'Squid Game' ends with a whimper, but a big cameo

The Herald Scotland

8 hours ago

That's the haunting message we're left with in the final moments of Netflix's juggernaut South Korean horror drama, which wrapped up its third and last season with six episodes released June 27. Like the first two seasons, the episodes were unrelentingly bloody and bleak. And they wrapped up with an ending that might be a new beginning.
Season 3 of the Netflix's most-watched show of all time was a macabre and depressing affair, a sort of half-story that seemed to indicate Seasons 2 and 3 were really just one story arbitrarily cut in half. The new episodes have all the flaws of the misguided Season 2, including that the show's core anticapitalist message has been swept aside in favor of more action set pieces and ceaseless barbarity. Any overarching point the series has been trying to make is lost in the chaos of men fighting with knives and threatening to kill a newborn baby to save their own skin.
Even the quiet, eyebrow-raising final moments, which suggest that the struggle for economic justice and equality might be utterly pointless, feel less like a philosophy and more like a real-life capitalist desire for more, more, more.
Season 1 of "Squid Game" remains one of the most arresting, shocking and thought-provoking TV shows ever made, so much that it became a surprise worldwide hit on the strength of word-of-mouth alone. Seasons 2 and 3 are hollow echoes of that achievement. They don't negate what that first season did, but merely dampen its effect. It's hard to remain awed when you've had two seasons worth of just, "ah."
Does Gi-hun survive the final game?
When the finale episode begins, our hero Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) is stuck in the last game with the late Jun-hee's newborn baby, who has become Player 222, and the baby's somewhat-of-a-dirtbag father Myung-gi (Yim Si-wan). The two men have seriously erred by killing all the other contestants before the final round of the game, because each round requires at least one person to die. In a brutal fight in which Myung-gi more than once endangers his newborn daughter (sometimes on purpose), Myung-gi ends up falling off the tall platform before the final round officially begins, meaning now either Gi-hun or the baby has to die or they will both be shot by the game workers.
The wealthy VIPs watching with their gilded opera glasses are waiting for Gi-hun to kill the baby, and Gi-hun's mortal enemy the Front Man/In-ho (Lee Byung-hun) expects him to do the same. But in one final act of rebellion against the games, Gi-hun kills himself to save the child, declaring he is not a horse to be bet on but a human with a life. Player 456 is eliminated.
What happens with Jun-ho and No-eul as the final game ends?
Gi-hun's struggle was not the only one as the final game played out. In-ho's brother Jun-ho (Wi Ha-jun) finally makes it to the island he's been searching for these last two seasons. He arrives in time to see his brother take away the baby and set a self-destruct timer on the island.
No-eul (Park Gyu-young), the games worker who has been trying to save a man with a sick daughter out of guilt for leaving her own daughter behind in North Korea, helps him escape from the island, and stays behind to burn records and feel sorry for herself. After witnessing Gi-hun's sacrifice, however, she decides not to let herself die, and evacuates the island with the rest of the workers. The VIPs make it out unscathed too, of course. They will never suffer any kind of consequence for their inhumanity.
'Squid Game': Where are they now
Six months pass after the explosive end to Gi-hun's final games, and our remaining (living) characters have all moved on with their lives, or so they think. Jun-ho's loan-shark ally Mr. Choi (Jeon Seok-ho), is released from prison. Jun-ho has given up his quest and his career, but don't worry, his brother delivers him Jun-hee's baby and her 45.6 billion-won prize. One can only wonder with horror who has been taking care of that baby for her first half year.
No-eul checks to make sure the father she rescued from the Games is still alive and thriving with his daughter. And she even gets good news of her own: The broker who helped her escape from North Korea has a lead on her own daughter's whereabouts. That same broker also brings us a blast from Season 1 past, reuniting the younger brother of Sae-byeok (the North Korean escapee who competed in the Season 1 games and finished third) with his mother.
The Front Man remembers another family member who needs to be taken care of: Gi-hun's daughter Ga-yeong (Jo Ah-in), now living with her mother and stepfather in Los Angeles. In-ho shows up at her door with a box containing the personal effects of her father, and tells her he's dead. Inside is Gi-hun's blood-stained track suit and the debit card to his account, which In-ho has seemingly restocked with the billions of won that disappeared from Gi-hun's hotel headquarters. It's the same kind of quiet, unsatisfactory ending we saw in Season 1. That is, until the last few moments.
Is 'Squid Game' getting an American spinoff?
As In-ho drives away from Ga-yeong's house, his SUV stops at a traffic light across from a dirty L.A. alley, where he hears a loud slapping noise. Could it be? Yes, it is: A suited games recruiter and an American man are playing ddakji. And that recruiter isn't just anyone, it's freaking Cate Blanchett, who gives In-ho a knowing look before she goes back to slapping her prey.
Then the credits roll. This A-lister cameo and revelation of an American version of the games can be interpreted in a few ways: Maybe it's just a coda that points out the true pointlessness and hopelessness of Gi-hun's rebellion. The games - and therefore wealth inequality, injustice and deep human cruelty - persist everywhere. One island off the coast of South Korea may have blown up, but no one will stop the wealthy from oppressing and crushing the poor.
Or, if you are thinking about real-life capitalism, this may be a way for Netflix to introduce a U.S. spinoff. Whether that's a good idea, storytelling-wise, doesn't really matter in the great content machine that is Netflix (and, to be fair, all the other streamers, too).
We'll just have to wait and see if a new show with a bloody version of Red Rover eventually hits our Netflix queues. Netflix has announced no plans for a spinoff; USA TODAY has reached out for further comment.