SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for the series finale of “Squid Game,” now streaming on Netflix.
“Squid Game,” Netflix’s most-watched series of all time, has come to a devastating end. Helmed by creator/writer/director Hwang Dong-hyuk, the thriller follows Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), who won the games in Season 1, and then came back to them in Season 2 with the hopes of infiltrating them from the inside out and dismantling them forever. Upon returning to the game island, Gi-hun naively assumed he had the upper hand. Yet, by the end of the second season, the former gambling addict realized that in these particular tournaments, the house always wins. The final season is still deeply disturbing and ultraviolent, but it’s much more of a continuation of the second season than a distinct entity. Still, Season 3 puts a bow on this chapter of the phenomenon while paving the way for a new, Westernized beginning.
The third season opener, “Keys and Knives,” picks up right where Season 2 ended, with the pink soldiers killing off the rebel players who aligned themselves with Gi-hun in an attempt to stop the games. However, these pink-clothed fixers aren’t the typical soldiers who have been carrying out the Front Man’s bidding. To further immerse themselves in the chaos, the VIPs are outfitted in soldiers’ garments, thrilled to be active participants in the games they’ve only watched from afar. While the majority of the rebel players are slaughtered on sight, Gi-hun is spared and placed back in the central common room. Amid the chaos, pink soldier No-eul (Park Gyu-young) begins her plot to extract Park Gyeong-seok (Lee Jin-wook), her former coworker, who only joined the games to pay for his young daughter’s cancer treatment, from the island.
Despondent about the failed rebellion and emotionally tormented by all that he’s experienced, Gi-hun is inconsolable. Yet, the games continue. There is a terrifying round of “Hide and Seek,” a horrific turn of “Jump Rope” — and finally a fight to the death in “Sky Squid Game.” Though Gi-hun has seemingly given up, Detective Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon), who previously snuck into the games as a guard, hoping to find his missing brother, Hwang In-ho (Lee Byung-hun), continues to search for the island where the contests are held. Unfortunately, false leads and nefarious characters initially prevent him from finding any real evidence.
“Squid Game” Season 3 isn’t as haunting and spectacular as the first two seasons, mainly because of the repetitive structure of the games and the lack of new characters. Still, there are certainly some compelling twists that make the last six episodes of this intense saga worthwhile. Though some Season 2 fan-favorites die in the most crushing ways, it’s the arrival of Kim Jun-he’s (Jo Yu-ri) newborn baby at the end of Episode 2, “The Starry Night,” that shifts the course of the final games and raises the stakes to a level that hasn’t been seen previously.
In deep mental turmoil because of the games, his inability to beat the Front Man and his own personal failings, Gi-hun begins to view Jun-he’s child as an opportunity for redemption. The infant’s arrival awakens him from his stupor, and after promising Jun-he his protection, he seems to come back to himself, reinvigorated with a new purpose. However, when the VIPs decide to use the baby as a pawn for their own cruelty and amusement (a direct allegory for the relationship between the ultra-wealthy and the helpless in our present-day society), Gi-hun comes to realize that not only are the most innocent among us inherently vulnerable, greed and monstrosity are boundless especially when $45.6 billion is on the line.
Ultimately, Gi-hun does not survive this round of the games. With the baby’s life in peril and without any recourse to destroy the Front Man or stop the games, he chooses to sacrifice himself. So that the infant girl might have a chance to live, he ends his life in the final contest, “Sky Squid Game,” so that the baby is declared the winner. A testament to Jung-jae’s outstanding performance throughout the series, viewers see a man who has navigated the full spectrum of emotions and managed to hold onto his humanity despite his circumstances.
The world is cruel, unfair and full of horrors, many of which will grow increasingly grotesque in our lifetimes. Though this version of “Squid Game” has concluded, it’s far from over. In the series finale, “Humans Are…”, the Front Man finds himself in Los Angeles, admiring a game of slap, which is also the entry point into the Squid Games. After admiring the recruiter (Cate Blanchett) engaging in a vicious contest with an unhoused man, In-ho and the woman share a quiet smile. Yet, even amid this dark and twisted final scene, creator Hwang has offered a path forward. Individually, we don’t have the power to fix everything. Yet, if we do our part in changing and affecting one thing, just like Gi-hun, Jun-ho and No-eul, it will add up to so much more. Ultimately, as Gi-hun says before he falls to his death, “We are not horses. We are humans. And humans are…”
“Squid Game” Season 3 is now streaming on Netflix.
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