Badland Hunters Ending Explained: Nam-sa’s Final Confrontation with Dr. Yang

The latest action film on Netflix, Badland Hunters, ends with Nam-sa ending Dr. Yang Gi-su’s conspiracy. He kills Yang Gu-si and frees his prisoners.

The Korean thriller is set in a post-apocalyptic world after an earthquake. Years after the downfall of society, the survivors have found ways of moving on despite the circumstances. Amidst all of this, Dr Yang was conducting dangerous experiments.

Yang created a cult out of the remains of the military. He promised immortality and a way to bypass the necessity of water, which led him to get permission to conduct his experiments.

The film’s ending is satisfactory, as Nam-sa, Eun-ho, and Ji-wan manage to sabotage his plan and free his prisoners. Nam-sa kills Yang, while Su-na is able to pay her last respects to her dead grandmother.

1. What was Dr Yang’s ultimate motive?

Dr Yang’s main goal in Badland Hunters is to bring his daughter back to life. He preserved her upper torso inside a cryogenic pod for ages, hoping to find a way to revive her.

Yang wanted to create a new species of life that would not require food or water for survival. He believed that these necessities held back people, who could have a longer life without depending on these necessities.

For his research, he required several hostages. He made a plan with the military to lure people into their community in search of food and water and turn them into hostages for experiments.

Yang also realized that his experiments only worked on teenagers, so he separated all the younger prisoners from their parents and sent them to the eighth floor. They never returned, and Yang began forming a cult to continue his experiments.

2. What happens to Dr Yang’s daughter?

Yang shot the box with his daughter’s remains by mistake. When Nam-sa attacked him, Yang went on randomly shooting several people who were running away and accidentally shot the box with his daughter’s remains.

In other words, it would no longer be possible to bring her daughter back to life. Yang blamed Nam-sa for the accident, but he killed the doctor soon after.

It is not clear why Dr Yang’s daughter was the way she was, although it is known that she was almost dying before the apocalypse. Dr Yang was on the verge of injecting himself with something to see if it could also be used on his daughter, just when the apocalypse began.

Yang was also surrounded by lizards and alligators, which means he was also using them as lab rats. Moreover, his daughter was only 18, explaining why he only conducted his experiments on young people.

3. Yang’s Hostages Had Turned Into Zombies

Some of Dr Yang’s subjects turned into zombies by the time they were rescued. They were humans who could not die but also remembered who they were and attacked others.

When Eun-ho enters Yang’s building to rescue the prisoners, most of them had already turned into zombies. She had no option but to kill them and free them from the pain.

4. Will there be a sequel to Badland Hunters?

There are no hints of a sequel or any post-credits scene in Badland Hunters. There is also no news of Badland Hunters 2 being on the cards as of writing.

If a sequel is made, it could tell a new story with little to no connections to the first two installments. Badland Hunters was a sequel to the 2023 film Concrete Utopia.

The ending is quite final, showing Nam-sa and his companions returning home after the events. Ji-wan also teases Nam-sa about getting married and adopting him later.

5. About Badland Hunters

Badland Hunters is a 2024 South Korean dystopian action film directed by Heo Myung-haeng in his directorial debut and starring Ma Dong-seok, Lee Hee-joon, Lee Jun-young and Roh Jeong-eui.

The film is a sequel of 2023 film Concrete Utopia and takes up the story post-earthquake transformation of Seoul into an apocalypstic wasteland, where everything from law and order to civilization has collapsed.

The film is an original production of Netflix, and was released on Netflix on January 26, 2024.