All Of Us Are Dead Killed Off [SPOILER] Way Too Soon

Warning: This article contains SPOILERS for All of Us Are Dead.

Netflix’s All of Us Are Dead season 1 kills off a major character far too soon with Lee Byeong-chan’s death and it throws away a number of interesting possibilities for the show. Netflix’s newest hit follows the first few hours of a zombie apocalypse after a strange virus spreads in a local high school and its students fight to survive. Despite its simple premise, All of Us Are Dead delivers a thrilling experience throughout the entire season thanks to its well-developed characters and exciting pace.

The first few minutes of All of Us Are Dead’s premiere revolve around Lee Byeong-chan, the school’s mysterious science teacher and his unorthodox research. Even before further context was given, Byeong-chan carries with him a mysterious aura that serves to further heighten the atmosphere of tension that the beginning of a zombie story naturally carries. That secrecy begins to dissipate as Lee Byeong-chan’s real motives for creating the Jonah virus become clearer. Even still, it’s not until the interrogation scene in All of Us are Dead episode 4 that the character finally reveals what his true plan is, and it only serves to underscore what a waste his later season 1 death is.

Byeong-chan is revealed as a desperate father who is determined to create a serum that will give his timid son, Jin-su, the strength and bravery to stand up to the bullies that drove him to attempt to end his life. As his twisted view of the world’s problems accidentally led to the creation All of Us Are Dead‘s zombie virus, Lee Byeong-chan had the potential to be the show’s main antagonist, a complex character who slowly becomes a true villain as his worldview warps. However, Byeong-chan was quickly killed off during All of Us Are Dead episode 4, cutting short the potential of the character and prematurely ending his story. More on the scientist’s motives for creating the virus, his blurred view of injustice in the world, and his total disregard for humanity would have offered several interesting plotlines going forward. Instead, All of Us Are Dead opted for a semi-redemption for the character, who died saving Song Jae-ik, a detective investigating the zombie outbreak.

Due to his original mission of saving his son from being bullied, Byeong-chan is the kind of villain who believes he is the hero of his own story. Although he was worried about the consequences of the outbreak that led to so many character deaths in All of Us Are Dead and expressed regret, he was also visibly proud of having achieved what he dreamed of: turning fear into strength. This is evident in the police station scene in which the scientist both smiles and cries after seeing the zombies. A character who has committed such an atrocity but who believes he is right could have been the perfect human antagonist for a zombie story, a character of fascinating contradictions and complexity.

Rather than exploring more about how Lee Byeong-chan would react to the world he helped create, All of Us Are Dead took a cheaper and far less interesting route by killing him off after his not fully-earned change of heart. Granted, the scientist could still be one of the halfbie zombies who manages to retain a level of awareness and his former personality. Even still, the character’s total absence for the remainder of season 1 is already a wasted opportunity, especially for All of Us Are Dead season 2. Had Byeong-chan remained human and not been killed off so quickly, the character could have come out of the show as a much more interesting villain.

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Marcelo Leite
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Marcelo Leite is a senior writer for Screen Rant with years of experience in creative and academic writing. Although his chosen field was structure engineering, there is nothing he likes better than writing about the things he loves.

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