Defendant · Season 1 · Episode 18 · 21 March 2017
S1E18 Episode 18
THE MOMENT The full truth of what happened that night finally laid bare - the gap in memory that opened episode one filled in at last.
The finale closes out the legal and personal reckoning with a directness the series earned through its sustained tension. Audience engagement peaked here - the finale's 26.6 percent nationwide rating confirmed the show had locked in its viewers across 18 weeks and delivered enough payoff to justify the investment.
Full episode analysis below. Spoiler-light verdict above.
Updated
Defendant's finale achieves a 26.6 percent nationwide rating - the series' peak and a figure that confirmed the show had retained and grown its audience across all eighteen episodes. The resolution delivers the legal and personal reckoning with a directness that the sustained tension of the preceding seventeen episodes earned: the gap in memory that opened Episode 1, the prosecution's unexplained charges, the family's fate - all of these receive answers in the finale without the deflation that mystery payoffs frequently produce. Ji Sung's performance across the finale was identified by Korean reviewers as the series' performance peak: a man who has spent seventeen episodes operating without full knowledge of who he is now confronting the complete truth of what happened. The show confirmed its position as one of the most watched Korean legal thrillers in SBS history.