Netflix’s “If I Hadn’t Met the Sun” ending explained: Li Renyao and Jiang Xiaotong’s fate, Ko Chia-yen’s twist, and the real meaning behind Yunzhen’s ear cuff

From the team behind Someday or One Day comes the year’s biggest Taiwanese drama, If I Hadn’t Met the Sun. Since Part 1 premiered on Netflix in late November, its twisty, heartbreaking plot has sparked a wave of discussion. Ko Chia-yen’s appearance at the end left viewers with a major cliffhanger, with every clue fueling questions about what happened in between. Now, Part 2 has arrived with the finale, revealing every answer. The tangled love, hate, and revenge at its heart may have had viewers in tears until dawn, but did you truly understand each character’s bittersweet ending?

• Related reading: A guide to this Taiwanese take on Black Mirror: What does Netflix’s Black Box represent? The plots and themes of all four chapters, explained

(Spoilers ahead)

(Spoilers ahead)

(Spoilers ahead)

(Spoilers ahead)

If I Hadn’t Met the Sun ending explained:

#1. How are Chiang Hsiao-tung, Hsia Tian-ching, Chou Pin-yu, and Chi-chi connected?

Part 1 begins when Zeng Pin-yu visits Li Jen-yao in prison for an interview and unexpectedly has a “ghost encounter” with Chiang Hsiao-tung. That meeting sets off a layered trail of clues involving dreams, memories, and the truth. By Part 2, the pieces finally come together: Chiang Hsiao-tung, Hsia Tian-ching, Chou Pin-yu, and Chi-chi are all the same person.

Chiang Hsiao-tung is the original personality. After enduring a gang rape and having footage of the assault circulated online, she is unable to face reality and develops Chi-chi, a dark personality created to protect her. Like an imaginary friend, Chi-chi has one purpose: to help Hsiao-tung survive. She creates the other personalities, which is why no one else can see her; Zeng Pin-yu can only speak to her through pretend phone calls.

Hsia Tian-ching, played by Ko Chia-yen, is a personality Chi-chi creates based on an image she heard described on a radio program, with Hsiao-tung’s post-plastic-surgery appearance. Her psychogenic blindness symbolizes her refusal to confront the trauma. She chooses to forget everyone who knows what happened, including her parents and people from her past, in an attempt to sever every connection that could remind her of the harm she endured. It isn’t until Chen Che-li enters her home and triggers those suppressed memories that Chi-chi, her protector personality, reappears, drives Li Jen-yao away, and even harms herself in front of him.

As Tian-ching’s defenses begin to crumble, she remembers a story a colleague once told her about “Joy” – someone who loved steadfastly, undeterred by differences in social status. Joy becomes the person Tian-ching most longs to be. She therefore imagines herself as Chou Pin-yu, who shares Joy’s appearance. Whenever she needs courage or must confront the truth and take action, Pin-yu appears to lead her toward the answer.

If I Hadn’t Met the Sun ending explained:

#2. Why did Li Jen-yao kill the innocent child?

After setting out on his revenge, Li Jen-yao targets everyone who ever harmed Chiang Hsiao-tung. Yet he ultimately kills Wang Yu-hsiang’s wife and child, neither of whom was connected to the events of the past. Because the wife witnesses his crime and had abused the child, she becomes, in his mind, a “witness who must be eliminated.” What truly breaks him, though, is the child standing on the stairs and saying, “Don’t forget me.”

In that moment, Li Jen-yao sees himself in the child. They are both trapped in abusive homes and left helplessly alone – a reflection of the childhood he knows too well. He understands where that path leads, as well as the pain of having seen the sun only to be consumed by darkness. Years of accumulated guilt come crashing down: without him, perhaps his mother would not have suffered, and perhaps Chiang Hsiao-tung’s life would not have been destroyed. He turns his hatred of his own existence into a warped form of “release,” ending with his own hands the cycle he believes cannot be escaped.

When the police ask why he killed the child too, he offers only this almost empty response: “Maybe I was always a piece of trash.” In that moment, the person he truly wants to erase is himself – someone he believes should never have been born.

If I Hadn’t Met the Sun ending explained:

#3. Why did Hsu Ta-wei film Li Jen-yao, and why did he stop in the end?

From the start, Li Jen-yao repeatedly asks Chou Pin-yu, “Why are you filming me?” worried that Chiang Hsiao-tung may have remembered something. The answer is finally revealed in Episode 9. After Pin-yu falls asleep, Hsu Ta-wei opens up: his sister was sexually assaulted and ultimately died by suicide, while her attacker received a light sentence after shedding cheap tears in court and was free again within a few years. That anger, with nowhere to go, caused him to lose control in a malicious road-rage incident and led him to use his camera to make the world understand the hatred he could not contain. Yet the one person who truly understands his pain turns out to be Li Jen-yao, known as a “murderer.”

Later, when Chiang Hsiao-tung tries to give a confession in hopes of saving Li Jen-yao, Hsu Ta-wei decides to stop because he sees a repetition he can no longer bear. He refuses to let Hsiao-tung once again become someone to be watched, consumed, and forced to reopen her wounds. In the end, he only vents his anger at Ouyang Ti’s mother in the hospital, telling her, “You’re not as innocent as the public thinks,” before deleting all the saved footage. Some truths, once exposed, bring not justice but repeated harm.

If I Hadn’t Met the Sun ending explained:

#4. Why did Yun-chen work with Li Jen-yao, and what does removing her cartilage hoop signify?

Yun-chen helps Li Jen-yao seek revenge out of deep guilt and remorse. She once entrusted the person she treasured most, Hsiao-tung, to Li Jen-yao’s protection, then stepped back and watched the tragedy unfold, only learning the truth years later. More than she hates Li Jen-yao, she hates the version of herself who chose to leave rather than stay by Hsiao-tung’s side. That unspoken guilt and longing lead her to tacitly allow the revenge to happen. Had Li Jen-yao not acted, she might even have sought revenge for Hsiao-tung herself.

 

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Yun-chen and Li Jen-yao therefore form a silent pact: he will eliminate those responsible for what happened that year, while she will watch over Hsiao-tung. Using the alias “Shen Mu,” she remains in Taipei as Hsiao-tung’s cousin, caring for her as she lives with memory loss and believes herself to be Pin-yu. This is why Yun-chen loses control when Hsiao-tung grows close to Li Jen-yao again and falls for him, demanding, “Didn’t we agree to end all of this? Can’t you just go die quietly on your own?”

In the final episode, Hsiao-tung’s original personality truly returns, and Yun-chen quietly removes her cartilage hoop on the street and slips it into her pocket. The gesture marks a long-overdue farewell. She finally lets go of her fixation on Hsiao-tung and her desire for revenge, while also shedding the identity of “Shen Mu,” which was born out of her need to protect her. As she puts away the earring, once a symbol of longing and resolve, Yun-chen finally allows herself to move beyond a chapter of her life that had been at a standstill for so long.

If I Hadn’t Met the Sun ending explained:

#5. Is Chiang Hsiao-tung alive at the end? Is the ending hidden in the characters’ names?

At the story’s end, Chiang Hsiao-tung reunites with her parents and, under the name Chou Pin-yu, returns to her dream of ballet by staging The Dying Swan, fulfilling her promise to Li Jen-yao. She and Yun-chen then return to the shore to finish reading Jen-yao’s letter before taking off their shoes and walking into the sea. Does this mean Hsiao-tung chooses to take her own life after all she has endured? Probably not. In the post-credits scene, Li Jen-yao and Chiang Hsiao-tung finally spend Christmas together on a rooftop. The camera lingers on two of Chi-chi’s favorite lollipops on the table and two butterflies flying out of frame, leaving an open ending for viewers to interpret.

In a later interview, the production team revealed that the protagonists’ names had held clues all along: Hsiao-tung, Tian-ching, and Jen-yao are all connected to the sun, while the Chinese character yu in Pin-yu contains the character for “moon.” Taking one character from Jen-yao and one from Pin-yu creates the Chinese word for “mermaid.” This opens the finale to different interpretations: perhaps Hsiao-tung’s personality chooses to follow Li Jen-yao, leaving Chi-chi to remain in the world with Pin-yu. Or perhaps, with Chi-chi’s help, Li Jen-yao becomes one of Chiang Hsiao-tung’s personalities and lives alongside her forever. Which makes for the best ending? Perhaps the answer has always been left to each viewer.

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