Posted by The Thai series Delete, which landed on Netflix in June 2023, has pleasantly surprised viewers. The plot faces the concept of “deleting” a person with a special phone: you take a photo of that person, and suddenly they disappear, leaving no trace. That leads to a complicated sequence of events and an ending that puzzled everyone: what happens to Lilly, Aim, Orn, and Too? And who are those women we see in the last scene? Let’s have everything carefully explained.
You can watch the official trailer for Netflix’s Delete (2023) here on Youtube.
Netflix’s Delete, plot & ending explained: who are those women?
The plot of Netflix’s Delete kicks off in the strangest way: a young woman (Claire – but we’ll discover her name later) enters a supermarket, hands over a mysterious phone to another woman (Lilly), and asks her to take a photo. When Lilly shoots the picture, Claire disappears. She’s been “deleted.” The phone stays in Lilly’s hands, and she starts thinking about the possible uses of such a powerful device. From that moment, we discover the affair between Lilly and the writer Aim, we meet a police officer, Yutthachai, with a complicated plan, we see many people disappear. Until we arrive at the ending of Delete and that weird last scene that definitely needs to be explained.
Now, instead of describing the plot of Delete episode after episode, what we will do is follow the events in a chronological order, so every action is explained until the ending, as a consequence of what happened before.
Everything starts weeks before. Claire is Captain Yutthachai’s young daughter, and her mother is a nurse at the hospital. Many patients disappear in that hospital: they are all patients who became friends of Claire. Since their lives are miserable, they beg Claire to make them disappear. They all know that Claire has this mysterious phone that “deletes” people. Claire does so, and many patients are deleted. Claire’s mother even sees one of the disappearances in real-time, and together with her husband, they decide to keep the secret and protect Claire. But Claire feels guilty and no longer wants to live at her house with her parents, so she decides to disappear. That’s why she asks Lilly (a stranger) to take a picture of her with that phone: it’s her way of taking her own life.
However, as soon as Claire is deleted, all the hospital patients reappear. From here, Claire’s parents understand that when someone “deletes” a person who used the phone to delete other people, those other people come back. From there, Captain Yutthachai makes up his plan: he discovers from the supermarket’s cameras that the woman who deleted Claire is Lilly, Mr. Too’s wife, so he decides to act privately. He decides to kidnap Lilly and delete her, so Claire will return. That’s the part that changes the plot of Delete and needed to be explained.
Meanwhile, Lilly keeps the phone for some days. She talks about it to Aim, her lover. They decide to use the phone to make their respective partners disappear, so they can live happily together. Aim deletes Orn and gives the phone back to Lilly. But for Lilly, it’s more complicated: she’s pregnant, and her husband Too reveals that he knows she has an affair, but he still wants to live with her and raise her child as a family. Lilly takes some days thinking about it. She spends some time with June, Too’s sister, who’s also in love with Lilly. In those days, June discovers Lilly’s phone and its power. Disappointed after Lilly rejects her, June keeps the phone for herself.
One night, Lilly leaves the farm in secret. She believes the phone is in her purse, but she cannot find it: June took it, but Lilly doesn’t know it yet. She desperately tries to call Aim, but he’s asleep. A police car stops her: it’s Captain Yutthachai, who hits and kidnaps her. He brings her to his home, where he tortures her, trying to understand where her phone is. Not having an answer, he breaks into Too’s farm, attacking him, but it’s useless: Too knows nothing about that phone. But at some point, something important happens: a student disappears from the school where June studies. Yutthachai realizes that June has the phone and blackmails her, demanding to give up the device.
June is scared, so she agrees. She previously gave the phone to her best friend Tong, but she asks him to come over to the appointment with the secret blackmailer. When they meet, Yutthachai manages to delete June and run away with the phone. Aim arrives (he realized too that June had the phone) and rescues Tong. Together, they see the return of the student June deleted, and they understand the rule that can make someone return after being deleted.
Captain Yutthachai returns home, but it’s too late: Lilly escaped; she is at the supermarket close to home. Lilly calls Too, but while Too drives toward the supermarket, an employee reaches the police, and Yutthachai is informed. Yutthachai arrives at the supermarket before Too; he chases Lilly and deletes her before Too’s eyes. Yutthachai finds Claire in the aisle where Lilly took the picture of her, and they run home together. But Too chases them: when Too reaches Yutthachai, he hits him and demands an explanation. Yutthachai explains that he had to delete Lilly to make Claire return. Too understands and deletes Yutthachai, so Lilly comes back. Aim is there with Too when this happens: it’s him who drives to the supermarket to rescue Lilly. Meanwhile, Too decides to delete also Yutthachai’s wife and Claire.
Lilly is rescued by Aim. She explains that she decided to stay with her husband Too and raise her child with him. Aim is devastated and alone. Lilly throws the phone in the river, hoping it won’t harm anyone anymore, but Too secretly takes the phone out of the river. Falling into depression, Aim shares a controversial post on social networks where he confesses he lied in his best-selling book and reveals that “he made up his mind.” Scared, Lilly runs to Aim’s home, but he’s not there: he’s at Too’s farm, where Too is going to take a picture of him with that phone, under Aim’s request. Aim no longer wants to live, and Too has no problems satisfying his wish. As soon as Too deletes Aim, Orn reappears behind Lilly’s eyes: Lilly now knows that Aim has been deleted. This leads us to the ending of Delete, which needs to be explained separately.
Lilly returns to the farm and discovers a terrible smell from the basement. She enters the secret basement and discovers a series of boxes with female corpses inside. Horrified, she tries to escape, but Too comes down at that moment and opens all the boxes, “deleting” the bodies with the phone. When he’s about to leave, he hears a noise behind him and discovers Lilly. The ending of Delete doesn’t show us what happens, but most likely, Too is forced to delete Lilly as well, after she found his terrible secret.
Who are those women? The plot & the ending of Delete hasn’t explained it to us. Still, from the exchange we hear between Too and his father, we understand that those women represented a threat to Too’s father, and Too decided to get rid of them. Maybe Too’s father abused them, and they were about to report him to the police? We don’t know that, but it’s a plausible theory. What we know, though, is that among those women, there was also Tong’s sister, who disappeared years before. She was among the women that Too needed to murder.
Who built that phone? Why does it work that way? And what happens to Too, Orn, and the others from now on? That’s something Delete has not explained. But who knows, maybe one day we will have a Season 2 with more events to follow.
