Breaking Down the Ending of Netflix K-Drama Boyfriend on Demand

In Boyfriend on Demand, Netflix’s glossy new Korean rom-com, Blackpink’s Jisoo stars as Seo Mi-rae, a 29-year-old woman who works as a producer at a small webtoon company in Seoul. As part of her job, Mi-rae oversees the platform’s most popular romance webtoon. But, in her personal life, she is uninterested in dating. She and her college sweetheart broke up in the transition to working life, and Mi-rae has never quite worked up the courage to try again. Plus, who has the time and energy to date in late stage capitalism?

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When Mi-rae is approached by the creator of a new platform that offers users virtual reality dating on demand, she agrees to trial the experience and give her honest feedback as a webtoon producer. But she is slowly drawn in by the immersive simulations that make users the main character in popular romance tropes. When prickly work colleague Park Gyeong-nam (Death Game’s Seo In-guk) confesses his feelings for Mi-rae, she must choose between the neat, controllable love stories of the virtual world and the unpredictable chaos of a real-life relationship.

This kind of story set-up is usually framed as much darker in modern pop culture, with Western writers and directors leaning into the dystopian science fiction elements of how we are replacing relationships with one another with interactions with technology. Boyfriend on Demand, however, sticks to the beats of a rom-com and is not particularly interested in portraying the negative social consequences of a technology like this one. Instead, it prefers to explore the emotional contexts and consequences that surround the decisions women make in the attention economy, and in a world that demands so much. 

Boyfriend on Demand’s treatment of its transformational tech reminds me of the function the holodeck often played in Star Trek: The Next Generation. While there were moments when the immersive quality of the classic sci-fi series’ simulation chamber impacted characters’ real-world responsibilities and relationships in negative ways, it was often treated as a space where characters were able to work through their feelings in a cathartic and productive way. This tracks with early Star Trek’s utopian treatment of technology and its potential as broadly positive for humanity and our progression. Boyfriend on Demand is similar in its depiction of its in-universe VR platform. (And there’s certainly more to say about the show’s pro-tech structure, and how it reflects Korea’s comparatively optimistic outlook on AI.) It is gloriously uninterested in depicting how transformative technology could lead to the end of society as we know it. Rather, it is focused on validating the very human traits and desires that tech companies knowingly exploit to wield such power over us. 

More specifically, Boyfriend on Demand is a meta exploration of how many women use story-worlds as a cathartic, sometimes productive escape from the monotony and demands of their offline routines. In the show, users aren’t just getting boyfriends or dates, they’re getting entire, serialized stories. In most of the dating scenarios, they are not playing themselves, but rather versions of an archetype: a hotel worker who saves their rich boss from drowning in a chaebol romance or a fresh-faced college girl swept up in a romance with a hunky senior classmate or a flight attendant caught up in an action spy thriller. The users are not only escaping the real world for a moment, but are escaping their own identities in a way that fiction can provide, giving familiar tropes that will always conclude with a happy ending in place of the uncertainties (and often cruel certainties) of the real world. 

A misogynistic version of Boyfriend on Demand might have judged its characters for their use of the in-universe platform, or for their desire for a momentary escape from reality. Refreshingly—and smartly, given that much of the K-drama audience will have a propensity for story immersion as hobby—that is not what this Netflix series does. While there is judgment within the world, both from specific characters and societally in the form of news coverage, Boyfriend on Demand does not treat its female characters’ use of immersive storytelling as inherently problematic. 

There are moments of overuse or one notable case when webtoon artist Yun Song (Hometown Cha Cha Cha’s Gong Min-jung) plagiarizes a Boyfriend on Demand character in her ongoing webtoon, but there are also moments when the virtual reality allows its human characters to process an emotion or solve a problem in a way that makes them more confident in their offline relationships and activities. In an optimistic depiction of humanity’s current battle with technology and its dude-billionaire overlords, Mi-rae is able to set boundaries around her platform use, and stop using it when it no longer serves her.

While Mi-rae ends the series choosing to unsubscribe from the platform, she does it with a kind of grateful, pro-technology reverence for all she has learned from the virtual experiences. Without the platform, she arguably would never have worked up the courage to date Gyeong-nam. Through the immersive storytelling, she was able to move on from her failed relationship with her college ex, and to explore her feelings around what it might be like to date someone new. By series end, she is in a happy relationship with Gyeong-nam, and they have even weathered their first relationship bump. 

While Mi-rae chooses to devote most of her free time to real-life dating, two characters end the series as Boyfriend on Demand subscribers. After Yun Song’s plagiarization, she considers giving her Boyfriend on Demand tech away, but ultimately chooses to continue using the platform after grilling her virtual boyfriend about why he likes her. His answer that he likes to make her happy seems to be enough for Yun Song for now. His emotional support has arguably made Yun Song more open to forming relationships in the offline world, and it isn’t treated as unhealthy. 

Meanwhile, Mi-rae’s boy-crazy friend Lee Ji-yeon (The Trauma Code’s Ha Young) is allowed to date as many men as she wants without judgment in the virtual world of Boyfriend on Demand. Her enthusiastic game-ification of the platform, and accompanying blog reviews of the experience, draws the attention of the platform’s creators. They offer Boyfriend on Demand fangirl Ji-yeon a consulting gig—a depiction of the growing mainstream recognition of the  financial value that can come from understanding and wielding the power of women-centric fandom. 

Ironically, Boyfriend on Demand’s commitment to championing immersive fiction as valid is what makes the series’ central romance fall a bit flat. While Mi-rae and Gyeong-nam’s love story is swoonworthy, it is too close to the perfect, trope-driven simulations of Mi-rae’s virtual dates to act as an effective counterpoint. Sure, Gyeong-nam is outwardly stoic and hard to read, but his tsundere trajectory and the office romance setting of his romance with Mi-rae are their own polished tropes. 

And despite efforts in the show to visually separate the virtual world from the offline world, Mi-rae’s life stays on the fantastical side of the K-drama spectrum. Perhaps because of the relatively short episode order, it also lacks the kind of specificity, e.g. literally any familial relationships, that can be used in Korean dramas to create real world texture. While Mi-rae’s Boyfriend on Demand residence may have a Dress to Impress-style walk-in closet and a balcony-cum-living-room reminiscent of Jasmine’s personal quarters in Aladdin, her Seoul apartment is pretty cute too—clean, warm, and with plenty of room. Her hair is always styled, and her work outfits are always stylish and immaculate. When Boyfriend on Demand half-heartedly pivots from Mi-rae choosing the real world over the virtual one, it never commits to the messiness of real-world relatability.

Like many of its characters, Boyfriend on Demand chooses a safer, less rewarding path than it perhaps could or should. In doing so, it caps the potential of its central romance, and the opportunity to make more in-depth commentary on the value of offline connection over friction-less, digital immersion. However, powered by a Jisoo in her best-suited acting role yet and a championing of the female-driven romance genre, the Netflix K-drama is an entertaining winner. Sometimes, there’s value in escaping reality for a little while.