In Queenmaker, after a tragic accident, a woman resolves to take her powerful employers down by making a civil rights lawyer the mayor of Seoul. The series is now streaming on Netflix.
Warning: This article contains heavy spoilers
Plot summary
Hwang Do-hee is the general manager of Corporate Strategy for Eunsung Group, a powerful business conglomerate. She has been “Eunsung’s Go-To Lady” for the past 10 years, as she efficiently covers up all their scandals and loyally serves the family.
She was a nobody when the owner, Ms. Son, hired her, and today she is one of her most trusted employees. Do-hee proves her worth by going above and beyond for Ms. Son’s family.
Ms. Son has two daughters — Seo-jin and Chae-ryoung. The two women do not get along, as they see each other as competition.
When the mayor of Seoul refuses to be Ms. Son’s puppet, she forces him to resign and plans to get Baek Jae-min, her younger daughter’s husband, elected as the next mayor of Seoul.
Jae-min approaches Do-hee and tells her that his secretary, Han I-seul, has been trying to seduce him. He rejected her advances, but now she is blackmailing him and claiming that he sexually assaulted her.
Do-hee uses I-seul’s past to threaten her in order to ensure that she does not create a scandal. She fires her, refuses to listen to her side of the story, and dismisses her pleas. I-seul sends Do-hee a mail and kills herself by jumping off the office building.
After witnessing her death and reading the mail, Do-hee realizes that Jae-min lied to her. He had sexually assaulted I-seul and made Do-hee punish an innocent woman. When Do-hee confronts him, Jae-min shows his true colors to Do-hee for the first time.
At the same time, Oh Kyung-sook, a labor rights lawyer, has been protesting for several days on the rooftop of Eunsung Department Store. The store recently fired 500 female part-time workers, and Kyung-sook has been fighting to get them justice.
Do-hee had earlier tried to deal with her, but she had failed to get her to leave the rooftop. After I-seul’s death, Do-hee regrets her life choices and decides to save Kyung-sook, who is going to be forcefully removed from the rooftop.
Do-hee intervenes when men come to drag Kyung-sook away and takes the hit in her place. In the struggle, Kyung-sook is pushed off the rooftop, and people think that she jumped on her own to continue the protest. Kyung-sook survives and becomes a hero in the eyes of the masses.
Jae-min also puts himself in a good light by reinstating the workers who were fired. Ms. Son forces Do-hee to prepare for Jae-min’s campaign and make sure that he becomes the next mayor, but Do-hee refuses, as she does not want to give power to a monster.
Due to this, she gets fired without severance pay, while her junior, Ms. Guk, replaces her easily. Do-hee is made to give up her car and residence. Furthermore, her father’s kidney transplant is canceled, and he is discharged from the hospital because Do-hee no longer has Eunsung’s VIP status.
Do-hee then promises Ms. Son that she will destroy Ms. Son’s corrupt world. In order to do that, Do-hee needs to convince Kyung-sook to run for mayor. While Kyung-sook initially dismisses her, Do-hee manages to get her to do it eventually, and Kyung-sook publicly challenges Jae-min.
Jae-min even sends people to attack Do-hee, but she is determined to make Kyung-sook the next mayor. They agree to work together, but Kyung-sook warns her that she will not tolerate unethical schemes. Kyung-sook gets the help of a publishing company she had defended in the past to set up a campaign office.
Kyung-sook’s strongest opponent is Assemblywoman Seo Min-jung, an experienced politician whose policy director, Mr. Ma, is Do-hee’s ex-husband. Do-hee’s strategy is to get her to face Kyung-sook in a primary election and take over her resources.
To compete against someone like Do-hee, Ms. Son hires an expert named Carl Yoon to handle Jae-min’s campaign. It is imperative that he win for the smooth functioning of her biggest project — Eunsung’s new duty-free shop building, Heaven, which will be opening soon.
Ms. Son asks her eldest daughter, Seo-jin, who lost her position as the heir after she got divorced, to manage the department store in place of Chae-ryoung, who is ordered to do nothing else except support Jae-min until he wins the elections.
On the other hand, Do-hee arranges a debate on TV between the two women candidates. Just before the debate, Do-hee’s team leaks a video of Ms. Seo’s luxurious lifestyle to ruin her image, which is that of being the people’s protector.
Additionally, Do-hee almost makes her lose the support of the woman who has been funding her election campaigns for years. Kyung-sook goes off script during the debate, and Do-hee uses Ms. Seo’s affair with a younger man to force her to agree to the primary election.
When Do-hee makes trouble for Eunsung and puts a pause on their development project, Ms. Son asks Carl to get rid of Do-hee. Carl joins forces with Ms. Seo, who now wants to defeat Kyung-sook at any cost because the two candidates have been doing everything they can to defeat the other.
Unbeknownst to Kyung-sook, her general manager, Hwa-soo, had used the money that was donated to reinstate fired female workers for her personal use. Ms. Seo blackmails her and gets her to put the blame on Kyung-sook to ruin her image.
To prevent Do-hee from doing damage control, Carl kidnaps her father, who has dementia, and leaves him in the middle of nowhere. Do-hee’s father gets into an accident and dies. Carl comes to his funeral and it does not take Do-hee long to realize that her father’s death was not an accident
Kyung-sook understands Hwa-soo’s position and does not hold a grudge against her. In fact, she tries to make sure that Hwa-soo is fine. A guilty Hwa-soo tries to kill herself, and Ms. Seo uses this opportunity to blame this also on Kyung-sook.
Kyung-sook does not want to expose Hwa-soo and hurt her further, so she decides to take responsibility for Hwa-soo’s actions and drop out. However, Mr. Ma, who does not agree with Ms. Seo’s unethical methods, betrays Ms. Seo at the last minute and proves that Kyung-sook had nothing to do with Hwa-soo’s suicide attempt.
His conversation with Ms. Seo also proves that it was her plan to pin the blame on Kyung-sook. Ms. Seo is forced to withdraw, and Kyung-sook, who decides to continue fighting, becomes the official representative of the Reform Party of Korea.
Soon after, Jae-min gets himself attacked in public by a man who was once helped by Kyung-sook to gain public sympathy. Additionally, he gets another candidate to drop out of the race and form an alliance with him to get his supporters.
Do-hee is unaware that one of their campaign workers has been spying on them for Carl. Due to this, she fails to get the women who have worked closely with Jae-min to testify against him.
She then discovers that Eunsung discarded the CCTV footage of the day I-seul died, which means that there is something that she does not know about her death. She goes to talk to Ms. Guk about it and ends up finding out about Ms. Guk and Jae-min’s affair; Ms. Guk is now pregnant with his child.
As the election draws closer, the two rivals and their camps leave no stone unturned to gain public support. Carl then decides to target Kyung-sook’s son, Hyun-woo. His people release a video to prove that Hyun-woo is a bully; later, they also allege that he is a sex offender.
Hyun-woo is arrested, and Carl uses Eunsung’s money and influence to get him charged with murder. Kyung-sook is given a few hours to withdraw her candidature if she does not want her son to spend his life as a convict, but Hyun-woo does not let her do that.
Mr. Ma joins Kyung-sook’s camp to help her. Additionally, Do-hee had earlier refused to accept illegal funds from Seo-jin, who does not want Jae-min to win because then Chae-ryoung will be at an advantage. Do-hee finally decides to take funds from her, as Do-hee and Kyung-sook are now going all out to win.
Do-hee threatens the boy who was beaten up by Hyun-woo to settle the case. She also bribes another candidate, Yook Seung-cheol, a famous educator, to lend his support to Kyung-sook. They use him to bring out the truth about what happened to Hyun-woo.
He reveals to the public that Hyun-woo’s classmates were paid by Jae-min’s camp to post indecent images and messages about Kyung-sook on his social media account to provoke him into beating one of them; this was then recorded and used to get him arrested.
Do-hee manages to rescue both Kyung-sook and Hyun-woo. She also leaks the news about Jae-min and Ms. Guk’s affair and her pregnancy to ruin Jae-min’s carefully created image of a good husband.
Jae-min claims that these are just rumors and gets Ms. Guk to do the same. However, it does not help, and Ms. Guk, who is now anxious about her and her unborn child’s life, passes out in public and is admitted to the hospital.
Jae-min makes his move and promises to distribute 50% shares of the duty-free shop among the public if he becomes the mayor. He refuses to be controlled by Ms. Son or her daughters anymore, as he knows that they now need him.
Do-hee has a record of all the bribes and underhand dealings that she had participated in on behalf of Ms. Son to get the duty-free shop constructed. She hands over this information to Kyung-sook and asks her to use it during the candidates’ final debate.
Ms. Guk is the only hurdle in Jae-min’s path, and he decides to get her killed. Once she dies, he will claim that since Do-hee and Kyung-sook spread false rumors about their affair, Ms. Guk could not handle the public humiliation and killed herself. This will ensure an easy victory for him.
He sends his wife to escort a pregnant Ms. Guk home from the hospital to show the public that he never had an affair. Ms. Guk knows that Jae-min can harm her or her child, so she gets a paternity test done to have proof against Jae-min.
However, Jae-min tampers with the results of the test, and Chae-ryoung meets Ms. Guk to convince her to put up a show in front of the media. Once that is done, she tells Ms. Guk that she will be dead soon just before Ms. Guk is taken away in a car.
Queenmaker ending explained in detail:
Does Do-hee save Ms. Guk?
Do-hee and her senior, Lee Cha-sun, manage to get the CCTV footage from a building near Eunsung that shows Jae-min leaving the premises right after I-seul’s death and looking unbothered, which means that he had something to do with I-seul’s death.
Furthermore, when Do-hee sees Ms. Guk with Chae-ryoung on the news, she figures out Jae-min’s plan to get Ms. Guk killed. She sends Yoon Dong-joo, Kyung-sook’s loyal employee, to follow Ms. Guk’s car.
Dong-joo loses the car, but Do-hee finds it using the directions he gave her. She finds an unconscious Ms. Guk locked inside with a burning coal briquette, which is going to suffocate her. Before she could help her step out, she gets attacked by Jae-min’s men.
Dong-joo reaches there in time. While Do-hee saves Ms. Guk and escapes with his help, he gets stabbed. However, he survives and is taken to the hospital when he is found injured.
Who wins the election?
During their final debate, Jae-min was prepared for the corruption allegations because he was informed about them by Carl’s spy. Ms. Guk’s suicide note also gets posted at the same time, and Jae-min makes Kyung-sook and Do-hee look like the guilty party.
This turns the tide in Jae-min’s favor. While the whole city turns against Kyung-sook, her old comrades, including Hwa-soo, come to support her. Kyung-sook chooses to address the citizens via a live stream.
Fortunately, Ms. Guk wakes up in the hospital, and after talking to Do-hee, she gets convinced to tell the truth. She joins Kyung-sook’s live stream and talks about her affair with Jae-min as well as his attempt to get her killed. She also thanks Do-hee for saving her life.
Ms. Guk had kept I-seul’s phone in a locker, and she gives Do-hee access to it. I-seul had recorded her last conversation with Jae-min on the rooftop. She wanted Jae-min to tell the world what he had done to her and apologize to her. Instead of doing that, Jae-min pushed her off the roof to kill her.
This conversation is also played by Kyung-sook while addressing the people of Seoul. Once Jae-min’s truth comes out, Kyung-sook easily wins the election and becomes the mayor of Seoul.
Is Jae-min dead or alive?
Do-hee meets Jae-min and tells him that when his father was on track to become the next president years ago, it was Carl Yoon who framed him as a corrupt politician. Due to this, Jae-min’s father killed himself, and his family had to suffer.
The news shocks him, and Jae-min breaks down. Do-hee kept her promise and brought Jae-min to his knees. He is not seen in public again.
Ms. Son does not think twice before throwing him under the bus to protect Eunsung. She blames everything on him, gets him killed, and makes it look like he took his own life after his crimes were exposed.
What happens to Do-hee and the Eunsung Group?
Although Kyung-sook wins the election, Do-hee tips the journalist, who has been working with them, about the illegal campaign funds. While Kyung-sook does not know anything about it, Do-hee publicly acknowledges that she took illegal funds from Eunsung.
Do-hee had asked Seo-jin to put the money from Ms. Son’s slush fund account directly into her own account. She had planned to sacrifice herself all along to get this account investigated so that it could be proved that Ms. Son had bribed several people for her duty-free shop.
Do-hee is found guilty and has to go to prison. She bids a tearful goodbye to Kyung-sook, who decides to use the power given to her by Do-hee to take Ms. Son down. The duty-free shop is investigated, and the illegal deals related to it as well as the bribes come to light.
Kyung-sook gives Eunsung Group the option to prevent the demolition of the duty-free shop by giving 90% of the shares to the public-private company established by the Seoul Metropolitan Government for the betterment of the citizens.
Ms. Son tries to threaten Kyung-sook, but Kyung-sook tells her that everything that Do-hee taught her and told her is enough for her to destroy Ms. Son’s world in a few months. Ms. Son has no choice but to give up 90% of the shares of her biggest project.
After her mother, Seo-jin becomes the owner of Eunsung. She offers to make Chae-ryoung the CEO of the logistics company, but Chae-ryoung is still struggling with the fact that her mother got her husband killed.
In prison, Do-hee is happy when she watches Kyung-sook on TV. She knows that Kyung-sook is doing her part to make this world a better place. A man then comes to visit Do-hee in prison and asks for her assistance.
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