According to The Hollywood Reporter, Sony and Netflix are entering early talks about producing a sequel to KPop Demon Hunters. This is hardly surprising given the animated musical’s success, but knowing a follow-up is coming means we get to spend the next however many years speculating about what comes next. Spoilers ahead!
Is Jinu alive?
The question on just about everybody’s mind is whether or not Jinu, the leader of the Saja Boys demon boy band, is gone for good. At the end of the first movie, Jinu sacrifices himself to save Rumi from Gwi-ma, the demon king. He uses his final words to tell Rumi that she gave him his soul back, and that he relinquished it to power her soulsword and help her defeat Gwi-ma for good. So is Jinu truly dead, or does he live inside his almost-girlfriend’s weapon? If it’s the latter, I would not be surprised if a significant part of the next movie focuses on Rumi trying to find a way to set him free once more.
© Netflix
Who is Rumi’s father?
We know pretty much nothing about Rumi’s father beyond the fact that he was a full-fledged demon by the time he met her mother, a demon hunter a generation before Huntr/x. He hangs over the first movie as Rumi struggles with her human/demon identity, but Rumi never really asks about him or seems to even know anything about dear ol’ dad beyond his demon lineage. Some fans theorize Gwi-ma might be Rumi’s peepaw, but he seems completely ignorant of her nature throughout the movie, and he only ever appears as a gaseous, fire-breathing monster who probably wasn’t out in the human world making babies in that form. He can probably transform into a sexy hunk the same way the Saja Boys do, but the fact that Rumi is entirely an enigma to him despite bearing his marks does leave room for doubt. See? Unanswered questions!
What happened to Rumi’s mother?
We know Rumi’s mom Mi-yeong Ryu was a member of the musical demon hunter group the Sunlight Sisters, and that she was very close with Celine, Rumi’s caretaker and mentor. Early in KPop Demon Hunters’ development, a concept that wound up being scrapped was that Celine would have secretly killed Rumi’s mother, leading to a falling out between her and Huntr/x’s lead singer. Obviously the two don’t part on great terms in the final film, but this idea adds dimensions to the relationship worth exploring, even if, according to artist Simon Baek, it’s not official or canon. As such, we don’t really know what happened to Rumi’s mother, or how she ended up with her demon partner. A Netflix press release says she died in childbirth, but the movie doesn’t say or explore that. Given that Rumi’s heritage is the source of many of the movie’s unanswered questions, I fully expect KPop Demon Hunters’ sequel to focus on her learning more about both her parents, especially now that she is more accepting of her demonic side. Who wouldn’t want to know more about where you came from after you’ve sufficiently unlearned the self-hatred your surrogate mother gave you?
Let’s give the other girls some more spotlight
This isn’t so much an unanswered question as it is a request. I am a Rumi stan above all else, but I will admit that Zoey and Mira, the other members of Huntr/x, deserve some more spotlight in the sequel. Rumi will likely still remain the main character of the story, as she stands at the center of the demon hunting world as a human/demon hybrid, but hopefully the others can actually have more than a supporting role. Let’s flesh them out some more. Tell me about Mira’s estranged family. How does Zoey feel as a young Korean-American woman growing up in Burbank and moving to Seoul later in life? There’s a lot to dig into.
© Netflix
Did some members of the Saja Boys survive?
In the final musical number, Huntr/x makes one last stand to push Gwi-ma and the Saja Boys back into the demon world and seal the Honmoon barrier between both worlds. Our girls come out on top, but interestingly enough, we don’t actually see two of the Saja Boys die on-screen. Mira kills Abby, Zoey takes out Mystery, and Jinu dies defending Rumi, but Romance and Baby are never shown on the wrong end of Huntr/x weapons. Did they get away? Were their death scenes left on the cutting room floor? Could they return in a sequel? Maybe! But…
Just who were the Saja Boys, anyway?
With the exception of Jinu, we know nothing about the individual Saja Boys. One might think they were merely an extension of Jinu’s plan to steal Huntr/x’s fans and feed them to Gwi-ma, but there’s a theory, with some evidence to support it, that these four singing heartthrobs were, much like Jinu, people with musical ambitions that were turned into monsters by the demon king. When Huntr/x visits Healer Han’s clinic early in the movie, the doctor has several pictures with KPop groups, and some of them resemble the Saja Boys. Still, it’s just a theory. I’d like to know more about all four of these guys. They’re far too popular to stay so underdeveloped.