Squid Game’s final season is here at last, revealing the fates of the show’s heroes and villains. That includes Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), the shell of a man who returns to the deadly competition as Player 456, intent on bringing it all down from the inside.
When we first met Gi-hun back in season one, he was a perpetual ne’er-do-well, sponging off his ailing mother to supply his gambling habit and routinely disappointing his young daughter. While he was off trying to win the 45.6 billion won, his mother died, and his daughter moved to America with Gi-hun’s ex-wife and her new husband.
Season one ends with Gi-hun very nearly getting on a plane to reunite with his daughter, hoping to repair their fractured relationship—but doing a pivot instead, declaring his intention to get revenge on the people who put him through hell. That’s what brings us to season two’s re-entry into the world of pink-suited guards, creepily twisted kiddie games, and outrageous cruelty, which carries right into season three.
There’s no time for Gi-hun to reach out to his long-lost family in season three (even if he wanted to) since he’s inside the game the whole time. But he does share a poignant moment with Player 222, new mother Jun-hee (Jo Yu-ri), as she crumbles with guilt, blaming herself for the players who’ve died while protecting her and her baby girl.
Gi-hun reminds her everyone there made their own choices and gravely tells her about his own daughter. He was a terrible dad, he admits, but watching her grow up gave him great joy. He understands that bond between parent and child, including how complicated the circumstances around it can be.
As Squid Game nears its conclusion and 456 meets his gruesome, self-sacrificing fate (the episode title, “Humans Are…” echoes his last words), there’s a smidge of redemption in the show’s “six months later” coda, showing viewers how the surviving characters have fared after the games.
The last segment takes us to Los Angeles, where the Front Man (Lee Byung-hun) pays a visit to Gi-hun’s daughter. She’s dismissive until the mysterious stranger at her door lets her know that her father has passed away.
He hands her a box containing Gi-hun’s Squid Game sweatsuit and a bank card presumably loaded with her father’s season one winnings. That would be a fine place to end things, but instead we keep following the Front Man as he’s driven through downtown Los Angeles.
Stopped in traffic, he catches sight of a woman in a suit playing rounds of ddakji—the paper-flipping game that was used to pluck new players from the subway stations in Seoul—with a random guy, crisply slapping his face when he loses just like the Squid Game recruiter did.
The woman, by the way, is Cate Fucking Blanchett. She looks over and exchanges a knowing glance with the Front Man. “Game on… again” is the implied message.
Is this Netflix’s heavy-handed way of reminding fans that a U.S. version of Squid Game is coming—something we already knew was in the works courtesy of David Fincher?
Is it just a little wink confirming that the Squid Game is, indeed, a global phenomenon, setting up shop wherever there are people desperate enough to risk their lives and moral dignity for cold hard cash? America certainly fits the bill there.
Or… is it one last moment designed to leave the story open-ended in case creator Hwang Dong-hyuk, who’d originally wanted Squid Game to be a one-and-done release, can once again be tempted to return?
Whatever the intention, it’s a weird distraction from the intense emotional roller coaster that’s come before. Did we really need a big star to pop up in the finale’s closing seconds, especially in a show that achieved such incredible success while hailing half a world away from Hollywood? The lasting impression is “OMG Cate Blanchett??” above everything else, and that just feels a bit like it’s ripping the rug out of the six hours of TV that came before.
What did you think of that last scene? Let us know in the comments below.
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