‘Squid Game’ season three ending explained: Does Gi-hun survive the final Games?
**Warning: Spoilers Ahead**
Squid Game is back for its third and final season on Netflix – but does Gi-hun survive the final Games? Read on to find out.
All six episodes of the third season were released on the streaming service last week (June 27), with the events picking up immediately after the cliffhanger that brought season two to a close last December.
Lee Jung-jae’s Gi-hun, aka Player 456, remains the central figure in the new episodes, finding himself drawn back into the Games, but now deeply disillusioned and traumatised.
As with previous seasons, the new episodes have been overseen by showrunner Hwang Dong-hyuk. Despite the show’s runaway success – it quickly became Netflix’s most watched title of all time on its original release in 2021 – it has been confirmed that this will be the final regular season of the show.
Dong-hyuk recently discussed the possibility of there being a prequel series in the future, and also stated that he felt the villainous VIPs in the show “resemble Elon Musk”.
In a four-star review of season three, NME wrote: “With the parting reveal that Squid Game is much bigger than just South Korea through an A-list cameo that’ll steal your breath, the relentless cycle of capitalist exploitation and suffering is pulled back into focus. It may all feel like doom and gloom but the final episode is deliberately titled ‘Humans Are…’ It’s left up to the viewer to decide how they fill in that blank.”
Squid Game season three ending explained: Does Gi-hun survive the final Games?
After the deadly ending to season two, in which his close friend Jung-bae is killed, Gi-hun is traumatised and apparently defeated as season three begins.
One of the key plot developments involves the birth of player 222’s baby, who Gi-hun vows to protect after player 222 dies. The organisers of the Games order that the child will be counted as an official player in its mother’s place, and by the time of the final game – Sky Squid Game – Gi-hun, the baby and its biological father Myung-gi are the only remaining competitors.
Myung-gi declares that he is prepared to kill the baby in order to take home the huge cash prize, but when he wrestles Gi-hun, Myung-gi is thrown off their high tower to his death. With just Gi-hun and the baby left, Gi-hun addresses the watching audience: “We are not horses, we are humans. And humans are…” and with that, he jumps to his death.
With the detectives nearly at the island on which the Games are being held, the Front Man rescues the baby and activates a self-destruct button that destroys all evidence of the Games.
We later see the Front Man in the US and he sees a recruiter playing the slap game with a potential new player. The recruiter is revealed to be played by Cate Blanchett, suggesting that the long-rumoured, David Fincher-directed US version of Squid Game may now be a reality.
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Max Pilley
NME
