Warning! This post contains spoilers for All Of Us Are Dead season 1.
Netflix zombie horror series All Of Us Are Dead has been a huge hit for the streaming service and its ending sets up much for a potential second season. The 12-episode South Korean series is a coming-of-age story that puts a class of high school students in the middle of a zombie outbreak. Based on the South Korean webtoon Here At Our School, it follows a teenage girl named Nam On-jo, who, along with the other students in Class 2-5, must fight to survive as her school is overrun with zombies. The show has become a runaway hit for Netflix, quickly becoming the top series on the streamer in 5o countries, mirroring the success of Squid Game.
Throughout the series, the clever students of Class 2-5, juniors at Hyosan High School in the fictional Hyosan City, use their creativity to evade and fight off the zombie horde that used to be their schoolmates and teachers. On-jo, whose father So-ju is a firefighter and former soldier, helps to keep her classmates alive using the survival skills that her father taught her. As they fight to stay alive, they grapple with what it means to survive when all of their friends and loved ones have been turned. The story also follows other groups of survivors, including another band of kids from their high school, as they all try to make it out of All Of Us Are Dead's Hyosan City and to the quarantine camps being run by the military.
By the last episode of the season, roughly half Hyosan High students make it out of the city alive and unturned. While the season wraps up relatively well, with the students finally settling at the quarantine camps, it also leaves some questions unanswered. It also introduces some new information that may be setting the series up for a second season. There may not be definitive answers to some of these questions until season 2, but until then, here's the ending of All Of Us Are Dead season 1 explained.
Which Students Survived The Zombie Outbreak?
Though originally All of Us Are Dead's cast of characters started with 12 students who were trying to survive together, only a few made it out of Hyosan City. Likewise, of the other group of students who fought to survive, only a couple escaped. From Class 2-5, Nam On-jo, her crush and Choi Nam-ra's love interest Lee Su-hyeok, the big guy Yang Dae-su, and Seo Hyo-ryung were the only students who survived. Jang Ha-ri, the older sister of Class 2-5 student Woo-jin, and an archery prodigy, also survived along with senior Park Min-ji. The two older girls fought off the zombies using Ha-ri's archery skills along with two other students, Min-jae who was on the archery team with Ha-ri, and Eun-jeong, who was friends with Min-ji. Nam-ra, one of the Class 2-5 students, also survived but didn't escape with the group because she was turned into a halfbie, or half-human, half-zombie.
The groups met each other after they both tried to escape during a thunderstorm that distracted the zombies. They run to the school's auditorium for shelter, but find the place crawling with zombies. Using their combined strategy skills, they manage to come up with a plan to escape by using rolling containers for sports equipment as a barrier. They lose a few of the kids to zombies and finally escape when On-jo's dad So-ju finally comes to the school to rescue them. He tells them to go through the tennis courts and run up the mountain, but the zombies close in on them at the tennis court and he is forced to sacrifice himself. Lee Cheong-san, On-ji's neighbor turned love interest, is turned when Gwi-nam, a halfbie bully, comes to kill him, and Ha-ri's brother Woo-jin is turned trying to save her from a zombie attack. Finally, Nam-ra leaves the group when she starts to lose control over her halfbie infection and nearly bites On-jo. By the end, there were only six students who made it out as survivors for All of Us Are Dead season 2: Nam On-jo, Lee Su-hyeok, Yang Dae-su, Seo Hyo-ryung, Jang Ha-ri, and Park Min-ji,
As a halfbie, Gwi-nam has been shown to survive things that would kill a human or a regular zombie. Though he and Cheong-san are shown being engulfed by the bombs and falling together, there's still a possibility that one or both of them survived. While Cheong-san was bitten by Gwi-nam, he doesn't immediately turn into a zombie. Instead, he still fights Gwi-nam until the end. The series leaves it open that Cheong-san could be a halfbie, as well, which increases the chances that he survived the bombs.
What Happened When The Surviving Students Met Nam-ra On The Roof?
After On-jo sees a campfire burning on the roof of the school, she and the surviving Hyosan High students plan to go to the school to investigate, hoping to find their Halfbie friend Nam-ra. The city is basically abandoned after the bombing, so they get to the school easily without facing any zombies. Nam-ra is waiting for them on the roof, having lit the campfire in hopes that they would see it and come join her. This is a callback to when Nam-ra and the rest of her classmates sat around a campfire on the roof during the zombie outbreak, in hopes that someone would find them and rescue them. Nam-ra mentioned wanting to have that experience again, just before being turned by Gwi-nam.
When they meet Nam-ra on the roof, On-jo tries to get Nam-ra to return with them to the quarantine camp where they have been held for the past few months. Nam-ra, however, refuses, recognizing that she isn’t a zombie, but also is no longer human. She also reveals that there are other kids at the school like her, and that she needs to stay there for them. Using her heightened zombie senses, she tells the survivors that the other halfbies are coming and jumps off of the roof to greet them. Presumably, the fall does not hurt her, because the halfbies are able to take a lot of damage and survive, even damage that would destroy a regular zombie.
After she jumps, the students look out over the roof and are surprised by something that the audience never sees. It’s likely that what surprises the other students is the group of halfbies who are just like Nam-ra. The group could also be surprised that the halfbies don’t look as monstrous as the zombies that they battled. Nam-ra looks much healthier than when the group left her, which suggests that the halfbies may experience a final form that resembles that of a normal human. It's also a possibility that they recognize some of the halfbies. While most of their friends and family members that turn are shown turning into zombies, there's still a slim possibility that any of the halfbies are other students that the kids had relationships with, such as Cheong-san.
Did Any Zombies Survive The Bombing?
After the martial law commander watches the video that the science teacher Lee Byeong-chan made specifying that the only way to ensure the virus does not spread is to burn the infected, he decides to bomb Hyosan City, similar to the plan to bomb Las Vegas in Army of the Dead. The remaining zombies are presumably burned up by the series of bombs dropped at strategic points in the city. However, it isn't unreasonable to assume that there could have been some surviving zombies. When the students are finally about to escape and are running through a seemingly abandoned area, they come across a few surviving zombies. Similarly, when the soldiers go into Hyosan after the bombing to search for survivors, they find a few zombies.
The bomb most likely eradicated most of the zombies, however. The ones that the bomb didn't kill don't seem to have survived the three-month quarantine. When the students sneak back into the city after three months, they don't run into any zombies until they meet Nam-ra on the roof. It's likely that only halfbies survived because they still have the cognitive abilities that they did when they were human. They wouldn't have been attracted to the sound that the government used to corral the zombies and also would have understood to take cover during the bombing. Halfbies can also feed on zombie corpses, while zombies completely disregard halfbies. This could also explain why no remaining zombies seem to be in Hyosan, while there does appear to be a group of halfbies living there. Again, this also raises the possibility that Cheong-san cheated death in All of Us Are Dead season 1 and could return for a second season.
What Does The Government Want With The Science Teacher’s Wife And Son?
Lee Byeong-chan, the science teacher, originally created the Jonas virus to help his son, Jin-su, who was being bullied by some of the students at Hyosan High. His intentions were good, with him wanting the virus to make Jin-su brave enough to attack the bullies. But as previous zombie IP like The Walking Dead show, creating a zombie virus is never a good idea. Instead, Byeong-chan's virus turned Jin-su into the first zombie. Jin-su then turned his mother, as well. At the end of All of Us Are Dead season 1, government officials return to the science teacher's home to retrieve any of his remaining research and they find Jin-su and his mother, still in their zombie form, chained up. The government decides to take them, unharmed. The first assumption is that the government wants to study them to come up with an antidote to the virus. However, considering that the government has a zombie soldier and a halfbie student in their possession and that they weren't able to come up with a cure by studying them, it's less clear what the government wants to do with the original two zombies.
It's possible that being the original test subjects means that the government could get a better idea of how the virus works. However, it's also possible that the military plans to use the zombies for their own reasons. They could be planning to weaponize the zombies in some way, using the science teacher's original research which intended to create a virus that increased testosterone, making the subject fearless. The idea that the government just wants to keep the zombies away from any population of people is unlikely, considering that the soldiers were typically tasked with killing any infected person on sight. More likely is that they feel that the original two zombies could be useful. The decision to leave them alive, however, is a foolish one that could spell disaster for South Korea in All of Us Are Dead season 2, considering the outbreak model that detailed an exponential spread of the Jonas virus should even one infected person get out of Hyosan City.
Why Do Some People Become Halfbies?
While most people who are infected become mindless zombies within five minutes, a few never fully transform, retaining mostly human looks and cognition. Halfbies, as Dae-su calls them, are somewhere between human and zombie. Byeong-chan suggested that because of the Jonas virus's ability to mutate the host's cells, eventually a new species of human could be born. Some of the halfbies retain a false version of their humanity as if the virus is wearing them as a mask. Gwi-nam and a girl he bullied named Eun-ji seem to be these kinds of halfbies. They both retain enough of their humanity to seem normal to those who don't know halfbies exist. However, they seem to lack the empathy or critical thinking skills that humans typically have. Nam-ra, however, maintains both her empathy and intelligence, as well as gaining halfbie abilities like enhanced strength and hearing.
The people who become halfbies seem to have a certain emotional drive that makes them resist the virus. Eun-ji wants to stop the bullies from sending out a nude video that they took of her, and is determined to destroy every phone in the school. Gwi-nam wants to stop Cheong-san from telling the police that he killed the principal. For Nam-ra, her determination to save Su-hyeok and keep her classmates alive may have contributed to her becoming a halfbie. In each of these instances, the host's will seems to have caused a rapid mutation in the virus that contributed to the halfbie state. These students may have also just had more immunity to the virus, with their bodies adapting to it instead of succumbing.
The halfbie expression of the virus seems to be closer to what Lee Byeong-chan intended for the virus to be. He wanted to create a way to make the weak strong. Halfbies, instead of turning completely, have enhanced senses and abilities which surpass humans and zombies. Their bodies also heal quickly from injuries and they are very difficult to kill, compared to regular zombies. Gwi-nam's multiple deaths create a problem for the kids of Class 2-5, but also leave it open that he might continue to be a problem in All of Us Are Dead season 2.
Will There Be An All Of Us Are Dead Season 2?
Despite the show's popularity, Netflix has yet to officially announce All Of Us Are Dead season 2. The season 1 plot followed the basic storyline of the webtoon, making a few changes to make the source material work better for television. However, the Netflix series did a lot to set up a season two that could be even better than season one. Considering the popularity of the series, it seems likely that season two could be on its way. The ending left open the possibility of a conflict between the humans and the halfbies, or even a faction of halfbies that decides they don't like being abandoned in the quarantined city. The government taking the original two zombies could create chaos for South Korea. Also, the citizens of Hyosan City are still living in quarantine camps at the end of season one. After three months, the people could easily become frustrated with the government and rebel against the extended quarantine. The webtoon has already ended, which gives All Of Us Are Dead the freedom to explore the aftermath of the Hyosun High School outbreak without having to worry about sticking to canon.