'Squid Game' Season 3 Ending Explained
WARNING! This article spoils the events of Season 3, now available for streaming on Netflix. Please do not read further if you do not intend to know what happens in Season 3
After last year's excruciating cliffhanger, Squid Game returned for its third and final season on June 27. And with it, it brought three more life-or-death games and another winner to take home an astounding amount of money, as well as plenty of blood, gore and violence that made the Korean series a massive hit for Netflix when it first debuted. Season 3 was not afraid to roll out the body count, with many players losing their lives over the course of the final six episodes. And it all came to one massive close, with a possible opening for more of the show to come.Here's everything to know about the ending of Squid Game Season 3.
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Squid Game Final Season Ending Explained
The final game
The final episode, "Humans Are...," opened with the three remaining players left in the game: Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), Myung-gi (Im Si-wan) and, stunningly, the latter's baby. That's because Jun-hee (Jo Yu-ri) had given birth to their child while in the games, before losing her life the next day. But, heeding her final words to stay away from her and her baby, Myung-gi revealed in the finale that he wanted to leave Gi-hun stranded, then kill the baby to make sure he walked away with the money. Luckily, Gi-hun went full Tom Cruise and jumped over to the last tower, fighting him. In the tussle, both men went over the edge, hanging on by a thread. And karma ultimately came for Myung-gi, as his lifeline tore, sending him plummeting to his death.
Gi-hun pulled himself back up, but the carnage was not done. The button had not been pressed yet, meaning at least one of the two remaining players had to die for the game to end. All of the VIPs watching believed Gi-hun would simply kill the child, making him the first-ever two-time winner of the games. But they didn't know the real reason he had thrown himself back in the fray. Turning his back on the oligarchs, he placed the baby down before speaking out loud (most likely to his nemesis, the Front Man).
'We are not horses," he said. "We are humans. Humans are…"
And with that, he threw himself off the tower. At long last, Player 456 was no more. And Player 222, a baby who was less than three days old and had inherited her mother's number, had won the game.
Destroying the island
While lots of drama was happening in the last game, plenty was also happening elsewhere on the island. No-eul (Park Gyu-young) had literally clawed her way back into headquarters, looking to take down her boss, as well as wipe the record of Gyeong-seok (Lee Jin-wook), whom she helped escape the games. In the process, she discovered the file room, containing the records of every player and employee in the games' history. There, she tearfully discovered that, according to her file, her daughter had passed away in North Korea. As No-eul sits down, preparing to end her life, she hears a baby cry. Upon seeing the new child in the games, she relents, deciding to leave the island.
And she has an easy out to do so, considering how things come to an end. After a two-year search filled with loan sharks and treachery, Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon) at long last succeeded in his mission. He found the island that he visited back in Season 1, and was looking to reunite with his brother, In-ho (Lee Byung-hun). However, upon infiltrating HQ, he found he was too late. After finding out Jun-ho had alerted the Coast Guard to their location, In-ho set the island to self-destruct and took off with the baby in tow. All Jun-ho could do was see his brother from afar, lamenting, "Why did you do it?" The entire setting for these depraved games is destroyed, though everyone is able to get out just in time.
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Six months later
We then pick things up half a year later across multiple continents. Here are the major beats from stopping in with all of the characters who survived:
–Gyeong-seok indeed made it off the island, and is back to painting caricatures in the theme park. Not only that, his sick daughter, for whom he entered the games in the first place, has happily survived.
–No-eul received a call that, despite what she found in the file, there is a chance that her daughter is still alive. She ended the series by going to the airport, flying off to China to go and find her.
–Woo-seok (Jeon Seok-ho), after getting arrested and imprisoned for breaking into Captain Park's (Oh Dal-su) house, got out of jail. Feeling "lost," the moneylender was looking to take up the hotel that Gi-hun bought in Season 2 to help surveil (and practice shooting) the masked men.
–After picking up Woo-seok from prison, Jun-ho came home to find quite a present from his brother. On his kitchen table was the baby, still wrapped up in his mother's tracksuit. And, as the technical winner of the games, that means she also came with a debit card to an account with 45.6 billion won. It is assumed that Jun-ho would raise this child as his own, with a life-changing amount of money in tow.
–In-ho himself, meanwhile, was over in Los Angeles. He visited Gi-hun's estranged daughter, informing her that her father had died. He then gives her his belongings: His 456 track suit, as well as her own card to his winnings. While Jun-ho and Woo-seok speculated as to who took Gi-hun's money from the hotel, it's now clear that In-ho did so to carry on his legacy.
Let the games continue
For all intents and purposes, it seems that the version of Squid Game we know is done. Conceived with only three seasons in mind, blowing up the island seemed to be a firm punctuation mark at the end of a four-year sentence, destroying the games forevermore. Or should we say...the Korean version of the games.
That's because, in the show's final scene, as In-ho is stopped in traffic, he hears a familiar sound: The *smack* of a ddakji envelope. As he looks out, he sees another recruiter (Cate Blanchett) is yet again engaging in a game with a down-on-his-luck man in an alley. She looks back on him and smiles, and he does the same before pulling away.
Talks of an English-langugage version of Squid Game have certainly been out there, with David Fincher at one point attached to the project. And it's unknown if this ending officially confirms if one is on the way. However, even on the surface, it shows there are multiple versions of the games, whether simultaneously running or with an American version having taken up the mantle after the Korean version was destroyed. Despite the happy endings for many characters, it's a sign that, try as you might, the games will still be on.'Squid Game' Season 3 Ending Explained first appeared on Parade on Jun 27, 2025
This story was originally reported by Parade on Jun 27, 2025, where it first appeared.
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