Yaksha: Ruthless Operations Ending Explained

Yaksha: Ruthless Operations has become a sleeper hit on Netflix because of its intense action scenes and suspenseful drama. Like a lot of the other spy movies, there are some twists in this movie, and that means that you need to pay good attention to the events to understand how the movie ends because you might get lost. So, how does Yaksha: Ruthless Operations end? That’s something we are here to look at.

How Does Yaksha: Ruthless Operations End?

One of the things that makes Yaksha: Ruthless Operations a compelling spy movie, despite not standing out in any true area, is the fact that it involves a more grounded narrative that focuses on a black ops team of spies that are stationed in the Chinese city of Shenyang. This city is said to be the center of espionage in East Asia and has the highest concentration of spies anywhere in the world because of how remotely close it is to countries like China, Japan, South Korea, and North Korea.

Two Worlds Clash

The movie opens up with an action scene involving Ji Kang-in, who is one of the protagonists of the movie and is the man they call Yaksha due to the way he dispenses justice in a vengeful manner. We were able to see him in action in the opening minutes of the movie when he dispensed his brand of justice against a turncoat spy that he executed himself.

Meanwhile, the movie fast-forwards four years when we are taken to Seoul, South Korea. The movie introduces us to Han Ji-hoon, a prosecutor that does everything by the book and has a stringent sense of justice because he wants everything to be legal when it comes to how he dispenses his brand of justice. He was seen trying to bring down a high-profile politician but failed to do so due to a technicality involving some of his colleagues.

Due to the blunder, he was demoted to a boring and uneventful desk job with the NIS, which is the intelligence agency of South Korea. But when an opportunity for him to get back on the field as a true prosecutor opened up, he took it quickly and was sent to the Shenyang arm of the NIS to work as an investigator and to look at the way that the Shenyang NIS, led by the black ops team of Ji Kang-in, was doing things.

Ji-hoon and Kang-in quickly clashed with one another because of how they saw things differently. Ji-hoon, as a prosecutor, believed in the law and wasn’t in line with the brutal and underground methods of Kang-in. On the other hand, because of his experiences as a spy and how he had lost colleagues over the years in his line of work, Kang-in sees justice as something that should be dispensed in whatever way possible.

As the events unfolded, Ji-hoon was roped into a larger conspiracy that involved numerous espionage agencies in East Asia, as the different agents were looking to be the first to take hold of valuable information regarding the entire espionage scene in the region. This is where the conflict between Ji Kang-in and the Japanese agent named Ozawa was revealed, as they were portrayed to be rivals who are after the same information.

Unlikely Partnership

The Shenyang NIS team managed to get hold of a young woman named Mun Ju-yeon, who proved to be a valuable witness because of her knowledge of her father’s work as a double agent that held valuable information regarding the different spies in East Asia. But an internal conflict between Ji-hoon and the members of the black ops team allowed Ju-yeon to escape and fall into the hands of Ozawa and the Japanese.

As Ji-hoon and Kang-in steadily learned to trust one another more, they were able to recover Mun Ju-yeon from the Japanese. Specifically, the young woman was entrusted with Ji-hoon as he was able to gain her trust and learn more about the information that she had.

The truth was that Ju-yeon had been helping her late father with her work in gathering intel about the different spies in East Asia and how they were connected with the different government agencies, government officials, and companies in the region. This information was valuable to the NIS because there were Korean officials who were connected to the spies. On the other hand, the Japanese wanted to recover this information and delete it because it involved sensitive information that could undermine their government.

Kang-in discovered that one of his men had been working with the Japanese the entire time because he was blackmailed into doing so. It was also revealed that the director of the NIS, the very same person that sent Ji-hoon to Shenyang, was also working with the Japanese as well. He confronted the director and made it look like he had killed her.

Meanwhile, Ozawa, however, managed to run into both Ji-hoon and Ju-yeon as they were hiding. He bribed Ji-hoon into killing Kang-in, much like how he was known to bribe different spies to turn over to his side by using their families against them.

The Big Reveal

In what seemed like a betrayal, Ji-hoon met up with Kang-in and shot him multiple times to convince the Japanese that he had killed him. Meanwhile, the Japanese took him and Mun Ju-yeon so that they could extract the information regarding the spies.

But the truth was that Han Ji-hoon had been collaborating with Ji Kang-in, who had to wear a bulletproof vest to trick Ozawa into thinking that he had been killed. He and his men were able to infiltrate the Japanese’s base while they had their guard down.

This led to a showdown that involved Ji-hoon, Kang-in, Ozawa, and Ju-yeon. The Japanese wanted to delete the file that Ju-yeon opened on a remote server so that he could keep the information about the Japanese’s involvement with the espionage game in East Asia a secret. On the other hand, Kang-in wanted to retrieve the file and kill Ozawa in the process.

Ji-hoon escaped with Ju-yeon while Kang-in and Ozawa were locked into a personal battle. Believing that Kang-in wasn’t going to escape the battle alive, Ji-hoon returned to the scene after securing Ju-yeon. While Ozawa was able to gain the upper hand against the Koreans and proceeded to delete the file, what he didn’t know was that Ji-yeon had programmed the file to send itself out to the different intelligence agencies around the world in case someone wanted to delete it.

As Ozawa felt hopeless in the situation, Ji-hoon and Kang-in worked together to defeat the Japanese agent. In the end, they escaped the burning building in different ways as Kang-in told the prosecutor to find a way to stay alive so that he could bring people to justice using the information that had been leaked out.

When the dust cleared out, it was revealed that Kang-in had actually spared the NIS director in a move that was unlike him because he was portrayed to be someone who would pull the trigger against traitors in an instant. Meanwhile, Ji-hoon regained his position as a Seoul prosecutor and was able to bring to justice the high-ranking official that he wanted to bring down at the beginning of the movie. It was revealed that this very same official was also involved in the entire espionage game.

Near the end of the movie, Ji-hoon receives a call from Kang-in, who reveals himself to be alive. He told the prosecutor that he needed him back on the field because he was now working on something big again and that he needed Ji-hoon’s help. As the movie ended, it appeared that Ji-hoon was now in London.

How Does The Ending Of Yaksha: Ruthless Operations Set Up A Sequel?

The ending of Yaksha: Ruthless Operations allowed us to see Han Ji-hoon returning to his beloved job as a prosecutor in Seoul. Meanwhile, Ji Kang-in was once again on the field working on a new mission that needed him to be in London, England.

So, while the ending of the movie does allow us to see Ji-hoon reprising his role as a prosecutor so that he could dispense justice in a manner that’s legal and stays true to the letter of the law, we did see him becoming more of a changed man that learned a thing or two from Kang-in. Of course, Kang-in also learned a thing or two from Ji-hoon, as seen in how he spared the NIS director instead of killing her on the spot.

A seemingly changed Ji-hoon did not look like he had any second thoughts about joining Kang-in when the latter told him that he needed the prosecutor’s help. This could set up a possible sequel involving the duo as they now have to work together in London.

Those who aren’t strangers to spy movies would know that London is probably the most prominent city when it comes to the espionage game in film because of how prominent MI6 and James Bond are in the entire spy genre. In that regard, London has basically become the spy capital as far as movies are concerned.

In that regard, the ending of Yaksha: Ruthless Operations could hint at a possible conflict that involves not only the NIS but also the MI6 in London. It could be possible that the movie is teasing us with a possible Asia vs. Europe spy game, especially if a sequel is in the works. But as far as Netflix and the filmmakers are concerned, no sequel has been announced.