Mad Unicorn Ending Explained: Who Wins the Mally Partnership? Who is the Mole?

Netflix’s ‘Mad Unicorn‘ ends with a desperate dash for survival as Santi, Xiaoyu, and Ruijie push themselves to the extremes to ensure the survival of Thunder Express. After Mally announces its decision to partner with an express delivery service, Santi and the crew realize it is an opportunity to dig themselves out of a hole while also outgunning their fierce rivals, Easy Express, once and for all. However, with numerous obstacles in their path, the main characters find themselves struggling to achieve their goal in a straightforward manner. As such, they must navigate the complexities of a cutthroat business laced with betrayals, jealousy, ambition, and romance without succumbing to any of these forces before the competition outruns them to the finish line. SPOILERS AHEAD.

Mad Unicorn Recap

At the start of the show, Santi Saelee is a daily wage earner at a failing sand mine in the remote outskirts of Thailand. After attending a lecture by a famed businessman named Kanin, the leader of the Kanin Group, Santi realizes that there is a way to save the sand mine he is working at before the vultures pick up the scraps. He shares his idea with the proprietor, who gives him some leeway to implement the concept. When the plan is executed successfully, Santi is promoted to the general manager role at the mine. However, his ambition is much greater because of a humiliating encounter he had with his dad ages ago. Therefore, after saving up some cash, he moves to Bangkok, Thailand, and starts working odd jobs to build up more wealth.

While working in Bangkok, Santi gets acquainted with a client who promises to introduce him to more wealthy Chinese investors who might be interested in buying a condo from him. He also runs into a woman who lends him her lipstick with the promise that he will pay her later. However, he fails to show up to the encounter because of other commitments. Subsequently, he travels to Shanghai for a meeting with the investors, where he runs into Mr. Kanin again, letting him know that he attended his lecture a while back. Although Santi fails to achieve his main objective of selling the condo, he achieves something much greater during the China trip. During a visit to a fast delivery service, a business plan arises in the protagonist’s mind that he believes could easily turn into a billion baht enterprise.

On the flight back to Thailand, Santi is bumped up to business class by none other than Mr. Kanin himself. He hears Santi’s plans to establish a billion baht express delivery service in Thailand using the Chinese market and investors as his way in. Impressed by his idea, Kanin tells Santi that he is willing to bankroll his concept as his business partner. Many months later, Santi and Kanin prepare to launch a new delivery service, Easy Express, to the public by joining forces with a wealthy Chinese investor. However, the other company’s CFO has qualms about Easy Express, the same woman who lent Santi the lipstick, Xiaoyu. Once the red flags are vetted after considerable persuasive efforts from the protagonist, the deal gets underway. However, Santi is betrayed at the last second by Kanin, who promotes his son, Ken, as the CEO over the protagonist.

Mad Unicorn Ending: Who Becomes Mally’s Partner?

After being double-crossed by Kanin, Santi resolves to bring down the business tycoon by building his own express delivery service that will rival Easy Express. However, first, he needs to hire someone who is gifted in IT matters. Fortunately, Xiaoyu helps him find a name swiftly – Liu Ruijie, a coding prodigy who is also on the radar of Easy Express. Despite facing some trouble, Ruijie joins him as a valuable stakeholder in the company. Xiaoyu is the next person to join, buying significant shares in the company in the hopes that she might make enough money to pay off her father’s debts. As a result, the three begin a new delivery service company, Thunder Express. The company gets off to a flying start and often makes Easy Express sweat. Still, matters get complicated when Santi’s obsession with revenge rears its head.

Despite being warned about lowering their price below a certain line, Santi decides that dropping it is the only way to make the final push to beat Easy Express. However, as expected, it has dire consequences for the company and sets it on a tailspin towards death. The company’s sales are affected, which in turn adversely impacts their employee benefits. As such, most of the hires start leaving the company and joining their competitors. Meanwhile, Santi realizes that he has made a terrible mistake because of his inability to see beyond his vengeance. Fortunately, a reprieve appears when he and Xiaoyu attend an event held by Mally, a major company seeking to partner with another delivery service provider for at least a year. While it could solve Thunder’s issues, they have to win a competition against their competitors to be selected by Mally.

Determined to make a final stand, Santi and his team prepare the perfect game plan for the day of the competition when all the delivery services will be participating. However, they face a significant problem – the existence of a mole. Santi becomes aware that someone from within the Thunder Express management team is leaking info to Easy Express, making it viable for the latter to sabotage the group. Yet, despite the many hurdles created by Easy Express, which include halting a conveyor belt, buying up all the spare delivery buses, stopping any on-route vehicles, and trying to stop a delivery flight, the team perseveres and comes out on top of its challenges. Later, Mally announces that Thunder Express is the winner of the event, meaning they get all the benefits of partnering with a prestigious organization for a year, effectively saving their business.

Who is the Mole?

While the final victory feels sweet because of the hurdles the group circumnavigated at the last moment, it still comes down to the wire due to the mole sabotaging operations. Santi initially believes that the mole has to be one person involved in the higher echelons of his logistical team. To that end, he organizes a secret meeting at a karaoke club where he vets them all personally. Upon noticing that no one cracks under the pressure of questioning, he assumes that his team is all clean and that the mole must be someone else. However, later in the narrative, we learn that the mole is none other than Linux, one of the prominent members of the tech team, second only to Lui Ruijie. Although it comes as a surprise, a bigger shock arrives further down the line when it is revealed that another mole exists in the team – Niphon.

Linux’s reasons for double-timing as a secret agent for Easy Express mostly come down to her personal circumstances. Earlier in the narrative, we are told that she has a sick mother who constantly needs medical attention to stay alive. Thus, Linux is desperate to save her mother no matter what. Ken, the CEO of Easy Express, uses this to his advantage and offers Linux the chance to provide the best healthcare to her mom in exchange for working for him as a saboteur within Thunder Express. When the Mally event takes place, Ken puts even more pressure on Linux to carry out his bidding as his side is rapidly losing the race. As a result, Linux goes into the secure staff section and puts a stop to the warehouse conveyor belt, which has huge repercussions for the team’s performance. Subsequently, Santi and his team learn the truth about Linux’s betrayal and have to let her go.

Despite getting rid of Linux, the worries mount for Santi as his rival continues to receive fresh information from another spy within the main group. To that end, it puts another set of shackles on them as their every move is countered by Easy Express. However, Santi eventually learns who the actual mole leaking information is – Niphon. Initially, the protagonist believed that Niphon was one of the few people who was clean and had nothing to do with Easy Express. Yet, it is later revealed that Niphon lied and was always in bed with Ken, regularly providing him updates on Thunder Express’s every move. It made life difficult for the protagonist, even though he managed to rise above it in the end. It also showcases how originality and persistence trumps shortcuts and cheating when push comes to shove.

What Happens to Easy Express? Does Ken Resign?

Following Thunder Express’s victory in the Mally event, things take a turn for the worse for Easy Express, their rivals. Despite being led by a much bigger multi-conglomerate group with a lot of muscle, the delivery express’ fate is one of abject defeat because months later, the Kanin Group is forced to abdicate their project and sell it to FINIX. The person who is hit hardest by the failure is Ken, the CEO of Easy Express and Mr. Kanin’s son. Despite being counseled by the investors that selling is beneficial for all parties involved, he is dejected by the notion, especially after trying so hard to come out on top, only to fall so far down the pecking order. He tells his father that he does not want to sell. However, such an option is far out of his reach and means, which he realizes deep down in his heart.

Easy Express’ collapse may be a business failure on one end, but it has far deeper implications for those involved. For Ken, it offers him the chance to finally come clean to his father about the pressure he is constantly under to impress him. He feels defeated in an emotional sense because no matter what he does, he will always be known as Mr. Kanin’s son. As mentioned in the show previously, his father is known as a great person because he came up through humble means, similar to Santi’s journey. However, for Ken, this is not possible as he was born into wealth, and as such, he is judged as someone who was handed a silver spoon from birth. Ultimately, it made him unable to compete with someone like Santi, who was willing to go the extra length to achieve success because failure was never an option.

How Does Thunder Express Become a Unicorn?

Despite being in dire straits for a while, the Mally partnership proves to be transformative for Thunder Express. Santi’s company grows into a billion baht company, just as he predicted in the opening parts of the show. As a result, Thunder Express becomes a unicorn company, which puts it on an upward trajectory of even greater growth. For those unfamiliar with the term, unicorn companies mean startups valued at over $1 billion. It goes to show Thunder’s immense rise in the wake of seeing off existential threats and fierce rivals such as Easy Express. With much of the market laid open, the final parts of the show reveal that Thunder expands even beyond Thailand and into the far reaches of other neighboring countries that require fast delivery services at short notice.

In some ways, Thunder’s success is often predicted by numerous people, especially Xiaoyu, who constantly backs Santi to turn the organization into a major player despite the many hardships they confront. Her belief stems from the fact that Santi is a relentless person who is unwilling to stop at anything to see his dreams come true. Therefore, it is a foregone conclusion in her mind that he will find a way to make Thunder into a billion baht company that leaves everyone in its shadows. Fortunately, this prediction comes true in a fascinating way near the end. We witness Santi celebrate his success by showing the company to his mother, who is incredibly proud of him. He is also incredibly gracious towards Mr. Kanin despite their longstanding rivalry, showing that he learned a lot from the man despite battling against him for a while.

Does Santi Pay Xiaoyu Her Money?

One of the other storylines explored in ‘Mad Unicorn’ is the special bond between Santi and Xiaoyu. Despite having some romantic tension between them, the duo end up not falling in love for a variety of reasons, such as Xiaoyu’s commitment to her fiance, Liam. Although Santi tries to ask her out in his own way numerous times, he only faces failure, making it clear that he cannot win every battle in his life. Regardless, he owes Xiaoyu another debt in the form of a monetary reward. When things looked dire for Thunder Express following the price reduction, she was willing to sacrifice herself to provide the company with a financial boost that could see it over the line when needed. However, in the process, she dissolved her shares in the organization.

Xiaoyu’s sacrifice takes on an even greater meaning when we realize that she also has personal financial commitments she needs to clear, such as her father’s crippling debts. In fact, it is the main reason she decides to leave her normal job and become a stakeholder in a risky startup venture led by Santi. She believes that he is capable of driving the company towards success and making dreams come true if he has his mind set on the right goal and path. However, his desire for revenge often clouds his judgment, requiring her to step in and remind him of his true purpose. Ultimately, she pays the price of having to cut herself out of the equation so that the company can survive and Santi can do what he needs to do. It showcases her trust in him, even though she can never love him in a romantic fashion.

After Thunder’s rapid success following the Mally partnership, Santi visits Xiaoyu’s place to offer her the enormous sum of money she deserves for her incredible sacrifice. Even after months of separation, Santi remembers to hand her the just reward for her deeds, finally allowing her to clear off her father’s debts as originally planned. It closes off her story sweetly and succinctly, even though not everything happened exactly the way it should. For instance, Santi sees Xiaoyu’s daughter through the house’s window, a reminder that her life belongs to Liam and not to him. As such, he heads off for a meeting with his investors, leaving Xiaoyu to deal with her family and her life, something he is no longer a part of. Thus, it serves as a bittersweet ending to their story.