Caemeron Crain
The following contains spoilers for Squid Game Season 3 (written and directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk)
Squid Game Season 3 picks up directly where Season 2 left off, which isn’t a surprise since we were left in the middle of the Squid Game. However, as much as I felt like Season 3 was going to be Season 2 Part 2, and that I wouldn’t be able to properly assess Season 2 until I’d seen Season 3, in retrospect, I think there are meaningful thematic differences between the seasons. It’s not an artificial separation, even if we could easily imagine the two combined into one 13-episode season in terms of the narrative.
The action in Season 2 was initiated by Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) trying to bring down the organization behind the Squid Game (and thus abolish the Squid Game itself). But the thematic core of the season only settles in after he has joined the latest iteration of the Squid Game, and it revolves around the relationship between Gi-hun and In-ho (Lee Byung-hun). As I wrote in the wake of Season 2, In-ho is trying to teach Gi-hun a lesson: there is no morality, only power and grace.
For the most part, that lesson is completed as Season 2 ends. Gi-hun’s attempt to overthrow the Squid Game from within by leading a rebellion fails, and In-ho retakes his position as Front Man to ask Gi-hun if it felt good to play the hero. Meanwhile, lots of people are dead.
As Season 3 begins, it’s clear that the order to the guards is to kill any surviving players who rebelled, with the exception of Gi-hun. No-eul (Park Gyuyoung) slyly disobeys this order to save her former co-worker, Park Gyeong-seok (Lee Jin-wook), who you’ll recall has a sick daughter, but the reasons for No-eul’s little insurrection are entirely personal.
Indeed, Squid Game Season 3 as a whole shifts our concerns from the systemic to the individual. Gi-hun had wanted to bring down the system—that’s the whole reason he’s in the Squid Game this time—but he failed, and at the beginning of Season 3, he is despondent in that failure. He’s looking for someone to blame, but tending toward blaming himself.
In S3E2, “The Starry Night,” the games resume with a version of Hide and Seek that involves half of the players getting a knife and the other half a key. Those with a key are tasked with trying to hide or escape, while those with a knife are required to kill a member of the other team lest they be eliminated when time runs out. Before the game begins, however, the players have the opportunity to trade roles with a member of the other team, if both agree to do so.
Our friend Gi-hun gets a knife, but shows absolutely no desire to trade with someone (or talk to anyone at all). This seems a bit out of character, and while you could argue it’s because he’s fixated on killing Dae-ho (Kang Ha-neul) because Dae-ho betrayed the attempted rebellion, that still feels a little out of character. Gi-hun is not, generally speaking, a murderer.
But at this point in our story, Gi-hun is in a state of despair. He’s given up hope, and he can no longer muster his sense of solidarity with the other players. Watching this episode—which is, honestly, one of the best of the series—I was not sure he cared whether he would live or die. He doesn’t kill Dae-ho because he needs to in order to survive; it’s because he’s focused on Dae-ho as a kind of symbol of his hopelessness.
For this episode, our hero is Hyun-ju (Park Sung-hoon), as she helps Geum-ja (Kang Ae-sim) and Jun-hee (Jo Yuri) survive. After breaking her ankle, Jun-hee goes into labor and ultimately gives birth in the middle of the game. Hyun-ju protects them and stumbles upon an exit that she could have walked right through. Instead, she goes back for her friends only to be stabbed in the back and killed by Myung-gi (Yim Si-wan).
Now, there is a baby in the story, and the first person who wants to kill it (along with its mother) is Geum-ja’s son, Yong-sik (Yang Dong-geun). In fairness, he has to kill someone in order to survive the game of Hide and Seek. His mother tells him to kill her, but he can’t bring himself to do that. So, when it comes down to it, Geum-ja kills her own son to protect Jun-hee and her newborn. Later, she’ll hang herself because she can’t live with this.
But first, Geum-ja pleads with Gi-hun to help Jun-hee and to protect her baby. And, when it comes down to it, he can’t help it. The VIPs have cruelly decided that the baby must take part in the next game, which involves walking across a narrow bridge while a swinging rope threatens to knock you off (so you have to jump).
Jun-hee has no chance at this game on her own (because her ankle is broken), so Gi-hun takes her baby across, promising to come back to help her. He doesn’t get a chance to do so, however, because time runs out. Jun-hee dies, and while some of the VIPs think the baby should simply be killed, too, it is ultimately decided that the child will take her mother’s place in the Squid Game as player 222. Good times.
It wouldn’t be accurate to suggest that the old Gi-hun reemerges at this point in the story. Our friend is broken. But his commitment to Jun-hee’s child is evident, both because he swore to protect her and because, well… it’s a baby, for god’s sake.
The extent to which everyone except for Gi-hun is willing to sacrifice the baby is almost implausible, until you take a moment to look around the world and realize that the only difference is proximity. Most of us would never kill a baby, but many seem unfazed by reports of babies killed in war zones, and some even celebrate those deaths out of a disgusting tribalism. So, no, it’s not implausible that players in the Squid Game would be looking to kill this child when it would serve their interests to do so; it’s just disturbing.
Before the final game, in which the players have been told at least three of them will die (but they’ll get to decide who), the Front Man summons Gi-hun to his office. He reveals himself as In-ho to Gi-hun, and we should take a moment to think about the weight of that. This man, who you thought was your friend, is actually the one you’ve viewed as your greatest enemy. It’s In-ho’s final lesson to Gi-hun: You can’t trust anyone; everyone is just out for themselves, and you need to accept that.
In-ho gives Gi-hun a knife and tells him that, if he proceeds to murder the other remaining players while they sleep, Gi-hun and the baby will be allowed to leave as winners of the Squid Game. Those guys are garbage. They’re planning to kill you. Here’s a way for you to get what you want.
In flashbacks, it’s revealed that In-ho was given the same opportunity when he won the Squid Game, and he took it, which makes me wonder if In-ho has been thinking about offering Gi-hun a position in management. We’ll never know, since Gi-hun can’t go through with the killings. He’s close to doing so, but Sae-byeok (Jung Ho-yeon) appears to him in a vision to remind him that this isn’t who he is. Thus, he’ll enter the final game with a baby and a knife.
For the final game, there are three towers. The players will have to kill at least one person by pushing/throwing them off the tower. Then, the rest may advance. So, three people have to die, and six players have an alliance as to who those three should be: Gi-hun, the baby, and Min-su (Lee Da-wit).
The problem is that Gi-hun is definitely not willing to give up the baby, and if they push him off along with the baby, then one of the six players in the alliance will have to die in a later round. They resolve this in the first round by killing Min-su, but in the second round everything goes haywire.
By the end of it, only Gi-hun, the baby, and Myung-gi survive. Myung-gi has tried to claim that he’s on Gi-hun’s side, but when the bridge opens to the third platform, he goes across first, only to then confront Gi-hun with a pole such that Gi-hun and the child cannot get across. Myung-gi wants Gi-hun to hand over the baby, which it’s clear he intends to kill. His plan is to never allow Gi-hun to even make it to the third platform.
The VIPs think this is a brilliant strategy, but Gi-hun isn’t about to let Myung-gi get away with it. He sets the baby down, but then he runs across the bridge at the last minute to fight Myung-gi, whom he ultimately kills. The problem is they never pushed the button for the third round to begin, and there are two players left: Gi-hun and the baby.
The VIPs expect Gi-hun to sacrifice the child, but, of course, he doesn’t. Ultimately, he sets her down on the platform and looks directly toward the VIPs. He tells them that human beings are not horses for them to bet on. “Humans are…”
Gi-hun doesn’t finish the sentence and proceeds to stretch his arms and fall backwards off the platform. We could speculate about what he was going to say, but I think that his suicide is the answer. Humans are capable of sacrificing themselves to save a stranger’s child when it does nothing to serve their own interests.
In retrospect, the result would have been better if Gi-hun had taken In-ho’s advice and killed the other players while they slept. He could have survived along with the baby, and while this was a possibility throughout most of the action of the final game, it was an unlikely one going into it. One could make the cynical argument that In-ho was right—Gi-hun should have just taken out the trash when he had the chance.
Things don’t play this way, of course. I think it’s clear that Squid Game wants us to view Gi-hun’s behavior as a kind of triumph. He, once again, refuses to be fully corrupted by the Squid Game and achieves a kind of moral victory against all odds.
Frankly, given the state of the world in 2025, I’m struggling with this. I don’t want to argue for the cynical point of view, which amounts to a kind of nihilism when it comes down to it, but I’m a bit tired of moral victories—I want material ones.
It’s true that, in a way, Gi-hun brought down the Squid Game that we’ve seen throughout three seasons. Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon) manages to find the island (with an unintentional assist from No-eul) and call in the Korean Coast Guard, but the bad guys are able to evacuate and blow the place up before the authorities get there. So, no one is brought to justice, and I don’t see why they couldn’t just move to set up shop on another Korean island. In my imagination, they did.
The final scenes of Squid Game Season 3, though, show In-ho in the United States. After leaving Jun-hee’s baby for Jun-ho (along with her money), he’s travelled to give Gi-hun’s remaining money to his daughter. Then, we see Cate Blanchett on a side street, playing the role of The Recruiter, and the series ends.
This sets up the possibility of an American spin-off of Squid Game, which will likely happen. But in narrative terms, one has to wonder if there has been an American version of the Squid Game all along, or if this is a new development. I’m not sure how much it matters, since the message is clear: despite all of the efforts of Gi-hun and others, the Squid Game continues.
Which… of course it does. Insofar as the Squid Game has always been a stand-in for late capitalism, I never expected that this series would end with its destruction. I probably would have called that out as implausible. The question is whether Seasons 2 and 3 were warranted, and while I enjoyed them, I’m not sure they were in narrative terms.
It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Gi-hun was ultimately a naïve fool for thinking that he could bring the system down. I’m not going to argue that he should have killed those guys before the final game in this season, but I am tempted to say that he should have just gotten on that plane at the end of Season 1.
The only way to win is to not play.
