[Editor’s note: This article contains spoilers for “Squid Game” Season 3, including the finale.]
In the final episode of “Squid Game,” Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) utters the words “Humans are…” That incomplete sentence, that subject-verb combination that forms both the episode title and the show’s core questions lingers throughout the finale, and beyond. Are they good? Bad? Greedy? Selfless? All of it, none of it — and everything in between.
As noted in IndieWire’s spoiler-free review of the season, “Squid Game” mostly ends exactly how you’d expect. Viewers who feel disappointed due to a lack of twists and turns may want to consider what drew them to the show in the first place, and what it ever did to suggest an alternative denouement. This is a show that not only killed off most characters in the first season, but essentially promised to do so up front. What other course was there?
Season 3, Episode 6 opens right where its predecessor left off, with Gi-hun and Myung-gi (Im Si-wan) standing on raised platforms high above the ground, processing the knowledge that one of them or the infant 222 must die in the next round. The baby entering the competition strained “Squid Game” credulity, but only as far as it also pushed the characters’ moral boundaries.
After possibly the fastest birth in human history, Jun-hee’s (Jo Yuri) child is forced to take her place in the games, which anyone with an ounce of empathy would obviously reject. The average viewer’s mind will outright reject it — so, of course, the cartoonishly evil VIPs lap it up. Other players and guards indulge the perverse twist too quickly, but that works as an extension of the “Squid Game” worldview: Money makes people do unthinkable things, and it coaxes dubious witnesses into compliance (especially when dissent equals death).
All this to say: Way too many people were rooting for that baby to die in the final game, but it obviously ratcheted up the stakes for a show that often risks desensitizing viewers to fatal violence. After Myung-gi’s shallow attempt to protect Gi-hun and the baby, he wastes no time turning on them both. In a season filled with impeccable performances, Im is no exception in a final scene that lays out his character’s untold depths as well as his greatest disappointment: wanting so badly to do the right thing, but knowing he’ll fail before he even tries.
He didn’t want to hurt his own baby — but knew before even hitting the red button that when the moment came, he could do it.
Myung-gi — and many others, probably — is not capable of what Gi-hun does when the final game commences in earnest. Gi-hun summons his courage and spirit in his final moments, defending his values even as his mission decisively fails. He gives his life to save another, which might be the last vestige of the old Gi-hun who entered the games in Season 1. That guy was clumsier, less world-weary, even smiled once in a while — and he cared a hell of a lot for the people around him.
Lee gives it his all as usual, but with Gi-hun gone at the midpoint, the episode gives way to his superb costars; Lee Byung-hun as the Front Man, Wi Ha-jun as his brother Jun-ho, Park Gyu-young as No-eul. There’s barely any dialogue in the last moments of the game, but all of them convey worlds of emotion with their eyes and body language, raising the kind of philosophical character questions fans can fervently interrogate for years to come.
And as bleak and tragic as Gi-hun’s death is, it’s followed by the kind of pinpricks of hope (“bursts of light”) that make life worth living in a capitalist hellscape. Six months later, Na-yeon is cancer-free, No-eul might find her daughter, the mother and brother of Sae-byeok from Season 1 (HoYeon Jung) finally reunite, and the children of Gi-hun and Jun-hee will have better lives after their parents’ sacrifices.
It’s not a complicated takeaway: We do what we do — suffer, fail, persist, persevere — for love. What kind of world puts a literal price on love, on life? Love’s victories, however rare, poke through the grisly dread of of “Squid Game,” never cloying, but downright poignant. The games will find a way to continue, but the players and those who survive them will try to mitigate each other’s pain. That is all we can do, and we’ll keep doing it.
“Squid Game” is now streaming on Netflix.