Note: This story contains spoilers from “Beef” Season 2, Episode 8.
By the end of the Korean excursion in the “Beef” Season 2 finale, the status of the season’s two main couples seems to have swapped from that inciting fight: Austin (Charles Melton) leaves Ashley (Cailee Spaeny) for Eunice (Seoyeon Jang), while Josh (Oscar Isaac) commits the ultimate act of love by sacrificing himself to the law for Lindsay (Carey Mulligan).
That reality doesn’t last too long, however, with the epilogue for the season taking place eight years later and finding another reality for each couple. “Beef” Season 2 ends as it began, cycling through seasons during a toast at the country club, but this time, instead of Josh leading the event as general manager, it’s Ashley, with Austin and their baby boy by her side.
“I’d be curious of the audience’s interpretation of that moment — I think some may find it a little sad or depressing. I think others may find it very true to life, but it really is meant to be a canvas that you can look at and sort of project your own feelings onto wherever you’re at in your life,” showrunner Lee Sung Jin told TheWrap, underscoring the importance of seasons. “In art history, they talk about beholder’s share, where we can offer some share to the eye of the beholder in the audience to participate in the ending, so hopefully people will want to do that.”
While Ashley and Austin step into Josh and Lindsay’s shoes, the new season looks different for the older couple too — with Josh getting his freedom from prison only to learn that Lindsay had remarried an older man and had a child.
“We were just … chasing the different seasons coming for each character: Lindsay kind of becomes a version of Troy and Ava, in a way … married to an older husband, probably for security, but still nostalgic for the past, and then eventually we know Troy and Ava become Chairman Park and Dr. Kim, and you see how that turns out, and Chairman Park now is late stage winter post all of that, almost returning back to Ashley and Austin at the grave of her first love and lamenting her choices in life,” Lee explained.
The final shot of “Beef” Season 2 sees Chairwoman Park (Youn Yuh-jung) at the grave in the center of a wheel of life, known as samsara in Buddhism, which represents the cycle of birth, death and rebirth.
“How you process and interpret samsara really depends on where you’re at, and even internally amongst the team, there’s great debate over how one should feel at the ending,” Lee explained. “It was a big, contentious point in the mix of how much of the song and the needle drop we needed to add stems to to either make it scarier or lighter feeling, so there was a lot of debate over that. But what I found is that it depends on where you’re at, and so I ended up mixing and landing on an end moment that is more indicative of where I’m at.”
For Lee, that means of place of excitement and acceptance, pointing to a “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl, that his therapist gave him when he started therapy over a decade ago. “As dark and dire as things get, you just kind of have to find a way to accept it and surf the wave of life and that’s where I’m currently at,” Lee said. “We’ll see how that changes over time.”
The future might not mean another installment of “Beef” for Lee, who, when asked about if it was too soon to know if he wanted to do it all again, responded, “I do not … at the present moment. I need a break.” “But I remain open to other real life incidents that may land at my desk,” he said.
“Beef” Seasons 1 and 2 are now streaming on Netflix.
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