‘People like happy endings. Sorry!' Squid Game's brutal finale hits new heights of barbarity

The Guardian

4 hours ago

When season two of Squid Game dropped, fans were split in their response to Netflix's hit Korean drama. While some viewers loved the dialled-up-to-11 intensity of everything – more characters, more drama, more staggering brutality – others found the tone relentlessly bleak. And this was a show whose original concept – a cabal of rich benefactors recruit poor people to compete in bloodsports for cash – was already plenty dark. Anyone hoping the show's third and final season, arriving this week, will provide a reprieve should probably just rewatch Emily in Paris instead.
'The tone is going to be more dark and bleak,' says series creator Hwang Dong-hyuk, through an interpreter. 'The world, as I observe it, has less hope. I wanted to explore questions like, 'What is the very last resort of humankind? And do we have the will to give future generations something better?' After watching all three seasons, I hope we can each ask ourselves, 'What kind of humanity do I have left in me?''
That's a lofty ambition for what has become a flagship Netflix show – one of the defining cultural products of the 2020s, which seemed to hold a mirror up to a new era of desperation and savagery. The first and second seasons set global viewership records for the streamer – remarkable for a show that's not in English – and in 2023, it released Squid Game: The Challenge, a reality show based on the series, which saw contestants competing for a $4.5m prize. All this in spite of the fact that Squid Game is also one of the most extraordinarily violent shows ever aired, featuring all manner of brutal, disturbing death scenes. Watching the show can be a gruelling experience: in nearly every episode, several characters are pushed to their limits before being unceremoniously shot by one of the show's pink-suited guards.
Because of Squid Game's outsized success, it is surprising the show is ending after only three seasons in four years. By the time its finale airs, Stranger Things, another Netflix hit, will have run for five seasons over nearly a decade. Lee Jung-jae, who plays hapless hero turned vigilante Gi-hun, says Hwang's vision initially didn't even allow for a second season. 'He told us Squid Game was a limited series,' he says, also through a interpreter. 'But because it was met with so much love from across the world, he had to do subsequent seasons.'
The fact that Squid Game was conceived as a one-and-done hasn't lessened the show's impact. After a shocking first season that played up the contrast between the children's playground aesthetic and the copious amounts of blood and betrayal, season two raised the stakes with complex, attention-grabbing new characters. The purple-haired rapper Thanos, played by the rapper TOP, was a bizarre pill-popper with a proclivity for violence and speaking in a strange version of English, while Park Gyu-young played Kang No-eul, a North Korean defector who becomes a guard.
While he is aware of criticisms of the second season, Lee says there was no opportunity to change season three, given that the two seasons were filmed back to back. And besides, fan response was not the chief consideration. 'The messages of Squid Game are very important,' says Lee. 'Instead of 'fixing' the narrative, we just wanted to make sure the message was conveyed. And of course it's a TV show – you have to provide entertainment. In season three, we have new games, new characters, twists and turns. It's going to be very entertaining – but with a message.'
That message – about humanity's capacity for violence, and the danger capitalism puts people in – has been consistent throughout, but in season three, ideas of vengeance and retribution are given a lot of airtime, and the show leans into moral ambiguity even more. This darkness is at odds, Hwang suggests, with what most viewers are looking for. 'People like a happy ending,' he says, 'I'm like that too. But some stories, by nature, can't have one. If you try to force one, the essence is compromised. If a story is holding up a mirror to something, then it's not always a happy ending. Squid Game is no exception.'
As for whether loyal fans will be satisfied with the ending, Lee remains tight-lipped about what we will see, but is philosophical about its effect. 'The finale was something even I didn't expect,' he says, 'so I'm sure a lot of fans will not see it coming. I think a lot of people will have different reactions. It's definitely going to spur a lot of conversation. I'm looking forward to listening.'
For Lee, making two seasons back-to-back was challenging. 'It was non-stop filming for about a year and two months,' he says. 'So it was draining, physically. But I could really immerse myself in Gi-hun. When I'm stressed out or physically drained, I usually have really good food and that cheers me up. But I was on a diet. There was no way to release the stress!'
Lee is a veteran of the South Korean screen but he finds playing Gi-hun – who goes from wet-blanket nobody to hardened hero – endlessly exciting. 'Gi-hun is constantly pressed,' he says. 'He's very frustrated, because whatever he tries to do is just not working. If someone is pushed to that extent, even a good guy can change. It was intriguing to play a character who goes through so much change.'
Sometimes the show's intense brutality – characters die in horrifying and creatively violent ways, such as falling through glass panels or being pulled off a ledge in a gigantic game of tug of war – can feel almost desensitising, which Lee says isn't the intention. 'I really hope that people don't become desensitised,' he says. 'All these characters have very tragic backstories. I hope people will focus on that and mourn their deaths.'
Squid Game's anticapitalist sentiment is so strong that it is strange to see the number of promotional tie-ins Netflix has set up, with companies ranging from McDonald's to Uber – many of which have been accused in the past of putting profits before employee wellbeing. Hwang says that, at the end of the day, Squid Game exists in a capitalist system.
'For me and Netflix,' he says, 'we started out wanting to create a commercial product. It would be too far a stretch to criticise wanting to profit from something that criticises the capitalist system. No studio is going to want to create a story that's too critical of society. Having said that, if I felt [the partnerships] were too excessive, to the point where I felt it was damaging the spirit of the show, I might feel differently. But it wouldn't be right for me to tell Netflix not to do something. I don't have the legal grounds for that. I have had certain feelings about certain things, but I do not think it would be right for me to say exactly what, or to express my negative feelings.'
Perhaps that's because Hwang is already thinking about what a Squid Game sequel might look like. 'There's no saying we'll never do something again,' he says. 'I don't want to close the door – there are some threads left untied. If I were to come back to the Squid Game universe, I think I would come back with a spin-off. Narratively, there's a three-year gap between seasons one and two. While Gi-hun was on the search for the Front Man and the Recruiter, what were those villains up to? What do the pink guards do outside Squid Game? Those would be fun ideas to explore.'
There's also the matter of the show's US remake, which is reportedly being developed by David Fincher, director of Gone Girl and The Social Network. Hwang says he hasn't had any confirmation, but he looks forward to seeing Fincher's take. 'I am a big fan – I watched a lot of his works when I was studying film. So if it's true, I welcome it with all my heart.'
Until then, Squid Game fans have the show's final season, which seems destined to spark as much hullaballoo as the previous two. 'People have been so curious. A lot of them come to me asking for spoilers. I keep telling them that if you want to have fun watching season three, you just have to hold still. It's coming.'
Squid Game season three is on Netflix on 27 June