Little Women · Season 1 · Episode 12 · 9 October 2022
S1E12 Episode 12
THE MOMENT The confrontation that recontextualises whose story this actually was - a structural reversal the screenplay had planted across all twelve episodes.
The finale, the series' highest-rated broadcast episode at 11.1 percent nationwide, attempts to pay off a conspiracy that had grown more complex than the run time could fully accommodate. The resolution leaves some questions about whether it feels earned, but the ensemble's final performances and the class-politics throughline consistently land.
Full episode analysis below. Spoiler-light verdict above.
Updated
Little Women Season 1 Episode 12 aired October 9, 2022 on tvN as the series finale and its highest-rated broadcast episode at 11.1 percent nationwide - confirming that the audience which the premiere built had followed the full arc to its conclusion. The 100-percent Rotten Tomatoes score from 6 critics encompasses the finale in a consensus that Kim Hee-won's direction and Jeong Seo-kyung's writing maintained the series' quality across twelve episodes. The IMDb audience score of 7.7 and the individual episode tracking that shows a mid-series dip (episodes 7 to 9) before recovery reflect a show whose conspiracy mechanics grew more elaborate than the runtime could fully accommodate - an acknowledged structural limitation that the finale resolves with more focus on character than on plot closure. Kim Go-eun's Oh In-joo and Uhm Ji-won's antagonist reach their final confrontation with the class-politics argument the series had been making from the premiere intact. The APAN Drama of the Year 2023 award recognised the series as a whole; the finale is the episode where the ensemble's final performances, sustained across twelve episodes of escalating pressure, justify the recognition.