Taxi Driver – Season 2 Episode 16 Recap, Review & Ending Explained

Episode 16

Episode 16 of Taxi Driver Season 2 starts where we left off as Ha-joon tries to kill Do-gi. He is stopped by the Chief of Police though and taken to the correction room.

The Bishop takes away Ha-joon’s ring and banishes him from the community after being disappointed that he failed to defeat Do-gi yet again. Meanwhile, Do-gi himself is put in solitary confinement as punishment where he has no way to contact the rest of the Rainbow Taxi members as his earpiece has run out of battery.

A flashback from six years ago takes us to the day when the Bishop was released from prison after two years. Back then, he told Ha-joon and the other members of his cult that his two years in prison had given him the idea of what he wanted his chapel to be like.

Back in the present, Sung-cheol managers to escape the welfare home by tricking the guards as he makes his way back to the Rainbow Taxi headquarters.

Go-eun, Kyung-goo and Jin-eon are relieved to see that Sung-cheol is okay and try to find a way to get in touch with Do-gi. Meanwhile, Ha-joon is sent to the punishment room for solitary confinement just like Do-gi. On his way to the cell, Ha-joon is infuriated to see Do-gi still alive and promises to kill him with his own hands once they are both released.

Go-eun manages to convince the inmate that smuggles items inside the prison to secretly give Do-gi a new earpiece in solitary confinement. Once Do-gi gets his hands on the new earpiece, he manages to make contact with the rest of the team. Do-gi tells them that his plan now is not to escape the prison as he’s sure the prison is at the centre of all illegal activities run by the Bishop.

Together Do-gi and Go-eun build a list of all the businesses that the Bishop runs under different names all around the world. Do-gi decides that a good way to cause trouble for the Bishop would be by putting a halt to his most important businesses by stopping their cash influx.

Kyung-goo and Jin-eon manage to put a stop to an upcoming auction by stealing the antique pieces, which is the first nail in the coffin for his operation.

Meanwhile, Go-eun disguises herself as a customer at one of the illegal foreign exchange offices run by the Bishop. There, she uses a degaussing device to delete all the data on their computers and puts a stop to their international transactions making it difficult for the businesses to run smoothly. When the Bishop is informed about the holdup in the processing of cash for his businesses, he asks to see Do-gi in person.

At the same time, Sung-cheol takes himself inside the prison cell to meet Ha-joon. During their interaction, Sung-cheol claims that he needed to put his life in danger to share some documents for Ha-joon to see. Sung-cheol is immediately taken captive by the Bishop’s men. At the same time, Do-gi is taken to have an interaction with the Bishop himself. Seeing how persistent Do-gi was, the Bishop predicts Do-gi’s death.

However, when Do-gi does not back out, the Bishop uses the story of Do-gi’s mother’s death to infuriate him and blows a whistle, causing Do-gi to suffer a panic attack due to his Post-Traumatic Stress. The guards inject Do-gi with a sedative and he is taken away to be killed. Kyung-goo and Go-eun who were at stakeout outside the prison notice how a number of VIPs affected by their businesses falling apart had made their way inside the prison.

In his prison cell, Ha-joon opens the documents Sung-cheol handed to him earlier on and learns that he’s a missing boy named Kim Dan-woo. After the Bishop had him kidnapped as a child, his parents kept looking for him for years on end. Ha-joon sees missing flyers of his parents desperately looking for their son who was abducted and is shocked when he sees the photograph of his father.

A flashback takes Ha-joon to the night of his initiation into the cult, where a 19-year-old Ha-joon had killed someone upon the Bishop’s orders. The Bishop lies to Ha-joon’s father and asks him to wait at the rooftop of a building if he wants to see his son. Ha-joon kills his own father without knowing who he was upon the Bishop’s orders.

Present-day Ha-joon is angered and confused about being exploited by the Bishop and wonders what to make of this information that Sung-cheol has presented to him. Outside the prison, Jin-eon and Go-eun notice Do-gi and Sung-cheol being taken away and follow the vehicle to save the two.

However, the revenge crew is taken to an abandoned factory where all five are placed in line to be executed.

To everyone’s surprise, the deluxe taxi storms inside the factory with a female driver inside. The woman uses a sniper to shoot and kill the guards that were scheduled to kill the five. Sung-cheol introduces the woman as Rainbow Taxi’s first driver who has now settled overseas. Before entering the prison to meet Ha-joon, Sung-cheol had sent an SOS to the woman which led her to save Do-gi’s life.

The Bishop visits Ha-joon in his prison cell and claims that instead of punishing him, he’s willing to give Ha-joon a chance to compensate for his failure in trying to defeat Do-gi.

The Chief of Police informs the Bishop that Do-gi and the group had managed to escape which further infuriates him. Ha-joon pledges to kill Do-gi with his own hands and makes a cryptic call to the taxi driver.

On the call, Ha-joon asks Do-gi if he’s willing to take Ha-joon on as their client. He claims that he wanted to take his own identity back which prompts Do-gi to go back to the prison building. On the roof, Ha-joon waits for a final showdown with Do-gi. Despite being beaten up pretty badly over the last few hours, Do-gi manages to tackle Ha-joon and bring him to his knees.

The Bishop, who is watching the face-off, hoping to see Do-gi being killed at Ha-joon’s hands is pissed when he sees Ha-joon kneeling before Do-gi. He decides to kill Do-gi himself and points a gun at Do-gi’s back.

Ha-joon spots the Bishop and drags him across the roof before eventually jumping off the ledge. Ha-joon is satisfied by killing the Bishop in the same way that the clergyman made him kill his own father.

Ha-joon dies at the bottom of the building, reminiscing on the memories he made with the members of Rainbow Taxi when he was posing as an employee there. He wonders if life would have been different for him if he was not abducted by the Bishop but instead been taken in by Sung-cheol.

Meanwhile, Jin-eon and Kyun-goo release a toxic gas inside the prison and the chapel where all the VIPs and the guards were located.

What happens at the end of Taxi Driver Season 2?

Go-eun closes up all the exits of the property to stop anyone from leaving after Do-gi manages to escape the prison facility. The group leaves the facility after closing Ha-joon’s case once and for all, with all the VIPs locked in solitary confinement.

One year passes by and things are running pretty smoothly for the Rainbow Taxi revenge crew. Go-eun and Do-gi share a comfortable drink on the rooftop of his apartment as the episode comes to a close.

A short epilogue takes us to a military base camp where Do-gi reports himself to a new soldier in the investigation case of the death of a female soldier who has accused her seniors of sexual assault.

The Episode Review

This episode was a real rollercoaster ride from start to finish. I was so certain that Ha-joon would turn on the Bishop and help Do-gi and the others but this is not what I expected. I wish he was still alive given his emotional backstory but with the way he brutally killed so many people throughout the show, I think his death was perhaps needed narratively.

The Bishop really should not have died so easily but I can see why killing him was the only way for Ha-joon to have ended his evildoings. I love the way the rest of the revenge crew handled this episode with Do-gi being incarcerated and helpless throughout most of the chapter.

The cameos in this episode were really amazing and I loved Kim So-yeon as the badass former driver.

The episode ended with the mention of a new case that Do-gi has taken on involving the sexual assault of a female officer. The case resembles the real-life story of Lee Ye-ram, the Air Force sergeant who was sexually assaulted by her seniors. It is high time that her family get closure but I like how the makers of this show are blatantly exposing the military politics that led to Ye-ram’s death by suicide in real life.

While giving us a clue that Taxi Driver Season 3 could be coming in December this year, the episode also hinted Moon Chae-won’s character could have a history with Do-gi (played by Lee Je-hoon) which has me very excited.