Hotel Del Luna: do they end up together? The writers' answer has a loophole

Hotel Del Luna aired 16 episodes on tvN from July 13 to September 1, 2019, with IU as Jang Man-wol, the owner of a hotel for the dead, and Yeo Jin-goo as Gu Chan-sung, the human manager she hires. The finale was its highest-rated episode, at 12.0% nationwide, per Nielsen figures on Wikipedia.

It was also the episode viewers argued about most. Some called the ending sad, others called it open, and within days the writers, sisters Hong Jung-eun and Hong Mi-ran, gave an interview to set the record straight.

Spoilers for the finale from here on.

How the finale ends

Man-wol is bound to the hotel by guilt and grudges, and the hotel only exists for souls who haven't let go. The finale lets her go:

• The wine: She's offered moon flower wine that would let her stay. Chan-sung asks her not to drink it, and she agrees to leave, per Looper.
• The past: The finale reveals that the two of them had crossed paths once before, in a past life.
• The goodbye: She walks into the tunnel to the afterlife alone. They promise to meet again in their next lives, and the hotel's lights go off for the last time.
• After: Chan-sung gave Yoo-na the medicine meant to stop him from seeing ghosts, so he keeps the world Man-wol showed him.

Then the epilogue opens the door again. The deity Ma Go hands the hotel to a new owner, played in a cameo by Kim Soo-hyun, and it reopens as Hotel Blue Moon.

The final scene

The last scene puts Chan-sung on a park bench, and Man-wol appears with him. The show never says whether it's a memory, a dream or a meeting in some later life. The Review Geek's recapper asked whether he was dead, in another life or dreaming, and the episode doesn't answer.

The writers' answer

The Hong sisters answered for it themselves in September 2019, per Soompi. They rejected both the sad reading and the open one.

"We think our story has a happy ending."

— Hong Mi-ran, writer

Hong Jung-eun explained why they couldn't simply stay together. Man-wol is dead, and "it was impossible for them to be together in that lifetime." She described the final scene as Chan-sung hoping every ghost is reborn so they can meet and love one another again, and said he "may not know how much later it is, or what lifetime they are in."

The loophole is three words long: "in that lifetime." The Hong sisters ruled out a reunion in this life and left every other one open.

Will there be a season 2?

The writers didn't promise one. "It's not that we have concrete plans for a second season," they said, though they added it would be fun to switch to a male owner. That's exactly who the epilogue installs at Hotel Blue Moon.

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The story has traveled without them. Studio Dragon and Skydance announced an American remake in June 2020, and a stage musical premiered in South Korea in 2022. Man-wol and Chan-sung don't end up together in Hotel Del Luna. By their writers' own wording, they just don't end up together in this life.

Previously we wrote: What happened to Beom-seok in Weak Hero Class? Even Si-eun's revenge skipped him