Queen Mantis episode 8 review — Family wounds, broken justice and a mother’s last fight

Queen Mantis closes its first season with an ending built on fire and reckoning. Episode 8 ties up the copycat killer case and pulls every hidden truth into the open.

At its core, Queen Mantis tells the story of Yi-shin and Su-yeol, a mother and son forced to face what pain and abandonment have done to them. The drama shows how a system that refuses to protect can create its own monsters, and how motherhood can survive even when reshaped by violence.

The finale of Queen Mantis delivers resolution to the murder case but keeps its focus on family, survival and the scars left by injustice.

So, Queen Mantis turns a procedural chase into an intimate confrontation about love and harm that never truly separate.

Ah-ra’s end and the hollow myth she tried to claim

The hunt for the copycat in Queen Mantis reaches its violent conclusion. The killer is Ah-ra, also known as Kang Yeon-jung, a friend of Jung-yeon. She is not a misunderstood vigilante. She studies Yi-shin’s methods and uses them to feed her own hunger for power. Her crimes are imitation dressed as greatness, a way to steal a legend and build fear around her own name.

Ah-ra captures Jung-yeon and tries to draw Yi-shin into a fantasy of partnership. The plan collapses when she meets the real Queen Mantis. Yi-shin refuses to embrace her. Panic takes over. Violence follows. Na-hee is shot in the shoulder, and Ah-ra dies under police fire before she can strike again. The series ends this storyline without glamour or sympathy, leaving only the ruin of a predator who failed to understand the life she tried to copy.

Queen Mantis and the past that shaped Yi-shin

Su-yeol follows clues to Yi-shin’s hidden base and uncovers the life she lived before she became the Queen Mantis. He finds therapy recordings and fragments of memory that reveal a childhood marked by abuse. Yi-shin was harmed by her father and left unprotected. Her mother died in a fire he set. The authorities ignored her suffering. From that silence she built the path that turned her into a feared vigilante.

This discovery breaks Su-yeol’s certainty. He has spent his life insisting that Yi-shin is nothing but a monster. Seeing what happened to her doesn’t absolve her crimes, but it forces him to face the failures that shaped them.

Queen Mantis shows how desperation and abandoned childhoods can turn survival into something dangerous. It also reframes Yi-shin’s motherhood: her violence grew out of an urge to keep her child safe when the world refused to do it.

Fire, survival and a son’s desperate choice

Yi-shin captures the father who destroyed her life and decides to end everything. She sedates Su-yeol so he cannot interfere, then sets the house on fire with her abuser inside. It's her attempt to close the cycle on her own terms. Su-yeol wakes, fights through the smoke and drags her out. He revives her while she resists, wanting the fire to finish what she started. His act is love but also denial, a refusal to let her choose death.

The scene is the emotional peak of the season, forcing Su-yeol to confront every boundary he built. Saving Yi-shin is both an embrace and a challenge. Queen Mantis leaves the moment raw, filled with fear, anger and the complicated bond between a mother and the son she tried to protect.

Two years later: a mother kept behind bars

Time moves forward in Queen Mantis, but peace never arrives. Two years after the fire, Yi-shin is alive but imprisoned and stripped of parental rights. She spends her time drawing scenes of the family she once hoped Su-yeol could build: a partner, children and little Eun-ae, the girl he took in after the case. The drawings show a love she still feels even when separated from her son’s life.

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News breaks that the section chief who once protected Yi-shin has been murdered. Su-yeol arrives at the prison with detective Na-hee, and together they face Yi-shin again. The authorities turn to the woman they caged when confronted with a killer they can’t stop on their own.

Rating with a touch of flair: 5 out of 5 burning hearts fighting to protect a child in a world that failed them.

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