Hellbound (์ง์ฅ), written by Yeon Sang-ho and drawn by Choi Gyu-seok, is a Naver webtoon that opened with a prologue on August 25, 2019 and ended on September 20, 2020 after 57 episodes. Munhakdongne published it in two print volumes. The premise goes like this. One day a being people call an angel appears before someone and announces the date and time of their death; at that moment, executioners from hell appear and burn the person alive. The spectacle is called a demonstration. The story turns on the New Truth Society, a religious group that reads the demonstrations as divine judgment, its chairman Jeong Jin-su, and two people who doubt that reading, the attorney Min Hye-jin and the detective Jin Gyeong-hun. Yeon describes the work as cosmic horror, the genre about the fear humans feel in front of something vast they cannot understand.
Season one of the Netflix series arrived on November 19, 2021 as six episodes, directed by Yeon with Choi as co-writer. Yoo Ah-in played Jeong Jin-su, Kim Hyun-joo played Min Hye-jin, Park Jeong-min played the TV producer Bae Yeong-jae, Won Jin-ah played his wife Song So-hyeon, Yang Ik-june played Jin Gyeong-hun, and Kim Shin-rok played Park Jeong-ja, whose demonstration is broadcast live. It logged 43.48 million viewing hours in its first three days, ranked first in 12 countries, and made the top 10 in 59. Kim Shin-rok won Best Supporting Actress in television at the 58th Baeksang Arts Awards for the role.
Season two was confirmed at Netflixโs Tudum event on September 24, 2022, but the webtoon moved first. Hellbound 2: The Resurrected, the second season of the comic, began on Naver Webtoon on September 29, 2023 and ended on August 16, 2024 after 46 episodes. It follows what happens when Park Jeong-ja, who was dragged to hell, comes back to life and the New Truth Society and the militant Arrowhead group start moving again. Season two of the series was released on October 25, 2024, again as six episodes. Kim Sung-cheol took over the role of Jeong Jin-su from Yoo Ah-in, Kim Hyun-joo and Kim Shin-rok returned in their roles, and Moon Geun-young joined as Oh Ji-won, an agitator for Arrowhead.
What about season three? In an interview on October 29, 2024, Yeon said that even if a third season came, โthe questions will not be answered.โ His choice, he explained, is to let the world grow rather than resolve its mysteries, and he said he would like the setting to expand like Gundam or Star Wars, with many creators taking part. As of August 2026 there has been no announcement that season three is in production. The two authors did meet again in another direction, though. Yeon turned Revelations, a webtoon the pair made together, into a film released on Netflix on March 21, 2025, starring Ryu Jun-yeol, Shin Hyun-been, and Shin Min-jae, with Alfonso Cuarรณn as executive producer.
The reading order is simple. Read the 57 episodes of Hellbound, then move on to the 46 episodes of Hellbound 2: The Resurrected, and you can see where each season of the series came from. The English edition is on WEBTOON, and Dark Horse Comics published it in print in English in 2022. If the ending of the showโs second season left you frustrated, checking how the webtoonโs second season orders the same events is one way to work through it. (As of August 21, 2026)
