Mantis Ending Explained: Ace assassin Mantis comes back to work after a hiatus and finds himself at odds with his best friend and fellow assassin Jae-yi and his mentor and legendary killer Dok-go.
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Mantis Movie Cast
Im Si-wan, Park Gyu-young, Jo Woo-jin, Choi Hyun-wook
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Mantis Netflix Director
Lee Tae-sung
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Mantis 2025 Writers
Byun Sung-hyun, Lee Tae-sung, Lee Jin-seong
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Original Title
사마귀
The Korean action thriller film has a runtime of 113 minutes and exists in the same universe as the 2023 film Kill Boksoon.
Mantis Ending Explained
The film opens with two assassins talking about the ridiculous rules that they have to abide by and end up breaking several of them. They are immediately visited by Han-ul, or the Mantis, and he finishes both of the men off after a rather energetic fight. After finishing him off, he asks Cha Min-kyu to let him out of his 7-year contract with his company, but he is only given a break to think things through. In the end, though, Min-kyu promises to renegotiate his contract and agrees to interview Jae-yi.
However, after his vacation, Han-ul gets the news that Min-kyu has been killed by Boksoon and comes back home. With MK now dead, everyone’s fates are up in the air. So when Jae-yi talks about opening her own company, Han-ul is annoyed and goads her, saying that she wouldn’t be able to take care of herself without him. However, their fight is solved soon enough since they have been friends since they were little and know each other too well.
Han-ul meets Dok-go later on and realises that he’s about to rejoin MK after his spat with Min-kyu. He insists on taking Jae-yi with them to the company, but Dok-go refuses, stating that she cannot join under any circumstances since she doesn’t have the skills. Han-ul proposes starting a company with Jae-yi, putting up Benjamin’s name as an investor. With Han-ul by her side, Jae-yi takes up the offer, but their feelings for one another result in them not getting funding from Benjamin.
Regardless, they end up starting their company, but maybe with a little less fanfare. Soon, though, things start to get uncomfortable as Han-ul stops giving work to the others and only keeps the good ones for himself. The two start to fight as Han-ul completely insults Jae-yi, which leaves her angered.
Why was Jae-yi released from MK?
Although Dok-go wanted to take on both Jae-yi and Han-ul, Min-kyu suggested that they should only take Han-ul instead since he is the superior fighter and will end up surpassing her. Angered for being rejected, Jae-yi insists on fighting with him with a real blade, to showcase her talent and the fight that she will defeat Han-ul if given another chance. Shocked by her words, because it would mean that either of them can die, Dok-go realises that the decision to reject her was the right one.
Angered and humiliated, Jae-yi attacks Dok-go, but eventually isn’t able to win a fight against him. Dok-go warns Han-ul that Jae-yi will do anything to win and tells him that this is the reason why Min-kyu and he had a falling out – their inherent obsession to win trumps everything and everyone in their lives. The jealousy gets too much for them to control.
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What happens between Han-ul and Jae-yi?
Overcome with jealousy and tired of being called second best, Jae-yi fights Han-ul and defeats him, and he light-heartedly tells her to be in charge. However, she decides to leave their company and joins Benjamin to start her own venture. Someone takes a video of the incident and distributes it among their circles, leaving Han-ul devastated and without work while Jae-yi’s popularity rises.
What happens in the end?
Now working with Benjamin, she is tasked to go after Dok-go whom he has a personal gripe for rejecting his offer. At a meeting with all the companies later, Jae-yi speaks up against MK making all the rules and dishing out punishments and puts her name in to lead everyone. Dok-go asks her to prove her abilities in front of everyone, but Han-ul stops the pair from fighting one another. However, although she makes nice with Benjamin, it turns out that she has plans against everyone around her.
Those plans, though, have to wait for a bit as Benjamin, playing both Dok-go and Jae-yi, sends a bloody blade to Dok-go and incites a fight between the two. Knowing what the consequences will be, a panicked Han-ul asks for time to talk to Jae-yi in exchange for getting him back to MK. However, caught in a lie out of the blue, things blow up for Han-ul, and he has to make a choice.
Choosing to mess things up, he sends Jae-yi the bloody knife back, resulting in an all-out brawl in which Han-ul and Jae-yi both fight Dok-go. In the end, Jae-yi stabs Dok-go to death, and she tells Han-ul that people despise him for pitying them. However, she does have some regrets about how things went between them. In the end, Han-ul bids Jae-yi goodbye after telling her that she did a great job.
Some time later, MK’s takeover is almost over thanks to Jae-yi. However, one more job remains on her list – getting rid of Benjamin. And she hands that job over to an up-and-coming group in need of a job, as Han-ul is seen driving his car.
What are your thoughts about Mantis? Let us know in the comments below!
Also Read: Mantis Review: A Well-Acted and Thrilling Venture That Falls Short of Expectations
Thanks for explaining. I watched it and thought Mantis was a better killer than Jae-yi and he let her win the [2nd] fight between them because he was in love with her and she was so ambitious… basically he loved her more than being the head of the new MK group, so he let her have it. I also thought that Jae-yi believed she had won for real, but to kill her love for Mantis, she made that fight go viral so that she would not be tempted to give up her ruthless ambition for Mantis…. She chose ambition over love. I figured the name of the movie is Mantis, so he had to be the best killer but like…a killer with a heart, sacrificing his own ambition for his love. I did not like Jae-yi’s character at all; she had major self-esteem problems to the point of being feral. She needed to be put down, and I kept hoping someone would kill her. In my opinion, she sucked big time. I had hoped Boksoon would appear near the end of the movie and kill her, which would have made Boksoon’s cameo make more sense… personally, I think my version would have made this a better movie. : ) So thank you for explaining the true ending.
exactly !! I hated Jae-yi’s character too
I think that too. I mean, the confession at the end by Jae yi (I should have helped you up….) doesn’t justify her feelings and the fact that she wanted to be superior to everyone around her. Even I wished someone came by and showed her her place or maybe even killed her. If this gets a continuation movie, a following one , then I hope they do something like that with the character.