Breaking Down the Twisty Ending of Netflix K-Drama The Trunk
Warning: Spoilers ahead for The Trunk
Netflix’s latest Korean drama, The Trunk (트렁크), begins with a gunshot and the sinking of the titular trunk to the depths of a lake. Soon after, a flashback to five months prior introduces us to Noh In-ji (Dr. Romantic’s Seo Hyun-jin), an employee at New Wedding (NM), a mysterious company that provides professional spouses for the richest of the rich. In-ji is a “field wife” for NM, and is preparing for her fifth contract marriage with the company.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]This time, In-ji will be married to uber-wealthy music producer Han Jeong-won, played by Hallyu superstar Gong Yoo (Coffee Prince, Train to Busan, Goblin, Squid Game). Unlike her previous contract spouses, Jeong-won has not sought out the marriage for himself. It has been arranged by his ex-wife, the pathologically manipulative Lee Seo-yeon (Exhuma’s Jung Yun-ha), who has hired her own NM husband, Yun Ji-oh (Lee Woo). Seo-yeon has told a reluctant Jeong-won that, if he completes the one-year contract marriage, they can get back together.
But what starts as a business arrangement between In-ji and Jeong-won slowly becomes something deeper, as the two develop feelings for one another, threatening both Seo-yeon’s plan and the designs of murderer and former NM employee Eom Tae-seong (Kim Dong-won), who has been stalking In-ji for the last four years. This all comes to a head in the eighth and final episode of The Trunk. Let’s break down the ending of the psychological melodrama.
Why does Seo-yeon want Jeong-won to marry In-ji?
While it seems Seo-yeon has always used manipulation in an attempt to control those around her, the toxic behaviour escalated following the death of her unborn child, which took place before the main events of the series. A flashback shows that Seo-yeon was deeply troubled at the prospect of becoming a mother, and walked into oncoming traffic while eight months pregnant. Jeong-won saw her do it and as Seo-yeon was rushed to the hospital, Jeong-won pleaded with the doctors to save the baby first. As he later explains to In-ji, he was desperate to become a father as a way to try to outrun the trauma of his childhood. Jeong-won’s father, a rich and publicly well-respected figure, physically and emotionally abused Jeong-won’s mother. Jeong-won is still haunted by the experience, and by his inability to do more to stop it as a child.
Seo-yeon overhears Jeong-won’s request to the doctor, and is deeply hurt by her husband’s priorities. The events lead to the fracturing of their relationship, and spur Seo-yeon to arrange NM marriages for both of them. It’s unclear why exactly she does it, but she seems to glean some greater sense of control over Jeong-won, without actually having to live with him. She doesn’t want to be with him, but she doesn’t seem ready to let him go either. Presumably, Seo-yeon also sees it as a way to make Jeong-won suffer like she has suffered. However, she arguably ends up inflicting more pain on herself.
What is inside the trunk?
As we noted, the series begins with a literal trunk sinking into a lake.There are actually two identical trunks. One of them belongs to In-ji, and one of them belongs to Seo-yeon. When Tae-seong sneaks into Jeong-won’s house to steal In-ji’s trunk, which houses In-ji’s marriage contract to Jeong-won and the NM marriage manual, he accidentally takes Seo-yeon’s instead. In the eighth episode, Tae-seong lures In-ji out to the remote lake where she likes to go kayaking by threatening Jeong-won’s life. Tae-seong wants to “dominate” In-ji by exposing the existence of NM using the evidence inside of the trunk. In the process, he hopes to take down NM as well. However, when In-ji is unable to unlock the trunk, it becomes clear to both In-ji and the viewer that Tae-seong actually took Seo-yeon’s trunk.
Later, in the final police interrogation scene, we see Seo-yeon opening her trunk, which has been retrieved by the police from the lake. It is filled with baby clothes. Seo-yeon cries when she sees them. She has obviously been deeply affected by her pregnancy and by the death of her unborn baby. While Seo-yeon is far from happy or at peace when we last see her in The Trunk, the acknowledgement of what is inside of the trunk seems like a stutter-step in the right direction when it comes to processing her feelings around this traumatic experience. Later, we see her tell Jeong-won: “I’m just a bad person. That’s how I’ve found my closure.”
Who killed Eom Taesang?
About halfway through The Trunk, we learn the identity of the body found in the lake: Eom Taesang, In-ji’s stalker. Taesang was a self-defence instructor at NM. He had In-ji in class, and became obsessed with her. He killed one of the company’s security officers, known as “keepers,” in front of In-ji, seemingly as a way to “stake a claim” over In-ji, as she says he tries to do.
After the murder, NM has Taesang committed to a mental health facility. He was not properly prosecuted for the crime because NM did not want to draw attention to their existence. When Taesang is released from the facility, he immediately starts stalking In-ji again. “Eom Taesang is more of a danger to those around me than to me,” In-ji tells Jeong-won. Elsewhere, she expresses a desire to be the one who kills Taesang—and she tries to. After she fails to open the trunk, Taesang attacks her. She fights back and, when Jeong-won finds them, the lovers are able to get the upper-hand. In-ji tries to shoot Taesang in the back as he runs away—the gunshot we hear in the show’s opening seconds—but misses.
While many of The Trunk characters have a motive to kill Taesang, it is actually Yun Ji-oh, Seo-yeon’s field husband and In-ji’s co-worker, who delivers the killing blow. After escaping In-ji’s bullet, Taesang flees into the lake via a small boat, where Ji-oh finds him. Ji-oh stabs Taesang through the heart with a fencing sword. Ji-oh was at NM the day Taesang killed a security officer. Unhappy with the state of his contract marriage with Seo-yeon, whom he has developed feelings for, and presumably upset that Taesang literally got away with murder, Ji-oh kills Taesang.
Do In-ji and Jeong-won end up together?
While a murder may be The Trunk’s primary mystery, it is arguably not the series’ most gripping one. That would be the tangled web of relationships that drive the story, made more opaque by the contract nature of both In-ji and Jeong-won and Seo-yeon and Ji-oh’s marriages.
While In-ji and Jeong-won are not officially together at the end of The Trunk, it is implied that they will be one day. They are both taking time outside of romantic relationships to heal. We see Jeong-won playing with his new cats, Cookie and Momo. In-ji clips her toenails, goes to see a horror movie by herself—because Jeong-won did the music for it. They make dinner for themselves in warm, comforting home spaces. They are prioritizing taking care of themselves before they also try taking care of a partner.
When they meet randomly on a Seoul street, they are happy to see one another. When they parted ways, Jeong-won floated the idea that they would leave it to chance—if they ran into one another organically twice more, then they would stay together. “We might be destined to be together,” he tells In-ji, whom he has fallen in love with. “Maybe not for our entire lives, but for around 30 years, perhaps.” While In-ji did not initially explicitly agree to the suggestion, when they meet again, she seems to. “One more to go,” Jeong-won tells In-ji, tears in his eyes. “Yes,” she agrees, not breaking eye contact.
Do Seo-yeon and Ji-oh end up together?
While they are not the primary couple in The Trunk, Seo-yeon and Ji-oh’s complex contract marriage is an important subplot. While Seo-yeon is emotionally unavailable for most of their first year, Ji-oh falls in love with his contract wife. When Ji-oh is arrested for Taesang’s murder, Seo-yeon vows to get him the best lawyer, revealing to Jeong-won that they have decided to renew their contract.
Will there be a second season of The Trunk?
Currently, there are no public plans for a second season of The Trunk, which was adapted from a self-contained novel, written by Kim Ryeo-ryeong. It seems unlikely that there will be a second season, but Netflix is known for extending limited series when they are extremely popular, so we shall see. If you are interested in other K-dramas that feature contract marriage plots, recent examples include Perfect Marriage Revenge, My Demon, and The Story of Park’s Marriage Contract. When the Phone Rings, which is currently being released on a weekly basis on Netflix, also features a main couple in a contract marriage.