Beef Season 2 Ending Explained: What Happens To Every Main Character

Contains spoilers for Season 2 of "Beef"

A lot can change in a few years, and the epilogue of the still enjoyable but less strong Season 2 of "Beef" sees all the characters winding up at the opposite end of the food chain to where they started — except Chairwoman Park (Youn Yuh-jung), of course, because she knows how to manipulate the game so that she always wins. 

Eight years before its closing sequence, Josh (Oscar Isaac) and Lindsay (Carey Mulligan) were first introduced giving a speech at their country club fundraiser, putting on the facade of a happy marriage that would drop the second they both left the shindig. Their blissfully loved-up underlings Ashley (Cailee Spaeny) and Austin (Charles Melton) were yet to have a single argument, but as soon as their paths crossed, both relationships took unusual turns.

After putting their blackmail plan in motion, Ashley and Austin began to grow apart, with Austin slowly falling out of love and having doubts about having children with his fiancé. As Josh revealed his secret embezzlement plan to his wife, with his intention to pin the blame on the "underqualified, entitled little Gen Z" that coerced him into getting an office job with health insurance, they began to show signs of a rekindled spark — only to end the season on different continents, unable to get their marriage working again. 

On its face, it's the simplest climax to any class-climber satire, seen in "The Talented Mr. Ripley" and the gorgeously unsubtle "Saltburn," as our less-privileged protagonists have manipulated their way around entrenched power to take control of an upper-class fantasia. However, seeing Ashley taking over from Josh as the new general manager of Monte Vista Point still leaves more questions than answers; Austin is still by her side despite professing to falling out of love several years earlier, and they have a young son, too. Are they genuinely happy, or are they in the same position Josh and Lindsay were in at the start of the season: Simply putting on an act, the cycle set to repeat itself?

Arguably, the biggest factor in the couple staying together is Eunice (Seoyeon Jang), the chairwoman's right-hand woman, whom Austin found himself falling in love with over the course of the season. Although he'd opened up to Ashley about this, as well as his plans to leave her, Eunice never reciprocated his feelings. As he gets in an Uber to drive the USB with all the evidence of a cover-up to her, she doesn't say "I love you" back despite repeated prompts, going instead for the relatively plutonic "love you." Immediately sensing this fantasy romance won't go anywhere, he instead changes his destination to the chairwoman to deliver the evidence and ensure it gets flushed away. 

Not only does the change in plan save Ashley, it also helps their relationship and newfound positions of authority at the club. With the chairwoman still running the show eight years later, this act of loyalty helped them maintain a place at the top.

But are they as happy as they seem? The immediate assumption is no — Austin's stare into the middle distance as he begins to drive suggests years of regrets are playing out, while doing his best to downplay them to a wife he tried to leave many years earlier. We see throughout the season that he's a people pleaser who will always prioritize the happiness of whoever is with him in that moment; why else would he have given Ashley's desired Gatorade flavor at the hospital vending machine to somebody else? The look on his face is the dejected look of a man who seems to be realizing he's given too much of himself to other people and never chased his own needs.

However, in an interview with Netflix's Tudum, Melton has stressed that the snapshot of their life could be deliberately deceptive, designed to make viewers have conversations like this one. He said of that final scene: "It's all our perception. Someone can be tired, and everyone thinks they hate their life. It's okay for Austin not to feel like he wants to read a book to his kid because he's so tired. Does that mean he's unhappy with his whole life?"

Josh and Lindsay's violent argument was the domino that led to his embezzlement scheme and an international conspiracy that targeted him for death. At the opening of the season finale, Josh has been captured by one of the chairwoman's heavies, but divine intervention interrupts. After narrowly escaping death, Josh makes the decision to go to Korea, but after spotting Lindsay and the others as they're hiding from more of the chairwoman's fixers, he inadvertently gets them captured anyway.

His final moments with Lindsay see them inch close to reconciliation. Josh accepts his fate and agrees to confessing to whatever the chairwoman wants, which devastates Lindsay. Their final moment together ends up being a kiss as he gets arrested, which is the most passionate moment of their relationship that we've witnessed. When the epilogue hits, it feels less like a rekindling than an emotional goodbye, but on better terms than they entered divorce proceedings with.

Eight years later, Josh is finishing his prison sentence for embezzlement, but he seems to have made a home for himself behind bars; he has a rapport with his fellow inmates identical to his easygoing friendships with the country club clientele. He also seems at ease with the fact he isn't getting back with Lindsay, who stopped visiting him after a year.

Josh doesn't want her new address back in Britain, and seems to have made peace with the inevitable fact that she's moved on. Whereas Austin seemed to be lying to himself about his contentment in his final scene with Ashley, Josh's statement to a TV crew interviewing him about his release seems genuine: he's happy that everyone he loves is happy. 

On the other side of the Atlantic, Lindsay finds out Josh has been released when the news pops up on her phone. She's living in the countryside with an older, richer husband, with whom she now has the daughter she always wanted. It's near identical to the final moments we share with Austin; she has the family she's always craved, in addition to the financial stability that comes with marrying rich. As to whether she's actually happy with how her life has ended up, that's deliberately left open for debate.

As with the last scene featuring Austin, we could simply be seeing Lindsay's life at a moment where she's pondering what could have been, and isn't reflective of her emotional state as a whole — seeing a longterm ex freed from prison will do that to someone. She needs a minute to herself after the discovery, but does it suggest that the following moment we don't see is her reaching out? Not necessarily. She was the one who stopped visiting Josh, as one of his fellow inmates filled us in; the relationship couldn't work with that much distance. 

The most obvious reading here is that she's taking a moment to ponder whether they'd still be together if they didn't have that barrier between them. Without any further context to her home life, beyond knowing she remarried and had a kid, there's no suggestion she regrets anything that came after. Only that she's ruminating on what might have been.

We learned throughout the season just how ruthless the chairwoman was. She arranged for the murder of her own stepson Woosh (Matthew Kim) after he got too close to the Tronchos conspiracy and was questioned by police, and detained everybody else to find the phone and USB that contained evidence of a murder. Eight years later, she still has — by her admission — "all the money in the world," her company is still in charge of the country club, and countless more operations. But she still seems to be expressing the same regret as every other character.

Speaking to her first husband's gravestone, she stresses that she's ended up just like her mother: old and full of regrets, despite obtaining the wealth that she thought could free her. She's still on top, her position unchanged despite the jostling beneath her and the allegations of corruption she's dodged (that we don't hear anything more about Eunice suggests what happened to her after she tried to contact the police), but has gradually realized there's still an emptiness, a happiness which forever eludes her.

Creator Lee Sung-jin said to Tudum this was intended to be the final scene of the series, but they realized later in production that having the moral of the story read by an evil billionaire undercut the sentiment. Working with director Jake Schreier and production designer Grace Yun, he returned to the Buddhist theme of Samsara — the cycle of death and rebirth — which informed a lot of his writing for the season, with abstract drawings of the couples' journeys appearing in the skies above Park. Everything we had seen before this moment is fully recontextualized: there is no definitive endings to these arcs, as the cycle of life continues.

In an interview with TIME, Lee said that he was inspired by the once-mysterious finale of "The Sopranos," as his favorite endings are those which "allow you to participate and think about your own life." The final shot is designed to be interpreted differently from viewer to viewer, as well as making them reconsider the final moments we shared with the characters just minutes earlier.

This isn't the only ambiguous visual metaphor throughout the series, with shots of ants and bees littered throughout; insects which all flock to a queen in their colony, just like all the characters here are — knowingly or not — dancing to the tune of the billionaire above them. The series creator similarly hasn't given a definitive answer, having said that: "I think there are a lot of context clues about the ants. They're hive mind bugs. My favorite part is hearing what people interpret about the show. I have my own interpretation. But I'm excited to hear what people think."

It's a little vague for an "ending explained" type of article, but you've heard it from the creator and showrunner himself: the finale is designed to resonate in whichever way you interpret it. If the concept of samsara is about the eternal cycles of life and death, then maybe all is as it seems for Austin and Ashley, and they're now just repeating the cycle Josh and Lindsay vacated. Lee won't ever give us a concrete answer, so we've just got to go where our interpretation of the evidence takes us.

"Beef" Season 2 is now streaming on Netflix.