Netflix Mask Girl recap guide: All seven episodes explained (spoilers!)

Mask Girl episode 6 recap: Kim Mo-mi

Mask Girl’s penultimate episode begins in 2012, the year Mo-mi was sentenced to prison. We see Mo-mi being escorted on a bus with other prisoners.

Her first months in prison are defined by violence. It doesn’t take long for Mo-mi to get on the bad side of the jail’s queen bee, a woman named An Eun-suk. She’s so formidable she even has the warden under her thumb and one thing she hates is adulterers, to the point that she orchestrates it so that every adulterer in jail is starved for three days.

Eun-suk paid someone to kill and dismember her husband and his mistress. Eun-suk doesn’t like Mo-mi because she looks too similar to said mistress. Mo-mi further antagonizes Eun-suk by feeding one of the women under Eun-suk’s starvation rule. Eun-suk sends some of her thugs after Mo-mi. Mo-mi gets violent first, headbutting the ringleader.

The guards throw Mo-mi in solitary as punishment, but every time she gets released she immediately attacks Eun-suk’s thuggish minions. This happens over and over again until Eun-suk is forced to call a truce.

Then we skip forward to 2023, actress Ko Hyun-Jung is now playing an older Kim Mo-mi, still imprisoned. Over the years, Mo-mi has practiced good behavior in prison. A new warden takes over in 2023. This warden is devout and preaches forgiveness and love to the inmates. Eun-suk wastes no time cozying up to her.

Meanwhile, Mo-mi receives a letter from Kyung-ja threatening her daughter Mi-mo. With help from her cellmate, Mo-mi plans to escape the prison, but her attempt fails. The warden punishes her by sending her to solitary for over a month. During that time, Mo-mi becomes a child of the lord thanks to a Bible gifted to her by the warden. She spends her days in solitary praying and when she finally gets out, Mo-mi claims to be a changed person.

One day, she notices Eun-suk sobbing. She isn’t a match for her daughter and cannot give her a kidney to save her life. Mo-mi offers to donate hers after confirming she and Eun-suk’s daughter are the same blood type. Eun-suk is incredibly grateful to Mo-mi.

Then at a Bible study group featuring volunteers from outside prison, Kyung-ja shows up, revealing herself to Mo-mi for the first time in over ten years. She clearly survived that night, shooting out the window of her car and swimming to the surface.

We find out that Kyung-ja has been scheming the entire time. She also got plastic surgery on her face so she could continue hunting Mask Girl without police interference.

Kyung-ja was very upset when she learned Mo-mi turned herself in, thinking she’d never get her revenge on Mo-mi if she was safely tucked behind bars. But she can’t let go of her thirst for vengeance and instead begins targeting Mo-mi’s daughter.

We learn that Kyung-ja has been manipulating Mi-mo since she was a child. Kyung-ja was Mi-mo’s “tteokbokki granny,” tending the tteokbokki stand outside Mi-mo’s school. Unbeknownst to anyone, it was Kyung-ja who spread the rumor about Mi-mo being Mask Girl’s daughter and then she encouraged Mi-mo to solve her problems with violence. Kyung-ja became a safe place for Mi-mo over the years. When she moved, Mi-mo gave her “granny” (though she really is her granny, but it’s unclear if Kyung-ja ia aware of that) her new address.

Ye-chun never told the bully about Mi-mo, it was Kyung-ja who did it after Ye-chun left. That’s why she looked so smug when Mi-mo attacked Ye-chun. With nowhere else to turn, Mi-mo went to Kyung-ja and is apparently now staying with her.

At the jail’s bible study, Kyung-ja tells Mo-mi that she plans to make her daughter disappear so she’ll finally understand the pain she’s felt all these years from losing Oh-nam.