Warning! This article contains SPOILERS for Netflix's Beef!Beef season 1, episode 9’s gruesome death scene helps explain the Netflix show’s ending. Starring Always Be My Maybe actress Ali Wong (Amy Lau) and The Walking Dead alum Steven Yeun (Danny Cho), Beef follows two deeply unfulfilled individuals who get entangled in a road rage incident. And while most might let that sort of experience go, Amy and Danny instead spark a ridiculous feud which turns dangerous as the story progresses.
Initially, the Netflix dark comedy veiled its violent elements through its comical portrayal of Amy and Danny inducing petty inconveniences for one another, with the occasional empty verbal threats. However, Beef's Amy and Danny eventually cross the threshold from making each other miserable into actually jeopardizing each other’s lives, even going as far as dragging other people into the mix. Such was the unfortunate fate of Maria Bello’s Beef character Jordan Forster, who died in the most brutal way.
Jordan's Death Is Beef's Most Brutal Scene
Albeit not the only casualty to occur in Beef, Jordan’s death is, by far, the grisliest. During the hostage sequence in Beef season 1, episode 9 “The Great Fabricator,” Jordan and Ashley Park’s Naomi make a break for the panic room, leaving Amy behind whom, unbeknownst to them, led Beef's Isaac Cho and his thugs there. While Naomi managed to get inside the panic room, she frantically initiated lockdown before Jordan does which resulted in a ghastly scene of the steel door jamming itself into Jordan’s torso a few excruciating times before splitting her in half.
While Isaac and his friends were also killed in the same episode via the SWAT team that came to rescue the civilians, their deaths pale in comparison to Forster's. Adding flavor to the wealthy art collector’s suspiciously unintentional demise, Naomi (despite having plausible deniability courtesy of the situation) actually had motive to kill her wife, Jordan, due to obvious jealousy over her attentiveness towards Amy. Given that Naomi was previously married to Jordan’s neglectful brother, Jordan following the same path would definitely induce a momentary moral dilemma: either Naomi intentionally pushed the lockdown button a few moments early, or she just gravely miscalculated the entire incident.
How Jordan's Death Foreshadows Beef's Ending
As a masterful commentary on humanity and its worst impulses, Beef utilized Jordan’s death and Naomi’s involvement as a contrast to Amy and Danny’s ambiguous closing frame of being snuggled up in a hospital bed. Because although Amy and Danny have tormented each other with escalating slights until they effectively blew each other’s lives up, they were in agreement about their anger and desire for vengeance; eventually allowing the opposing sides to reconcile and even connect deeply. Meanwhile, Jordan and Naomi’s surface-level marriage caused a rift between them, as Jordan had merely viewed her wife as a trophy while Naomi only ever wanted to be wanted.
And with Naomi supposedly being the one able for Jordan’s death, the loss served as a glimpse into what Amy and Danny’s future would have been like if they had held onto their grudges. So instead of going at each other until one dies, Beef thrust the pair in the middle of nowhere to face their internal turmoils. Compelled to painfully reflect on the damage they created and everything they lost, Amy and Danny were forced to accept their personal faults which, in turn, culminated in Beef's surprise ending.