why did seo bi save cho?

Kingdom season 2 spoilers follow.

Netflix's Kingdom is unique, even in the zombie genre. Like snowflakes and fingerprints, no two zombie apocalypses are never the same. Over the years, various films and TV shows have varied everything from the speed of infection to the zombies themselves, alternating mostly between shuffling and sprinting towards their victims.

However, Netflix's Kingdom remains more unique than most, and not just because of its historical Korean setting either. Amidst all the carnage, a physician called Seo Bi eventually discovers that this infection is caused by worms which live inside something known as the Resurrection Flower.

Using this knowledge, Seo Bi learns that the infected are afraid of fire and water will kill the worms off entirely, freeing the host. Once Prince Chang is made aware of this, he plans one final confrontation with the hordes which came to a bloody climax in the final episode of season two.

Realising that brute force won't be enough to save the palace, Chang and his men plan a suicide mission in one last desperate bid to save Korea before the infection spreads further.

Together, they all head out to a frozen lake and make one last stand in front of a burning temple designed to keep the zombies in place. Overwhelmed by the horde, Chang's forces suffer a huge number of casualties and each of our heroes are bitten in turn as well.

Gunmen try their best to shoot through the ice to try and drown all of the zombies at once, but time runs out. All hope is lost, until Chang makes one last desperate bid to break the ice by slamming one of the infected down onto the floor.

Everyone falls in, soldiers and zombies alike, killing the horde off entirely. Everyone who was bitten in those final moments survives too, because the water drove the infectious worms out of their bodies before they could reach their brains and turn them completely.

To make sure the plague is truly gone, surviving soldiers pull all the zombie corpses out of the water and burn them the next day. All that's left for Chang to do now is kill Queen Cho's illegitimate baby.

Prince Chang doesn't usually make a habit of killing babies, but this is a special case. In the episodes leading up to this finale, Queen Cho claimed that her son was the heir to the throne, thereby giving her control over the palace. However, the kid wasn't actually hers at all, and in reality, this meant Chang was supposed to take the crown for himself instead.

Cho died in the zombie infestation she herself unleashed in the palace, but Seo Bi rescued the baby last minute and bathed him in water, thereby saving him from the infectious worms which had entered his body.

This all led up to the moment when Chang finally found the child and was forced with an unenviable choice: kill the baby and take the throne, or allow him to live and face the political consequences of this decision.

Unwilling to commit either way, Chang decides to spare the boy and fake his own death. Because he was forced to kill his zombie father King, the Prince has been wracked with guilt this whole time, and believes this to be the only way he can make amends.

Following this decision, Chang leaves his kingdom behind to investigate the origin of the Resurrection Flowers. Meanwhile, the elders who remain start preparing the baby to take over as the country's new ruler.

Seven years pass in the blink of an eye and peace has seemingly been restored to the kingdom. The young Prince is kind and just, albeit a tad confused over how history has been rewritten to ignore the plague completely.

However, as the cynics among you might expect, the zombie crisis isn't really over just yet, because in the final moments of season two, we see a worm crawl under the sleeping Prince's skin.

When he was just a baby, the Prince was immune to the infection because his brain hadn't fully developed by that point — and we also thought Seo Bi had removed all the worms from his body too. Unfortunately, it looks like one was left over, and now that the Prince has grown older, it seems that this worm is no longer lying dormant inside.

So will the Prince become a mindless zombie and spread the plague once more throughout his kingdom? Possibly, although this is a rather unusual case. Instead, we wouldn't be surprised if the worm affects him differently than previous victims, perhaps even creating some kind of zombie/human hybrid.

Things aren't looking so good out on the edges of the kingdom either. Just as we learn of the Prince's fate, viewers are also reintroduced to older versions of Chang and Seo Bi who encounter the Resurrection Flower again near the Chinese border.

After discovering that someone from China is selling the flower to local Korean villagers, new zombies appear, but this time round, they have bells attached to their feet.

It's at this point where we suddenly meet a brand new character who seems to be spreading the virus on purpose — and she's keeping a few of the infected as pets too.

It's unclear yet whether this mysterious figure wants to take the kingdom for herself or simply watch it burn to the ground.

Either way, hints at the vile experiments she's carrying out suggest that Jun Ji-hyun's character will play a key role in Kingdom season 3, probably as the main villain.

She's only on camera for a few seconds at most, but given that wry smile on her face, it looks like the plant seller could even give Queen Cho a run for her money.

Now that the plague is set to spread further than ever before, let's just hope that Kingdom keeps everything that made this show so special in the first place, or otherwise risk following in The Walking Dead's tired footsteps.

Kingdom seasons 1 and 2 are now available to watch worldwide on Netflix.

Keeping in mind that there are some serious spoilers ahead, check out the 11 plot twists that left viewers on the edges of their seat!

At the end of Season 1, viewers learned that it is not the sun that the monsters fear but the temperature. Seo Bi explains in Season 2 that it is because the resurrection plant, which is the cause of the disease, prefers the cold and hates the heat.

In Episode 2, Prince Chang, Lord Ahn Hyeon, and other elite soldiers break into Mungyeong Saejae, and Lord Ahn Hyeon is killed by Cho Hak Ju‘s men. The next day, Prince Chang asks Seo Bi to resurrect Lord Ahn Hyeon and make him a monster—something he had suggested before succumbing to his wounds.

Arguably one of the most heartbreaking scenes in the entire series, Muyeong is revealed to have been Cho Hak Ju’s informant. He was forced into the role when his pregnant wife’s life was threatened, and he ends up dying in Prince Chang’s arms full of remorse.

Lord Ahn Hyun was credited for miraculously defeating over 30,000 Japanese soldiers with only 500 men during the war. It was revealed, however, that the reason he was able to accomplish this was because they turned sick, innocent commoners into monsters.

Seo Bi’s quick thinking shines through when she saves Cho Hak Ju’s life by submerging him in water. Worms from the disease float out of his body, and he subsequently makes a full recovery.

When Cho Hak Ju learns that the Queen faked her pregnancy and the son does not have the Haewon Cho clan’s blood, he swears to take away her power. But before he can even step out of the room, he collapses and dies. The Queen had poisoned his tea beforehand knowing what his reaction would be.

When Prince Chang storms into Hanyang to take his rightful place on the throne, the Queen decides to free the monster she had been hiding in the palace basement. She could not stand anyone else having the throne.

Knowing that the monsters hate the heat, Seo Bi saves herself and the baby by throwing a cloth of fire over her back and escaping.

In the epic final battle between Prince Chang’s army and the monsters, Prince Chang devises a plan to shoot the ice until it breaks so that the monsters can fall into the water. Before that can happen, however, he and the rest of his army are bitten, and all hope seems lost.

He then sees an unusually large monster and uses its weight to break the ice. They all fall to what seems to be their deaths, but the water instead removes the worms from their body.

They eventually realize that if they are bitten and submerged in water before they die, the worms can still be removed from their body.

In the aftermath of the battle, Prince Chang is told he must kill the baby if he wishes to claim the throne. He refuses to do so and instead tells them to announce that he is dead. He quietly makes an exit.

Seven years after the terrible ordeal, Prince Chang, Seo Bi, and the rest of their team learn that someone is teaching commoners how to grow the resurrection plant and use it to bring back the dead. In their search for this person, the season closes with a closeup of actress Jun Ji Hyun. Viewers must wait for Season 3 to find out what her role exactly is.

By the end of it, we all had this reaction:

…but it was so worth it. Can one year please hurry up?

At Lee Seung-hui's Jiyulheon clinic outside Dongnae, physician Seo-bi is contending with a severe food shortage as she treats her patients. In spite of government promises to send rice, the people are near starving. Seo-bi is relieved when Physician Lee returns, but he is obviously worried. She is shocked when she learns that Dan-i died on the trip, and is disturbed upon seeing the bite marks on his corpse. However, Physician Lee refuses to tell her what happened and locks himself in his room.

Later Seo-bi returns from gathering herbs to find that one of the patients, Yeong-sin, has cooked up a meat stew for the patients. Yeong-sin tells her that he poached a deer. However, when Seo-bi finds a finger in the soup, she realizes it was made from Dan-i's body. Horrified, she confronts Yeong-sin, who tells her that people often resort to cannibalism in times of famine. As they argue, the patients suddenly begin to take ill, and within a short time everyone who drank the soup has died. However, they resurrect shortly afterwards as night falls, and attack and kill the clinic's staff.

The Crown Prince and Mu-yeong reach the Frozen Valley, which is appropriately freezing unseasonably. They discover Seo-bi digging in an icy cave. She tells them that Physician Lee caused the disaster at Jiyulheon after resurrecting a man in the capital, and is horrified to hear that they removed the bodies. She tells them the people are infected with a horrible disease, and that they must warn the city before they resurrect at nightfall. She was hoping to use the resurrection plant to find a cure. The prince realizes that Physician Lee had resurrected the King on Lord Cho's orders. He orders Mu-yeong to accompany Seo-bi to Dongnae to warn the city, while he returns to Jiyulheon to get Physician Lee's medical journals.

Later at the magistrate's office, Magistrate Cho attempts to obtain a confession from Yeong-sin, ignoring his protests about the bodies. Seo-bi enters with Mu-yeong, and attempts to convince the magistrate that he is telling the truth. When that fails, she tries to warn the assembled crowd to flee; however, they also dismiss her. The magistrate calls her and Yeong-sin lunatics, and orders that they be locked up.

Night has fallen in Dongnae, and chaos reigns as the infected pour from the magistrate's office into the city. Magistrate Cho and some guards run to the jail. They attempt to lock themselves in the cell where Seo-bi is being held. The guard is bitten as he locks the door, but Seo-bi manages to kill him quickly. Together, she and the magistrate watch as the infected crowd around the cell.

When dawn breaks in Dongnae, sending the infected into hiding in dark spaces around the city, Seo-bi left the cell and explains that they became infected after eating a corpse because they were starving, and Yeong-sin adds that they must burn or behead the bodies to kill them. This sparks a backlash from the aristocrats, who refuse to allow the desecration of their relative's corpses.

Later Magistrate Cho has Seo-bi brought to him. She apologizes for not killing the infected at Jiyulheon, but says she hoped to find a cure for them. The Magistrate thanks her for saving his life, and promises to repay her. Seo-bi misinterprets the Magistrate's interest as an illness, and diagnoses him with gonorrhea. Mu-yeong enters to inform Seo-bi that the Crown Prince has requested to see her, and she leaves with him. Mu-yeong brings Seo-bi to Jiyulheon, where the Crown Prince is waiting for her. Seo-bi remembers the events of the initial outbreak. She, Yeong-sin, and Physician Lee locked themselves in the storehouse. A disoriented Physician Lee muttered that the disease has changed since Hanyang: when the King had bitten Dan-i he had only gotten sick and died, in contrast to the newly infected who are able to pass on the sickness with their bite. He nevertheless believed he could use his notes to cure the disease. However, he had been bitten, collapsed shortly afterwards as the disease took hold.

The Prince is studying the physician's notes when as Seo-bi enters the storehouse. She confirms that he believed the disease could be cured, but that she had been unable to find the resurrection plant in the Frozen Valley where it was said to grow. Mu-yeong interrupts them with important news, and Seo-bi leaves.

The Crown Prince and Mu-yeong arrive at the Dongnae docks, only to find that the evacuation ship has already departed, leaving behind a large crowd of stranded refugees. The Prince suggests they retreat to the barracks, but a guard tells him that the officials dismantled the wall to repair their ship. On Seo-bi's advice, they decide to take shelter outside the city, in Jiyulheon. On the way up the mountain, they notice hundreds of infected laying in cracks in the rock, and the crowd panics. Seo-bi spends the night at the clinic safe from the infected. During the day, as the clinic was attacked by the Royal Army trying to kill the Crown Prince, Seo-bi manages to survive and escape with the Crown Prince and his group.

The Crown Prince's group rests on the way to Sangju and Seo-bi went to search for herbs to treat the wounds of the Crown Prince. While looking for herbs, she hears a noise and the group is startled by Seo-bi's screams. She comes running out of the forest, warning them that she saw a monster. It turns out to be none other than former Dongnae magistrate Cho Beom-pal. The Prince is disgusted by his cowardice, but Beom-pal tells them he is the only survivor from ship that had evacuated Dongnae.

The Crown Prince's party comes across a small village in the mountains, where the locals are enjoying a feast in spite of the famine. Though the headman tries to bluff, they quickly understand they looted the ship with the dead. The villagers lead the Crown Princes' group to a clearing in a field of tall grass. Knowing what's the punishment for stealing, to avoid it they intended to kill the Crown Prince's group. But as the sun sets, the dead revive and begin to attack the group. As the fight occurs, they are close to being overwhelmed when Lord Ahn Hyeon and his followers arrive. Together, they quickly eliminate the threat and save the Crown Prince group and then guide them back to Sangju.

In the courtyard, Seo-bi asks Mu-yeong about Lord Ahn. She finds it strange that neither he nor his followers were frightened by the infected, and knew how to fight them effectively, as if they had already known about them.

On the next day, Seo-bi is gathering herbs, when Beom-pal runs towards her and asks her to run away with him, as he is sure the Five Armies are coming to arrest the Crown Prince and will surely kill anyone associated with him. However, Seo-bi is disgusted that he would run away again and abandon the Prince, and refuses to leave.

Cho Beom-pal returns to Sangju with a basket of herbs, hoping to impress Seo-bi. When it turns out the whole basket is full of useless weeds, she heads to the forest to find the herbs herself, and Beom-pal follows her. He warns her that the magistrate has prohibited anyone from taking a path that leads to a place called the Frozen Valley which is supposed to be dangerous. The name, however, immediately interests to Seo-bi, and she sets off to investigate. The valley is extremely similar to the Frozen Valley outside Dongnae; it is unseasonably cold, and contains a small pond which has been cordoned off with ropes hung with bells. On a hunch, Seo-bi wades through the pond and enters a cave at the end of the valley, and Beom-pal follows her. She finds a small purple flower growing in the dark - the resurrection plant she has been searching for. She starts collecting the plant, but Beom-pal notices shackles and bloody mats at the back of the cave. They are both started when something on the other side of the lake rattles, then breaks, one of the bell ropes.

Seo-bi and Beom-pal are then trapped by infected in the Frozen Valley, realizing that the temperature, not the sun, made the infected go dormant; as the country enters winter, the drop in temperature will allow the infected to be active at all times of the day.

Seo-bi appears in the following episodes: