Dear X- Episodes 11-12
“Cracks Behind the Smile”
Episode 11 of Dear X is one of those episodes that quietly tightens its grip on your chest and refuses to let go. It opens in chaos, with the brutal fight between Sung-hee and Ah-jin ending in blood and a scar that feels far deeper than skin. Moon Do-hyuk arrives too late to stop it, carrying a shaken Ah-jin away as everything unravels.
Ah-jin wakes up in the hospital to what seems like comfort. Jun-seo is there, gentle and familiar, pressing a kiss to her forehead. But even this moment later feels unstable, as Do-hyuk informs her that Sung-hee has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and sent to a psychiatric hospital. The explanation sounds neat, almost too neat, and the show makes sure we feel that unease settle in.
Life moves on, at least on the surface. Ah-jin begins laser treatments for her scar, determined to erase every visible trace of what happened. Meanwhile, Jae-oh starts digging, only to discover that Sung-hee has been locked away in Haemil Psychiatric Hospital, the same place where Do-hyuk’s wife has been hospitalized. No one has seen the wife in over a year. On top of that, Reporter Lim disappears right after recording a video about Ah-jin and Sung-hee’s shared past. The pattern is hard to ignore, and the silence around it feels deliberate.
Jun-seo, for his part, appears oddly at peace living with his mother. While shopping with her, he crosses paths with producer Han Ji-gyu, who drops a disturbing revelation: the rumors surrounding Ah-jin and Sung-hee mirror the events of his first novel. Jun-seo is further shaken when he learns that Ah-jin was attacked. When he calls Jae-oh for answers, he’s met with frustration and anger for disappearing when she needed him most.
Back at Ah-jin’s house, the story slips fully into psychological horror. A simple request for tea spirals into a hallucination of a maid lunging at her with a knife. Moments later, reality fractures again when the tea becomes whiskey and the room around her changes. She finds the third floor in ruins, doors smashed, only to be told by the housekeeper that she herself caused the destruction. A flashback confirms it: Ah-jin rampaging through the house, laughing hysterically after finding a room filled with photos of Do-hyuk and his ex-wife. Even so, she insists she isn’t losing her mind.
Determined not to stop, Ah-jin returns to work. Jae-oh confronts her on set, telling her she called him in fear, claiming Do-hyuk was doing something to her. She remembers none of it. Jae-oh shares what he’s uncovered, including Sung-hee boasting about meeting Do-hyuk right before the attack. Still, Ah-jin refuses to consider divorce. Everything she’s built is on the line. Seeing how trapped she is, Jae-oh promises to help, even as the danger escalates.
That night, another hallucination drives Ah-jin to smash a mirror, slicing her hands. Do-hyuk finds her, calmly tending to her wounds and urging her to lean on him. It’s a moment meant to feel comforting, but it’s laced with something chilling.
Jun-seo later meets Jae-oh, who voices his suspicions about Do-hyuk. Jun-seo dismisses them, insisting Ah-jin doesn’t need saving. Jae-oh’s anger explodes, born from fear and helpless devotion.
The tension peaks at the film shoot. A sudden script change forces Ah-jin to reenact the trauma of murdering her father with a bat. She struggles, and when she finally completes the scene, she goes too far, critically injuring her co-star. The tabloids immediately turn on her again. When Ah-jin questions the director, she learns the change was demanded by Saturn, Do-hyuk’s company.
Her confrontation with Do-hyuk is devastating. He admits he wants her completely dependent on him and coldly compares her to his ex-wife, saying Ah-jin will “entertain” him much longer. He reveals the truth about the hospital scene: it was him, not Jun-seo. Everything Ah-jin believed was already slipping through her fingers. He even knows about her mother’s death, something she confessed while delirious. In the present, he throws her into the pool and walks away, calling Jun-seo to clean up the aftermath.
By the pool, Ah-jin unravels, confessing her desire to destroy Do-hyuk and take his place. She secretly calls Jae-oh using a burner phone, clinging to the promise of a plan. When she asks why he does so much for her, his answer is heartbreakingly simple: he likes being by her side and being useful to her.
Soon after, Ah-jin wakes up hooked to an IV, smiling serenely, with no memory of the violent incident on set or her confrontation at the pool. Do-hyuk realizes this with quiet satisfaction.
Elsewhere, Jae-oh finally pushes back, threatening one of Do-hyuk’s men who once tried to burn him alive. The warning is quickly relayed, and Do-hyuk orders Jae-oh eliminated. Before the end, Jae-oh watches his brother from afar, wishing him well, as if sensing what’s coming.
That night, Do-hyuk’s men arrive in force. Jae-oh escapes on his bike, leading them to the rooftop where Ah-jin killed her father. There, he’s brutally beaten and thrown off the building, his fate left uncertain.
The episode ends on a haunting contrast. Ah-jin completes the final scene of her film to thunderous applause, her public image glowing once more, while behind the scenes, the people who love her most are bleeding, disappearing, or being erased.
“The Cost of Loving a Monster”
Episode 12 of Dear X is devastating in the quiet, irreversible way only this drama can be. From the very first scene, you can feel that everyone is walking toward an ending they already understand, even if they refuse to say it out loud.
The episode opens with Jae-oh calmly laying out his final plan to Ahn Do-kang. He asks for a hidden camera to be installed on the rooftop and secretly adds spyware to his phone, ensuring that everything will continue recording even if the phone is taken. It’s painfully clear that Jae-oh knows exactly what this will cost him, and he chooses to pay it anyway.
The story doesn’t soften the blow. Jae-oh is brutally beaten by Do-hyuk’s men, and the hidden camera captures the moment they openly state that Do-hyuk ordered his death. As they throw Jae-oh off the building, his thoughts drift to his memories with Ah-jin, making the moment all the more heartbreaking. Afterward, the team leader pockets Jae-oh’s phone, unaware that it’s still recording everything.
Soon after, both Ah-jin and Jun-seo receive a message from Jae-oh containing a link to the rooftop footage. Jun-seo rushes to Jae-oh’s workplace, where a shattered Ahn Do-kang hands over the original SD card and the burner phone that controls the spyware. Jae-oh had planned everything down to the last detail.
The next morning, Ah-jin sends all the housekeepers away and finally confronts Do-hyuk alone. She shows him the video of his men confessing to Jae-oh’s murder and killing him, along with proof that she personally witnessed Do-hyuk ordering the hit. For the first time, Do-hyuk is cornered, forced to realize that Ah-jin now holds the leash.
Jun-seo calls her in disbelief, asking what she’s done. Ah-jin’s response is chilling in its honesty. Jae-oh chose to die so she could control Do-hyuk, and she has no intention of stopping now. Jun-seo pleads with her to end it, but she can’t. After hanging up, Jun-seo makes his own move, calling producer Han Ji-gyu and asking if the documentary offer still stands.
Jun-seo then confronts Do-hyuk directly, revealing that he has access to more recordings from the spyware on Jae-oh’s phone. He warns Do-hyuk to stay away from Ah-jin, declaring that if anyone is going to stop her, it will be him.
While all of this unfolds, Ah-jin’s career reaches its dazzling peak. Her film Amen to Nothing becomes an international success, and she walks the red carpet at the Blue Dragon Awards to roaring cheers. When she wins Best Actress, it feels like the ultimate validation of everything she’s fought for.
But at the same moment she’s being celebrated, Jun-seo and Han Ji-gyu’s documentary airs on another channel. One by one, people from Ah-jin’s past speak up: Sung-hee, the café server, Heo In-gang’s brother, and even the police officer who covered up her father’s case. Their testimonies are intercut with Ah-jin’s acceptance speech, and as the documentary goes viral, the applause around her grows thin and uneasy.
Stepping off the stage, Ah-jin sees staff members watching the broadcast and arrives just in time to hear Jun-seo describe finding her holding the bat on the night her father died. The truth finally has a voice.
Ah-jin flees the hall and runs into the streets until she finds Jun-seo waiting in his car. She asks him to take her somewhere without people. He explains that he’s finally accepted she will never change, and that stopping her is the only thing he can do. She admits she has nowhere left to go. In a moment that feels both tender and tragic, he tells her he loves her, then drives the car off a cliff.
News reports later confirm that Jun-seo died on impact, while Ah-jin is missing. Back at home, Ji-sun reads Jun-seo’s goodbye letter, where he admits he still can’t forgive Ah-jin. He’s even removed every photo of himself from their albums, erasing his presence as if preparing for his own disappearance.
Do-hyuk is told there’s no evidence that Ah-jin survived. Yet a follow-up on Han Ji-gyu’s program reveals CCTV footage of Ah-jin stumbling away from the crash site. After that, there’s nothing. No body. No trace.
The episode closes in haunting silence. An urn bearing Ah-jin’s name rests in a columbarium as a woman places a white rose before walking away. In a final flashback, we return to the crash. Ah-jin wakes up, forces herself out of the wrecked car despite Jun-seo’s desperate attempts to stop her, and climbs the rocks alone. She turns back to look at the car one last time, her expression unreadable.
DramaZen's Opinion
Episode 12 ends Dear X not with clear answers, but with the weight of everything that was lost. Love, devotion, ambition, and cruelty all collide here, leaving us to sit with the unsettling question the drama has been asking all along: when someone survives everything, what kind of person do they become?
Overall this drama was an intense, wild ride!
The drama strips away any remaining romance surrounding Ah-jin’s success and exposes the machinery behind it. By this stage, the question is no longer whether she is a victim or a villain, but how many people will be destroyed trying to love her, save her, or control her. The answer, heartbreakingly, is all of them.
Jae-oh’s death is the emotional core of the finale. His choice to sacrifice himself is not framed as heroic in a glossy way, but as tragically inevitable. He knows Ah-jin better than anyone and still chooses her, even when that choice costs him his life. What makes it hurt even more is that his sacrifice works. He gives Ah-jin power over Do-hyuk, but in doing so, he also helps push her further down a path where control matters more than conscience. His love saves her, and damns her, at the same time.
Jun-seo’s arc in the final episode is quieter but just as devastating. He is the only one who truly understands that Ah-jin cannot be fixed, not by love, not by protection, not by patience. His decision to expose her through the documentary isn’t revenge; it’s exhaustion. By the time he drives off the cliff with her, his confession of love feels less like a romantic gesture and more like a farewell to the version of her he once believed in. It’s a chilling reminder that sometimes love doesn’t mean staying. Sometimes it means stopping someone, even if it destroys you in the process.
Ah-jin herself remains the most unsettling part of the ending. The drama never gives us the relief of redemption or punishment in a traditional sense. She loses everything publicly, yet possibly survives privately. The final image of her climbing away from the wreckage is haunting because it feels true to who she is. Ah-jin has always survived. Not because she’s innocent, and not because she’s strong in a noble way, but because she adapts, erases, and keeps going. The urn, the white rose, and the uncertainty surrounding her fate all reinforce the same idea: society may need her to be dead, but she doesn’t need closure to continue existing.
Moon Do-hyuk’s downfall is intentionally unsatisfying. He isn’t dragged away in handcuffs or publicly exposed in a dramatic fashion. Instead, he loses control. And for someone like him, that loss is the real punishment. The fact that Ah-jin slips beyond his reach is the one outcome he cannot manipulate.
What makes the ending of Dear X linger is its refusal to offer moral comfort. There are no clear winners, no clean justice, and no healing epilogue. Love is not portrayed as a cure, ambition is not rewarded, and survival is not celebrated. The drama ends by suggesting that some people are shaped so deeply by trauma and desire that they don’t break, they calcify.
In the end, the world may believe she’s gone, but somewhere, she’s still walking forward, carrying every choice with her.
