Nothing says Easter bank holiday like devouring the entirety of a Netflix show, chocolate egg in hand. For many, the series of choice was Lee Sung Jin’s road-rage thriller Beef, and the real Easter egg was the murder of crows that cropped up at symbolic moments throughout the 10-part series, giving stars Ali Wong and Steven Yeun a run for their money.
If you managed to pace yourself over the long weekend, be warned that this article contains spoilers for the season finale.
Released on Wednesday (6 April), the A24-produced show has received rave(n) reviews with a near-perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes. The series focuses on Amy Lau (Ali Wong), a plant-store mogul, and Danny Cho (Steven Yeun), a local handyman, and the chaos that ensues after a road-rage incident leaves them both resentful and seeking revenge.
From Wong’s gun masturbation scene to Yeun leading a Korean Church praise team with a soft-rock cover of “Amazing Grace”, there’s much to discuss, but the crows have somehow usurped all of this and stolen our hearts.
“Beef on Netflix is amazing, but I honestly have to say my favourite part was the crows declaring war on mankind. You have to watch the show to understand,” tweeted one fan. “The crow bit in Beef >>>” added another, while a third wrote: “I need a crows of Beef spin-off.”
Whether it’s the crow that Amy points a gun at, or the story that Isaac (Danny’s cousin, played by David Choe) tells about Danny nursing a crow back to life by feeding it crickets, the creatures seem to have an important role to play throughout the narrative. And in the 10th episode, “Figures of Light”, the crows actually have dialogue.
YouTuber BrainPilot picked up on the crows as a representation of transformation, saying that the animals foreshadow the growth and realisation that both lead characters undergo in their poison-berry-induced trance in the final episode.
Another viewer claimed that the crows represent the characters’ generational trauma: “When you mess with crows they remember it forever, like Amy and Danny’s trauma sticks with them forever.”
This astute viewer is not the only one to link the crows to Amy and Danny’s internal lives. Screenrant’s Cooper Hood noted that the crows signify the pair’s experiences as second-generation Asian Americans. His theory brings Danny’s phrase, “Western therapy doesn’t work on Eastern minds!”, to mind.
At one point in the show, Isaac’s friend tells a seemingly absent-minded story about how crows became conditioned to hate Dick Cheney’s face. As farcical as the tale seems, crows have actually been proven to recognise human faces, hold grudges, and pass these on for generations. The crows could, then, be connected to Danny and Amy’s efforts to impress their parents and overcome their mental health struggles.
These theories do not seem far off, as Yeun has said that Beef revolves around the darkness present in all of us. “This whole show is about every character’s shadow self and we all have that, ” he said. In other words, embrace the darkness and admit that we cannot have it all, all of the time, as Amy claims to have at her Las Vegas press conference.
One thing, at least, is for certain: the significance of the crows has provided an ideal excuse to go back and re-watch Beef, if you feel the feathery creatures might have flown right over your head.
