Month: April 2025

Nestled in the back half of Gareth Evans’ Havoc, a stunningly violent film that does exactly what it says on the tin, two parents sit down for an unexpected heart to heart about weariness and woe. 

One of them is corrupt politician Lawrence Beaumont (Forest Whitaker), who longs to reconcile with his estranged son, Charlie (Justin Cornwell). The other is a vicious gang boss (Yeo Yann Yann), never acknowledged by a given name, but by her status in Triad society (“big sister”); officially, she is credited as “Tsui’s mother.” She’s in the middle of orchestrating a revenge campaign on behalf of her son, Tsui (Jeremy Ang Jones), cut down early in the film during a drug deal gone bad, though his killers see it as having gone precisely according to plan.

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As she and Beaumont unexpectedly open up to one another, tipping out the hopes and dreams they have, or had, for their children, Havoc slows down and lets a hush settle in, replacing bedlam and bullet reports–a spare sentimental beat in a film where feelings are inconveniences at best and liabilities at worst. It’s a gripping, savage piece of work on account of its raucous and intense action, but it’s the quiet parts that help drive the loud ones home.

Read more: Here’s What’s New on Netflix in April 2025

Latching onto characters

Moments like that are as key to Evans’ cinema as the athletically made and kinetically shot melees he became known for in 2011, when his third feature, The Raid, made its world premiere at the year’s edition of the Toronto International Film Festival to instant hosannas; the film is action cinema’s take on the chamber drama, where an Indonesian police squad is trapped in an apartment complex and beset on by gang members and its residents alike. Enough jaw-dropping critical injuries are sustained by characters in The Raid to overcrowd the Pitt. Still, the emotional undercurrents help pull viewers along.

“Every time I’ve written anything, even though the characters always exist in a world and with circumstances that feel larger than life, there’s always an emphasis on trying to find an element of the storyline or the relationship between the characters that I can latch onto,” Evans explains in a conversation with TIME. In his post-The Raid projects especially, including its 2014 sequel, The Raid 2, his first collaboration with Netflix, 2018’s Apostle, and his 2020 Sky Atlantic TV series Gangs of London, Evans looks for avenues he can channel his personal anxieties through.

Typically, his concerns are parental. The Raid 2, for instance, a two and a half hour crime and punishment epic, boils down to one man’s struggle to win the approval of his stern father; whether this is significant to Evans’ life or not, the motif nonetheless transitions cleanly into Havoc. More than a decade has passed since then, and Evans now has a child of his own–a life change he reflects on directly through Havoc’s themes. “It was always about mining the fear of what it means to raise [children] properly,” he says, “and what it means to question every little decision.” Parents will keep themselves awake at night wondering what path their kids will take as they grow up, and whether they’ve steered them toward a good one (much less taught them the wisdom to take it). It’s a natural consequence of his own parenthood that emerges in Evans’ work, but the neurosis he mines is universal.

Parenting with pain

Granted, Evans isn’t a high-ranking member in China’s organized crime hierarchy, or a dirty mayoral candidate, or a crooked police officer, like Walker (Tom Hardy), Havoc’s troubled antihero, a hard-boiled detective wracked by guilt over the initially undisclosed sins of his past; Beaumont enlists him to track down Charlie, who has been framed for Tsui’s slaying and is thus on his mother’s hit list. 

The “fretting parent” motif manifests in Walker’s arc, too. He and his wife are separated, and he dearly wants to spend more time with their daughter; his ex is reluctant, given his dangerous profession and overall amorality. His habit of buying gifts at the last minute doesn’t help. (The movie introduces him shopping for his daughter’s Christmas present at a bodega as the holiday looms. Nobody’s perfect, perhaps corrupt cops especially.) 

Walker, Tsui’s mother, and Beaumont’s individual distresses are grounded in Havoc’s structure and action. They make up the film’s beating heart, carrying the burdens of their regret; it’s their own fault that their children keep distance from them. Beaumont aches to close that distance, while “big sister” is consumed by the tragic reality that Tsui’s death means she’ll never close it.  “At what point is it too late?” Evans asks. “At what point do you give in? Who has the resolve to keep fighting for that?” 

Action cinema’s compact is deceptively simple: show the audience well-choreographed fights, whether they’re conducted by hand, gun, or other martial implements, and they’ll be happy. But action sans thought–recent examples include The 355 and A Working Man–amounts to disposable mayhem at best, like cottony candy that knocks your teeth out instead of just rotting them. In the case of Havoc, giving “big sister” and Beaumont personalities as well as motivation prevents the narrative from tipping into nihilism (an attention to characterization which, frankly, applies to all of Evans’ films). “Everyone’s got shades of gray. Everyone’s fallible,” Evans says. “It was always important to find little touchstones, where you can say, ‘There’s humanity there, there’s still something to hold onto.’ Otherwise it’s just pain.” 

Storytelling and character development through action

The dialogue between Beaumont and “big sister” functions like a Tylenol tablet, a few minutes of mercy in a movie it’s broadly absent from. “Big sister” doesn’t believe in due process; she believes that Charlie murdered Tsui, and she acts accordingly. (“‘Play this like you’re the hero of your own movie,” Evans recalls telling Yann.) Beaumont leverages his knowledge of Walker’s past misdeeds to strong-arm him into recovering Charlie. For his part, Walker wants to leave those misdeeds behind him, and in Evans’ calculus, that, coupled with his tough-guy reticence, makes him the wrong character for driving home Havoc’s parenting theme.

Hence “big sister” and Beaumont’s exchange in the film’s third act. Evans didn’t plan it, per se; he realized, naturally, that these characters, in this particular moment, were right for punctuating that theme. “The set piece has to feel like it’s organic, that it comes from the characters,” Evans says. “It’s not just because we’re on page six or 10 or whatever, that we’re going to drop in a moment of spectacle.” 

Small presentation, big impact

In Havoc’s ratcheting chaos, even a scene of two characters talking calmly does feel spectacular. Evans saw this seemingly minor sequence as an opportunity for Yeo and Whitaker to give their characters pathos, and took it. But there’s a practical reason for “big sister” and Beaumont to speak with one another at this point in the story, too: to set up that last half hour. “It felt like, in the construct overall, a sobering moment to have within this film,” Evans notes, “which is admittedly a rollercoaster ride with big action sequences.”

Without further context, he could be describing any of his movies. Every Evans production is an amusement park ride with a body count. But Havoc is closer to Gangs of London than The Raid 2; that movie contains a critical mass of action sequences, and as Evans puts it, “a lot of deleted scenes that I probably shouldn’t have spent money shooting.” He focused on economy of action with Havoc instead, emphasizing world-building geography and characters ahead of explosive action, which is consequently as impressive in scale as even The Raid and The Raid 2’s standout sequences. 

Forget, by the way, that you’ll be watching Havoc on a smaller screen. Like every child of the 1980s with a lifelong love of genre cinema, Evans encountered the likes of Sam Peckinpah, Akira Kurosawa, and golden age Hong Kong martial arts cinema not in a theater, but at home. “The first time I watched them would’ve been pan and scan on a 21-inch screen if I was lucky,” he says. Consider yourself fortunate if you manage to catch Havoc in a theater, but if not, don’t worry: the action hits just as hard on your television set.

A prime example is the carnage that breaks out at the Medusa, a nightclub where Charlie and his girlfriend, Mia (Quelin Sepulveda), are converged on by “big sister’s” forces, Walker, and Walker’s shady colleague, Vincent (Timothy Olyphant), who wants to get Charlie first for his own reasons. “The Medusa sequence was probably the biggest thing I’ve undertaken, in terms of sustaining that pace, sustaining the movement of the action sequence across the different levels inside the tunnel, back outside, out into the streets,” Evans says. “Maintaining the POVs throughout the sequence was the biggest headache.”

The hardest part of shooting the Medusa sequence turned out to be COVID; production took place during the summer of 2021 in Cardiff, meaning several hundred folks on set had to be tested before the cameras rolled. Coronavirus aside, Evans makes filming itself sound like a walk in the park. “Because I work with such a great stunt team, led by Jude Poyer [who served as action designer & stunt coordinator on Gangs of London], and because we do a previsualization process, by the time we get to the set, it allows me to have a hell of a framework to build off. The heavy lifting is almost done then.”

All of this makes the personal confessions between Yeo and Whitaker read as the heavier lift. “Big sister” and Beaumont are alphas in their respective worlds, of Triad society and American politics; they maintain fronts with their subordinates and peers to assert their power and status. In private, those rules are relaxed. “For this one moment in time, because there’s no one else around, I can let these characters be vulnerable,” Evans says. The poignancy is fleeting–there’s still a half an hour of Havoc left to go, and it doesn’t go quietly–but makes its impact nonetheless.

Warning: This article contains major spoilers for the ending of Weak Hero Class 2.

Weak Hero Class 1 ends at the beginning—of the webtoon, that is. The final scene of the coming-of-age action drama’s first season is the first scene of its source material. In it, introverted teen Si-eun (played in the drama by Park Ji-hoon) arrives as a new student at Eunjang High School, and is almost immediately targeted by class bully Choi Hyo-man (Crash Landing on You’s Yoo Su-bin).

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Unbeknownst to Hyo-man, Si-eun is not someone to be trifled with. At his old school, Si-eun beat up the boys responsible for putting his friend, Su-ho (Choi Hyun-wook), into a coma. He may be a bird-boned bookworm, but, when necessary, he uses the same brain that makes him a top student to inflict precise harm against bullies much larger than him. It was only Si-eun’s former friend, the misguided Oh Beom-seok (Hong Kyung), who was spared retribution for his part in Su-ho’s severe injuries. Wracked with guilt over Su-ho’s injuries, Si-eun enters Weak Hero Class 2 determined not to let another friend suffer a similar, gruesome fate.

In the webtoon, Si-eun’s traumatic backstory is told through a series of flashbacks. For the live-action K-drama adaptation, director-writer You Su-min and executive producer Han Jun-hee decided to make that backstory an entire, eight-episode season in Weak Hero Class 1. “The original webtoon is a straightforward and intuitive school action story, where Yeon Si-eun seems to almost clear one stage at a time, like a game,” You tells TIME of the decision. “If we followed that storyline from the beginning, I didn’t think we could create a complete story, and I thought we had to first address how Si-eun and his friends got close and then drifted apart in order to complete the narrative.”

This frees up Weak Hero Class 2, which releases on Netflix today in its entirety a month after the first season arrived on the streamer, to focus on the main plot of the webtoon, without losing any of the complexity or weight of Si-eun’s past. Let’s break down the major plot points of the new season, the climactic ending, and what could be in store for a possible Season 3.

Read more: Breaking Down the Devastating Ending of Weak Hero Class 1

Si-Eun’s new friends in Weak Hero Class 2

“[Si-eun is] riddled with trauma [at the beginning of Weak Hero Class 2], but he still wants to make new friends,” Park tells TIME of his character. “I was curious if that would actually be possible for him, emotionally.” While Si-eun is initially resistant, fellow students Park Hu-min (Namib’s Ryeo-un), Seo Jun-tae (XO Kitty’s Choi Min-yeong), and Ko Hyeon-tuk (Uprising’s Lee Min-jae) eventually break through Si-eun’s defenses to become his new friends.

Park Hu-min, or Baku, is considered the strongest fighter at Eunjang. “I don’t find him very skilled in fighting, but he’s just a natural-born very strong person,” Ryeo-un says of his character. “He’s got very hard, strong punches, and instead of going for the more precise skills, he just deals a very big punch to someone or just makes him fly out of his way.” Baku’s protection has kept Eunjang from falling under the violent control of the Union, an alliance of gangs based in the local high schools. When the season begins, Baku is out of school due to suspension, allowing the Union a chance to get their claws into the Eunjang student body.

Ko Hyeon-tuk, also known as Gotak, is Baku’s best friend and fellow member of the basketball team. His background in the martial arts makes him good in a fight. “He’s a former taekwondo athlete, so he knows how to use his legs, so he’s got really good kicks,” says Lee. “That’s something that sets him apart from the other guys.” 

At the start of the season, Jun-tae has been coerced into acting as the Eunjang bullies’ errand boy. He initially steals the students’ phones, per Hyo-man’s orders, but is inspired by Si-eun to stand up for himself and others. “[Jun-tae is] not a good fighter, but he’s got skills,” says Choi. “He knows how to take a punch and not make it feel too hurtful … While he might not be a good physical fighter, I think he has his own means in helping out in a fight, in a bigger sense.”

How does union leader Na Baek-jin know Baku?

While much of Weak Hero Class 2 is concerned with the formation of Si-eun’s new friend group, it takes place within the violent pressures of the Union. The Union is run by teen Na Baek-jin (D.P.’s Bae Na-ra). Brilliant and ruthless, Baek-jin is almost impossible to beat in a fight. 

Baek-jin shares a complicated relationship with Baku. The two became friends as boys when Baku saved Baek-jin from bullies, teaching him how to fight back. Because of this, Baku feels responsible for the hurt Baek-jin has caused with those skills. Meanwhile, Baek-jin still wants to be Baku’s friend, using threats against Baku’s newly formed friend group to temporarily force Baku to join the Union, mid-season.

“I wanted to emphasize strong dramatic elements within the story,” You told TIME of his decision to tweak Baek-jin’s backstory. “To do so, the buildup of the characters’ relationships had to be done well, and the basic setting had to be well-established. Baek-jin and Baku’s story seemed appropriate to emphasize the theme of our series and add strong dramatic elements to the storyline.” Thematically, the fractured friendship works well in a story that is so much about the joys of friendship and the pain of a camaraderie betrayed.

In the final episode, it is revealed that Baek-jin has been donating the money he makes from his criminal consortium to an orphanage. It is implied that Baek-jin grew up there, as the woman who runs the place and accepts Baek-jin’s donations, seems to know him personally. She is worried about where Baek-jin is getting the money.

Weak Hero Class 2’s ending: Si-Eun’s master plan

Weak Hero Class 2 builds to a massive showdown between the members of the Union and the Eunjang student body. The two groups meet on a muddy basketball court, and fight. If the Union wins, then Eunjang will join the Union. If the Union wins, then Baek-jin will disband the gang, leaving Eunjang in peace.

Before the fight, Si-eun uses his smarts and study skills to come up with a plan. First, he recruits Geum Seong-ju (When Life Gives You Tangerines’ Lee Jun-young), Baek-jin’s right-hand man in the Union. Seong-ju likes being part of the Union, but he likes the “fun” of violence more. He jumps at the chance to cause greater havoc, agreeing to leak financial records.

Si-eun asks Choi Hyo-man to spread the information to the Union’s lower-level members, and the Eunjang bully agrees. He just wants to be a trusted part of someone’s plan. News of Baek-jin taking tens of thousands of dollars out of the burner account spreads discord among Baek-jin’s ranks, who are only in it for the money. On the day of the fight, the Union force’s numbers and determination are diminished.

Unfortunately, Seong-je knows no loyalty, and agrees to beat up Si-eun for Baek-jin on the morning of the fight. He lures Si-eun to Baek-jin’s bowling headquarters, claiming there is more evidence there that could help take down the Union for good. Si-eun manages to escape, with Jun-tae’s help, but he is late to the fight.

In the meantime, Baku has given it his all to face off against Baek-jin. “This is not why I taught you,” he tells his old friend, before going for his arms and shoulders again and again. The two are well-matched, but Baek-jin eventually comes out on top. Everyone thinks this is the end, and that the Union has won, until Si-eun shows up. He puts on his brass knuckles, and goes for Baek-jin’s legs. 

Si-eun knows he cannot win against Baek-jin, but he can last until Baku has the strength to get up again. “How wide is the margin of error, asshole?” Baek-jin asks Si-eun, once he understands that Baku’s focus on his arms and Si-eun’s focus on his legs was all part of Si-eun’s plan. “We’re in it,” Si-eun, teeth bloodied and almost tapped out, tells him. “We’re in my margin of error.” Baku gets back up, and takes out an exhausted Baek-jin once and for all. Eunjang has won, and the Union has lost.

Read more: The 10 Best K-Dramas of 2024

Staging the final fight

There was a great deal of behind-the-scenes planning that went into the climactic fight, which took roughly a month to film. “First of all, the safety of the actors was the top priority,” says Han. “Since it was an action scene with dozens of people fighting while it was raining, emergency medical staff were always on standby, and we closely checked the actors’ condition between takes.”

Good condition meant not just physically, but emotionally, as the final fight includes some of the most emotionally intense scenes of the entire season. “The actors who had to maintain such overflowing emotions for a whole month must have been very tired both physically and mentally, so we paid close attention,” adds Han.

Ryeo-un says that, while filming was intense, it is the kind of action scene that boys grow up dreaming about being a part of. “All of the actors there were actual actors, not just extras,” he tells TIME. “So they were all very passionate about this scene. And while it was a little bit physically demanding, to be honest, Min-yeong, who didn’t have to take part in that scene, would actually come over to the set to encourage us and to root for us.”

Su-ho and Beom-seok’s Weak Hero Class 2 appearances

Weak Hero Class 1 ends with Su-ho in a coma. The uncertain fate of his best friend impacts Si-eun throughout the season. He often visits Su-ho in the hospital, and confides in his unconscious friend about what he is going through. “To Si-eun, these two are the very first friends he’s ever had, and he really desperately needed them when they came to him,” Park tells TIME of the importance of Beok-seok and Su-ho’s Season 2 appearances. He can’t just move on, not thinking about them.”

In Episode 7, Si-eun imagines a conversation with Beom-seok. Si-eun apologizes to his friend, still wracked with guilt that he couldn’t do more to save him from himself. “When Si-eun is lying unconscious, he looks for Su-ho, and when he’s dreaming, he dreams of Beom-seok who kind of scolds him, saying like, ‘Are you making new friends again?’” explains Park. “So I think these are moments that show how much they mean to Si-eun because these friends still live in his heart.”

In Episode 8, Si-eun gets a call while he is out with Baku, Gotak, and Jun-tae: Su-ho has finally woken up. Wrought with emotion, he goes to see his best friend, bringing along his new friends. “How’s it going,” Su-ho asks Si-eun, like no time has passed. He notices his new friends. Su-ho, who has only ever wanted Su-ho to not be alone, is happy for him. “That’s good to see.” The season ends with Si-eun’s smile.

Who kills Baek-jin? Mid-credits funeral explained

Following the fight, Baek-jin disappears. “Will Baek-jin now get the right answer to the question he had gotten wrong?” wonders Si-eun in voiceover narration. He obviously feels sympathy for the antagonist, despite the hurt he has caused. If Beom-seok is the tragic character of Weak Hero Class 1, then Baek-jin is the tragic character of Weak Hero Class 2.

In a mid-credits sequence, we see Han Jeong-mi (Hospital Playlist’s Jo Jung-suk) approach Seong-je with an offer to replace Baek-jin. Jeong-mi is the leader of Cheongang, the ruling adult gang of the district. When asked, Jeong-mi claims not to know where Baek-jin is but, when we cut to Baek-jin’s funeral, a wreath sent by Cheongang implies that Jeong-mi was responsible for the teen’s untimely death. Presumably, Baek-jin was killed for his failure in leading the Union, and therefore his failure within Cheongang.

Si-eun, Baku, Go-tak, and Jun-tae all attend Baek-jin’s funeral. Baku is particularly distraught at the death of his old friend. “While we kind of grew apart, I think there was a little bit of that friendship left inside of Baku,” Ryeo-un tells TIME. “When we were in that very last fight, when you see me in the action scene, I’m kind of smiling when I’m throwing punches and fighting with him. I think my character felt like he was poking fun with his old friend, like a play date, because they grew up playing together.”

Of filming the funeral scene, Ryeo-un says: “When Baek-jin actually died, my heart was broken, and I was actually quite emotional when I was on set filming that scene, because I am very good friends with him in person as well.” The heartbreaking scene not only teases that there may be more story left to tell, but also reinforces the preciousness of the friendship Baek-jin and Baku once shared. Even lost, first through Baek-jin’s actions and then his untimely death, the value of what it once meant to Baku remains. 

“While working with director You on Class 1 and 2, we talked a lot about how this is a story about friends,” Han tells TIME of the series’ ultimate theme. “The concept of friends is familiar to everyone, and we sometimes forget their importance, but in the series, Si-eun also has a line saying, ‘I realized it’s good to have friends.’’ And, like that line, I think it will be a series that you can relate to more when you think about your friends and the meaning of the friends around you.”

Weak Hero Class 3: Will the K-drama have a third season?

While there has been no official announcement about Weak Hero Class 3, another season seems likely, given the series’ success so far. The first season reached Netflix’s Global Top Ten following its release on Netflix, three years following its initial premiere.

However, a third season is no doubt dependent on how Weak Hero Class 2 does. “After the final mixing of Class 2, director You and I had a drink and talked about what it would be like if we were to do the next story, but that’s about it,” says Han. “I think there are definitely stories left that we can do in a fun way, but of course, it depends on how much viewers love Class 2. Of a potential third season, he adds: “If there’s a Class 3, we are ready to cover the period from Si-eun’s third year of high school to graduation.”