Recap "All of Us Are Dead" Episode 11

Feb 8, 2022

It’s getting bleaker. That’s the unmistakable trajectory All of Us Are Dead is taking in its final episodes, at least from where I’m sitting. There’s every possibility, of course, that the finale will take things in a more optimistic direction—but the casualties that began piling up in the previous episode have only mounted, and the city that surrounds them has been destroyed. It’s hard not to think that the show may well live up to its ominous title.

Things get off to a bad start almost immediately, when only a few scant minutes after reuniting with his daughter On-jo, So-ju sacrifices himself to save the children he’d just rescued from the zombie hordes. To reinforce just how completely the zombie transformation eliminates the humanity from the people it infects, the episode shows the zombiefied So-ju brushing right past Cheong-san’s equally zombiefied mother—lifelong neighbors, each now incapable even of noticing that the other exists.

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The kids wind up stranded on scaffolding at a nearby construction site, and they’re grim about their prospects for the future. Wu-jin wonders if surviving can even be called living, given all the friends and family they’ve lost already. On-jo insists that no one else should sacrifice themselves; she and Cheong-san promise to talk tomorrow, or next week, or whenever they’re clean and fed and safe once again.

But thanks to Gwi-nam, that won’t be anytime soon. The unstoppable bully tracks them to their hiding place and a fight ensues, in which Cheong-san gets bit. After pushing Gwi-nam down to the ground below, he kisses On-jo goodbye, then sacrifices himself—after screaming to the heavens that he’s the happiest kid in the school—to lure the zombies down a shaft and away from the rest of the kids, who manage to escape to the nearby mountainside.

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None of this stops Gwi-nam, the Energizer Bunny of half-zombies. After first killing the archer Min-jae, who turns into a full zombie, Gwi-nam tracks Cheong-san down again and, finally, pokes out his eye. Promises made, promises kept.

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This gruesome display—long teased by the show and finally delivered in true horror fashion—does not mean that Gwi-nam is victorious. On the contrary, Cheong-san grabs the bully and ensures they both get consumed by the bomb blast that follows. The commander of Hyosan’s martial law has given the order to lure zombies to four locations using drones broadcasting high-volume noise, then blast them all into kingdom come. Hyosan High is one of the targets, and the fireball that destroys it kills Gwi-nam and Cheong-san, our hero, as well.

In the end, the commander can’t bear the responsibility for the innocent lives he’s just ended. (Unlike Mr. Lee, who found himself unable to burn his infected child and wife to death, the commander is a soldier, and went through with it despite his reservations.) After first telling Assemblywoman Park to address the survivors in the quarantine camp, then recording a mea culpa, then speaking with his wife on the phone, he shoots himself to death. It’s a development that’s easy to see coming if you have any familiarity whatsoever with apocalyptic horror—not for the first time am I reminded of The Stand—but regardless, it’s another sad note the show has chosen to play as it arrives at its final destination.

There’s only one episode of All of Us Are Dead remaining now, and as always, it’s entirely possible the show will collapse at the one-yard line. But the apparent killing of Cheong-san—or at the very least his transformation into a half-zombie like Gwi-nam, Nam-ra, and Eun-ji, currently being held as a guinea pig by the military—indicates that this is a show that isn’t pulling its punches. This may not be what an audience primed for chills, thrills, laughs, and action galore is looking for. But as the parade of familiar faces led to their deaths by the drones indicates—we see the zombie versions of Gyeong-su, So-ju, Min-jae, Na-yeon, Cheong-san’s mother, Joon-yeong, and probably others I missed—no one here gets out unscathed.

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