twenty-Five Twenty-One ending, as strong as they clearly are, are also subjective. There are none who claim that the episode itself was bad from a production standpoint. The acting was just as strong as ever, as was the highly emotional storytelling. Those who didn’t like the ending of Twenty-Five Twenty-One would have preferred a different outcome for Yi-Jin and Hee-Do, but none feel that the show lost any of the momentum which made it such a hit.
Twenty-Five Twenty-One is a South Korean television series directed by Jung Ji-hyun. Set amidst the aftermath of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the series follows the lives of a fencer and a reporter as they navigate love and ambition. Starring Kim Tae-ri and Nam Joo-hyuk, the show delves into themes of resilience and growth as the characters strive to achieve their dreams in a time of uncertainty.
- Release Date
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February 12, 2022
- Cast
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Kim Tae-ri
, Nam Joo-hyuk
, Kim Ji-yeon
, Choi Hyun-wook
, Lee Joo-myung - Creator(s)
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Jung Ji-hyun
- Writers
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Kwon Do-eun
