Squid Game Season 3 Ending Explained: Does Gi-hun Manage to Finish the Games?
“Squid Game Season 3” throws us into a spiral of new trials, painful betrayals, and heartbreaking decisions. New characters like Myung-gi or the young mother Jun-hee gain importance, while the survivors fight not only for money, but to preserve a minimum of humanity. He Front Man reveals himself to be more involved than anyone imagined… and the recruiter’s shadow extends the games beyond Korea. After a first season that was a global success, two others have followed (which formed a single-story arc) with less acceptance but which have served to offer us more adventure, drama, and macabre games, and also a definitive outcome for Sung Ki-hoon, the protagonist of the story. Of course, at the same time, they leave us with honey on our lips, a more or less open ending. Let’s analyze everything.
Squid Game Season 3 Ending Explained: The New Tests: The Three Cruelest Games Ever
Hide-and-Seek: The players are divided into red and blue teams. The red ones receive knives; the blue ones, keys. Only those who survive the established time continue. They die Dae-ho (Player 388), Hyun-ju (120), The Shaman (044), and Yong-sik (007). Geum-ja, Yong-sik’s mother, commits suicide after being forced to kill him.
- Jump Rope on the Bridge: The mythical doll Young-hee and his partner Chul-su spin a giant rope while players jump over a bridge. Die Nam-gyu (124) and Jun-hee drop into the void as she cannot cross injured. Your baby is forced into the game as Player 222.
- Sky Squid Game: Participants must push others from three platforms in the shape of a circle, triangle, and square. Only one can remain standing.
Who Dies in the End?
In the final test, Myung-gi reveals himself to be the father of baby 222 and tries to kill her to win. In the struggle with Gi-hun, he falls from the structure, but none of them had pressed the button that started the game. According to the rules, one death must occur per round… and since it had not formally begun, someone else had to fall.
Gi-hun sacrifices himself. Look at the camera and, like in season 1, repeat: “Players are not horses. Humans are…”, leaving the sentence incomplete as he falls backwards into the void. The front Man observes everything from the control.
Who Won the Competition?
In the final episode, the decisive game —called Sky Squid Game— poses an even more cruel challenge: Players must push themselves from three lofty circular, triangular, and square towers, but deaths only count if a button is activated on the ground at the beginning of each round. The last survivor is Jun-hee’s baby (Jo Yu-ri), born in the second episode, and who was allowed to continue in the game with him number 222 from his mother. In one of the most emotional and tense scenes, player 456 ends up hanging from the edge of the last tower, holding his weight with one hand and Myung-gi’s body with the other (Yim Si-wan), the biological father of the baby, whom he has just faced in brutal combat.
The jacket that held them together breaks, and Myung-gi falls. However, since the button has not been activated, his death does not count.
Now, Gi-hun has three options: kill the baby and win the game, do nothing and let them both die, or sacrifice himself to ensure the newborn’s victory. Choose the third.
“It’s almost as if Gi-hun is looking at his own daughter.”, Lee Jung-jae said to Tudum about his character’s final decision.
For its part, Hwang Dong-hyuk explained that giving victory to the baby is a symbol of hope, of sacrifice for future generations.
For the protagonist, the hard decision is the result of having rediscovered his humanity and conscience. It is totally opposite to what happens with him, contestant 333, who was willing to kill his baby to emerge victorious with the jackpot.
“In the end, I came to believe that, no matter how hopeless and dark the world may seem, we may still have a chance if we can find even a glimmer of hope within ourselves”, explained the director.
There is also a contrast to the decision of Jun-hee, who entrusts her newborn to Gi-hun.
Seriously injured after giving birth and with a broken ankle, she knows that she will not be able to advance in the dangerous rope game. Gi-hun tries to come back for her, but Jun-hee throws herself into the void to prevent him from dying trying and leaving her daughter unprotected.
“I hope that when viewers see Jun-hee, they understand that a mother’s love is so strong, powerful, and indestructible”, Jo Yu-ri said.
Hwang acknowledged that he was inspired by Children of Men by Alfonso Cuarón for that subplot: “In the film, the child symbolizes the future of humanity. I wanted to explore that last hope through Jun-hee and Gi-hun’s baby, who tries to protect her at all costs”.
What About the Front Man and His Brother?
Despite being betrayed by the captain of the ship he was searching for the island with, Detective Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon) manages to return to the playground and alert the coast guard. However, he arrives too late and only looks at his older brother from a distance. Despite having a gun in hand, he lets him flee. The Front Man (Lee Byung-hun) had already ordered the evacuation and destruction of the place. But before escaping, he makes an unexpected decision about the unusual outcome of the final game: he takes the baby, the only survivor of the tower, and takes her with him.
With a time jump of six months, it is revealed that he has secretly entered his younger brother’s apartment and left him two things: the baby and the 4.56 billion won prize. The character also travels to Los Angeles to give Ga-yeong, Gi-hun’s daughter, the money her father earned in the first season and tell her about his passing.
“When I saw that scene, I thought: ‘Gi-hun would be so angry that he would get up from his grave and jump out of the coffin. That’s how upset I would be’”, Lee Jung-jae joked to Tudum.
It is still a heartbreaking detail, considering that the protagonist’s story began when he lacked money to celebrate his daughter’s birthday.
For its part, Lee Byung-hun explained that the Front Man still retains “one last piece of benevolence inside”. This would have been encouraged after contemplating Gi-hun’s insistence on respecting his principles of justice, even though all conditions were against him after the Last Supper.
The actor believes that the decision to keep the baby in the game, following the suggestion of a drunk VIP, was a sign of his ambiguous humanity.
The Survivors Who Had Their Happy Ending
In the midst of the tragedy, the series does insert optimistic outcomes for some characters. The No-Eul (Park Gyu-young), a pink guard who risks everything to save the player Gyeong-seok (Lee Jin-uk), manages to get him to escape after falsifying identities and burning documents. When she was about to commit suicide, the North Korean regains hope after contemplating Gi-hun’s sacrifice. With renewed poise, he camouflages himself in the general evacuation and manages to leave the island. Half a year later, No-eul visits Gyeong-seok, who lives peacefully with his daughter in an amusement park, never knowing that she saved his life. Shortly after, the woman receives a call: they could have seen their daughter lost in China. Although the information is uncertain, she embarks on a journey to discover the truth.
What About the Money?
Shocked by Gi-hun’s suicide, leader In-ho decides to end the game by ordering the destruction of the island. He is now aware that not all human beings are ruthless and selfish, as this game had led him to believe. Also, pick up the baby to get him to safety, and, in the process, he awakens his brother’s mercy, Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon). It turns out that after two seasons looking for him to get revenge, when he has it within range, he decides to spare his life (as In-ho did with him at the end of the first season). Fortunately, because that way he can take care of raising the little daughter of player 222, because In-ho considers that he is a better candidate than him to take charge of his future, and even gives you all the money from the game prize that corresponds to you as the winner.
It is not the only distribution of dividends that In-ho makes; then, six months after the end of the game, he visits Gi-hun’s daughter in Los Angeles. There he gives him a box in which he will find several belongings of his deceased father: the game tracksuit, and a debit card that gives you access to the money Gi-hun got by winning the previous edition of the squid game in the first season.
And What Does Cate Blanchett Mean in all This?
During his visit to Los Angeles, In-ho sees a curious scene in an alley. An American recruiter is playing with a man, DDAKJI, the card game (similar to mugs) used in the series to attract new players. And that person is neither more nor less than Cate Blanchett dressed in a pristine black suit, replicating the iconic role he played in Gong Yoo in the first two seasons of the series. Thus, we know that in the United States, their version of the sadistic organization that takes advantage of people’s economic hardships is also underway. In this way, The Squid Game anticipates the American spin-off of the series that Netflix is preparing with the intention of starting filming before the end of this year, with David Fincher in charge. We still don’t know if Fincher will direct all the episodes of the spin-off, whose scripts he is working on with Dennis Kelly, the creator of Utopia, and its distribution remains to be announced. While it seems unlikely that Blanchett will be involved in that next version of Squid Game, his appearance at the end of the original Korean series makes Netflix’s conviction clear with what he undoubtedly considers one of his star franchises. The audience figures for its closure surely prove him right.
Epilogue: Six Months Later
- Guard 011 secretly meets with Player 246 after saving his life. His daughter, presumed dead, has been located in China.
- Sae-byeok’s mother reappears in North Korea and reunites with his grandson at the airport.
- Gi-hun’s money mysteriously disappears from the hotel. It is implied that it was the Front Man who took it.
Goodbye Player 456
Our beloved Sung Ki-hoon, also known as player 456, had returned to play the squid game for the second time, although his ambition was not to finance the juicy prize, but rather he wanted to overthrow those who organize the game. After his failed attempt at armed rebellion in the second season, Ki-hoon looked resigned: he did not have enough strength or ability to face his enemies, but you don’t want to continue with the game either. However, everything changed for him when he discovered that player 222 had given birth to a girl, which he wanted to protect at all costs. After crossing her in the rope game, where the little girl’s mother died, Ki-hoon became her protector, even defending her from her biological father, player 333. However, doom awaited him: when 333 died before they pressed the button that started the game, his death did not count as one of the obligatory ones, leading the protagonist to a fight. The rules of the game imposed that a player had to die in that last duel of the squid game, and only he and the girl remained. Of course, Ki-hoon is unable to kill the baby and decides to commit suicide so that she can live.
Hwang Joon-ho, Dad By Surprise
When it is decided that the baby of player 222 would take the place in her deceased mother’s game, she competes as one more in the games and, finally, ends up being the winner due to the protagonist’s decision. The question then was who was going to take care of her, because he ended up without a mother, father, or guardian. The leader, it seems, is the one who solves this problem, putting the baby on his brother, Hwang Joon-ho. The former police officer who has been here and there these two seasons with the boat looking for the island where the squid game was being held (to find it and really get nothing), he receives the carrycot with the girl and also the card with the 45.6 billion won. His life is already solved, yes, he has to change diapers.
