An Bo-hyun Left Engulfed in Flames as Chaebol X Detective 2 Breaks Its Own Record

Episode 13 of Chaebol X Detective 2 posted a series-best peak rating of 11.3% on September 18, the closest the SBS Friday-Saturday drama has come to cracking the 10% average threshold that has sat just out of reach across its entire run. The surge follows a pattern familiar to procedural dramas on Korean broadcast television: ratings that plateau through the middle stretch tend to spike sharply in the penultimate episode, when narrative stakes are highest and audiences tune in to see whether the villain gets caught.

According to Nielsen Korea, the nationwide household average for episode 13 came in at 9.4%, with the Seoul metropolitan area registering 9.7%. Both figures are the show's best to date. The jump from episode 12's 7.2% average represents a 2.2 percentage point gain in a single week, and it cleared the previous series high of 7.9% set in episode 8 by a wide margin. Among viewers aged 20 to 49, the episode reached 3.4%, ranking first across all programs in that time slot on Friday.

What happened in episode 13

The episode centered on detective Jin I-su (An Bo-hyun) gathering decisive evidence against serial killer Yoo Seong-won (Yoo Seung-ho), culminating in the Violent Crimes Unit 1 arresting Yoo at the airport as he attempted to flee the country. Jin's solo investigation led him to a concealed space beneath Yoo's studio, where photographs of victims and personal effects from crime scenes had been displayed. He alerted his team to the location, but before they could reach him, Jung Tae-seon's (Kim Hye-eun) secretary Han Jong-hyun (Moon Jin-seung) attacked him and left him unconscious.

Jung Tae-seon, the drama's principal antagonist, then ordered Han to burn the studio down with Jin inside. The episode ended on Jin surrounded by rising flames, an image that functions as the series' most direct threat to its protagonist yet. Yoo Seong-won, even as he was being taken into custody, taunted investigators with a remark implying he knew exactly where Jin had gone.

Earlier in the episode, a subordinate of Yoo's, butler Hwang Jong-su (Kim Jae-rok), was exposed as an accomplice but died by suicide under pressure from Jung Tae-seon before he could give testimony. Jung Tae-seon then used the circumstances of his death to frame Violent Crimes Unit 1 for excessive force, pushing Jin to resign from the force rather than let his colleagues face disciplinary action.

The road to tonight's finale

The show, written by Kim Ba-da and directed by Kim Eun-hye, launched in August and spent most of its run in the 6% to 7% range. The sharper uptick in the final two episodes has a practical explanation: MBC's Married Woman Killer ended its run last week, and a portion of that drama's audience appears to have shifted to Chaebol X Detective 2, a common competitive dynamic when two shows in adjacent time slots finish within weeks of each other.

The finale airs tonight at 9:50 p.m. KST. Whether Jin survives the fire, whether Jung Tae-seon faces any consequence for ordering his murder, and whether the show can close above a 10% average are the questions the broadcast will answer. The gap between tonight's average and that threshold is 0.6 percentage points. Chaebol X Detective 2 is available on Disney+ as its OTT platform outside of broadcast.