Our Sticky Love Episode 12 Recap (Finale)

Who's in the cast:
Jung Hae-in as Jang Tae-ha
Ha Young as Go Eun-sae
Heo Sung-tae as Baek Sang-gil
Jeon Bae-soo as Hong Do-yeop
Kim Young-ok as Go Yeon-hong
Jang Hye-jin as Pang Hui-ja
Cha Cheong-hwa as Cho Maeng-suk
Lee Jun-young as Kaito (special appearance)

Baek Sang-gil, the crime boss whom prosecutor Go Eun-sae put on trial, has escaped from custody and come after Jang Tae-ha's family in Gujin Taffy Village. The finale picks up mid-brawl, under a caption for Gujin Rice Taffy, as Tae-ha's friend Kaito, his former underling Kim Gang-rok and Coach Hong Do-yeop fight Sang-gil's men.

Taffy Village fights back

Do Jeong-hwa turns up and tells her husband, Do-yeop, not to worry: the ladies are here. One of the women works out that Sang-gil's men caused all of Tae-ha and Eun-sae's troubles, Jeong-hwa's car crash included. Someone shouts for Pang Hui-ja, and Na Geum-hyang answers a call to arms. Another woman brags that she threw shot put at Gujin Girls' Commercial High. Someone remembers that Kim Song-wol is from North Korea and is said to have been a soldier, and someone else makes do without tear gas: vinegar mixed with red pepper powder.

When a thug lays hands on her husband, Jeong-hwa, by every sign, goes for him with a stream of curses and has to be dragged off. A woman hands an injured ally to Dr. An Gi-jun and nurse Min Su-ji to patch up. They protest that they run a mental health clinic, not a hospital. Then Gi-jun takes a blow meant for Su-ji and tells her he is fine as long as she is. Kim Pil-seung turns up where he should not be and gets a frantic scolding. Eun-sae arrives, and the first questions are whether Gang-rok is hurt and where Tae-ha is.

Sang-gil's past catches up with him

Someone says Sang-gil's full name, and a run of flashbacks begins. A young Sang-gil is a boxer, and his coach, a young Do-yeop, can hear plaster in his gloves. Do-yeop disowns him on the spot: he never taught those fists to hurt people. A young woman, Jang Hye-su, demands to know why. Sang-gil says gamblers bet on him and promised him the winnings, and a stipend will never buy an oil boiler or a Grandeur sedan. She answers that she loved boxing because the ring makes everyone equal, and loved him because he got so far on his fists alone. He quits instead, and swears he will not spend his life losing like everyone else.

With a ban from the boxing association coming, a man offers him another way to earn a living. Later the same woman brings him a baby who will soon be 100 days old and begs him to get out. Sang-gil asks whether the child is even his, and offers money if she will disappear for good. She tells him she only wanted the baby to see his father's face once. Somewhere, a debtor who cannot pay is told he will be beaten. Sang-gil argues that honest people stay losers and so do their kids, so he chose to win by any means. She refuses the money anyway. Some things he can never beat, she says, and she will not raise her son on dirty money.

Hye-su is Tae-ha's mother, which makes Sang-gil his father. In another memory, at a funeral home, Tae-ha tells Sang-gil over drinks that his father died before he was born. Sang-gil says having no memories might be better. Tae-ha says he heard his father was a good man, and that he would have wanted to meet him either way.

Back in the present, Tae-ha tells Sang-gil not to make a scene in front of Grandma and to take it outside. The reply calls it a cruel twist of fate and addresses Tae-ha by his full name. Tae-ha shouts at Sang-gil to stop running and face the consequences. What sound like his old taunts echo back: a gift for a boxer who took off his gloves, and the dread of never knowing what Sang-gil has planned. Sang-gil proposes ending the twisted fate between them. Someone screams in protest, and Sang-gil gets hold of a gun and shoots himself. Tae-ha never learns that Sang-gil was his father. A last memory follows, of someone teasing two men who always end a night of drinking with gochujang stew, a spicy red pepper paste stew.

Second chances

Afterward, Cho Maeng-suk, the shaman whose powers deserted her, takes up tarot to earn a living. Asked whether the village faces another ruckus, she draws a card promising spring in many places.

Su-ji brings Gi-jun medicine for the bruises he got protecting her. He admits test answers always came to him easily, but a woman's heart never has. He wants more memories like their night at the pub. He recalls Eun-sae's point that it is lonely not to share memories with the person you love, and says their pride kept them from sharing any. Embarrassed, since he was the one who ended things, he asks for another chance. Su-ji asks whether that is all he has for his girlfriend, and he stammers out a question: are they back together?

Go Yeon-hong, Tae-ha's grandmother, calls him in and brings out keepsakes from his first birthday. In the memory, it is his doljabi, the Korean first-birthday game where a baby picks an object that predicts the future. The grown-ups urge him toward the gavel and then the doctor's pick, but he grabs the boxing gloves his boxing-fan mother put on the table. His mother says she named him Tae-ha for a big river that winds but always reaches the sea. Yeon-hong says he always knew what he wanted and lost it because of her. She could not face his mother in the afterlife. Her one request is that he be happy and let nobody stand in his way. "Go find your ocean," she tells him, and hugs him.

A proposal and a wedding in the rain

At Hye-su's grave, Eun-sae introduces herself to Tae-ha's mother. Tae-ha's own introduction is a single line: she is the woman he likes. Eun-sae lists everything he could have said instead, from her red-carpet looks to her career as a young star prosecutor, and appeals to Blessing, the dog, for backup. Then Tae-ha tries again. Everyone wants him to be happy, he says, and he wants it too, but "my happiness is Go Eun-sae." He asks her to marry him. She reminds him she already said she still likes him, even with her memory back: "Who else would I marry if not Jang Tae-ha?" Hidden villagers coo, and one declares the dog better than people.

At the wedding, Taffy Village's own S.E.S, introduced as the village fairies and named after the 1990s girl group, sing for the couple. Eun-sae's bouquet toss goes wrong, and the second throw lands with Su-ji. A man presents someone with flowers he seems to have cut on the spot, and the guests chant for them to marry. Then a sun-shower hits. Someone jokes that a tiger must be getting married too, the Korean folk saying for rain under sunshine. Everyone runs for cover. Tae-ha says rain always fell on his worst days with nothing to shelter him. Eun-sae promises they will weather it together, and they stay out in the downpour until the guests join them.

Every genre of a life

Too many trials are lined up for a honeymoon, Eun-sae says, so she wants a proper wedding night. Out comes a bottle of lion's mane liquor, supposedly a youth tonic. Tae-ha gets drunk fast, slurs that he really likes Go Eun-sae, and passes out happy. She tries babe, then oppa, the word for an older brother or a slightly older boyfriend, then his full name. In the morning she complains that he wasted their only first night. He asks why it has to be night when they could have a first morning.

A voiceover says every life has its genres. Romance: Gi-jun announces that he and Su-ji plan to marry. Film noir: a hole dug deep, which turns out to be for kimchi. Horror: Jeong-hwa raging at a man she blames for a sore back, apparently Do-yeop's. Fantasy: Maeng-suk hears her revered spirit come home.

At home, Eun-sae fills a photo album. Since losing her memory, she says, photos are like an emergency fund for the hard days. Tae-ha promises that if she forgets again, he will tell her everything. She has taken pictures since childhood, she explains, because without parents nobody else would remember for her. Now she knows how family feels. They take one more photo with Blessing, and it will go into the album too.

See every episode in the Our Sticky Love episode guide.