'Squid Game' Season 3 cast, creator on the meaning behind the baby in final season

Yahoo

5 hours ago

When Hwang Dong-hyuk's series Squid Game first premiered on Netflix in 2021, it absolutely took the world by storm as a thrilling and engaging story that people quickly became obsessed with. Four years later we're saying goodbye to the show that made a firm stamp on pop culture internationally, with an incredibly emotional, brutal and brilliant third season.
After the Season 2 cliffhanger where our lead, Player 456, Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), saw his best friend killed in the rebellion, and he comes face-to-face with The Frontman, things only get more heartbreaking from there. But as devastating as the game gets, it continues, leading to a shocking finale.One of the most impactful and interesting story elements in Squid Game Season 3 is the fact that Jo Yuri's character, Jun-hee, Player 222, gives birth to her baby during the Hide-and-Seek game. In the game half the players are trying to find the exit of a maze, with the use of keys of different shapes, while the other half of the group has to kill one of the players on the opposite side.
Pregnant Jun-hee teams up with Geum-ja, Player 149 (Kang Ae-sim), and Hyun-ju, Player 120 (Park Sung-hoon), but as Jun-hee starts going into labour, Geum-ja has to deliver the baby.
With so much of Squid Game being an evaluation of humanity, having a baby, this new life in the game was a particularly compelling choice.
"It was critical to telling the theme and exploring the theme of the story, because Squid Game is a story through the character Gi-hun, we get to ask these questions. Do we still have humanity left in all of us? Do we as a human race have what it takes to turn the path the world is in for the better?" Hwang Dong-hyuk explained to Yahoo Canada, with a translator, about the importance of including a baby in the story. "The more and more we live out our lives I think it's inevitable that we become pessimistic, we become very cynical of everything that's unfolding."
"And as you see the character Gi-hun, as a human being he hits absolute rock bottom. But despite all of that, are we going to give up? That's one of the questions I wanted to ask. And when we ask ourselves that question, I got to thinking that it is our duty to try to do something to better the world so that we can leave the future generation a world that is better than how we first found it. And it's important for all of us. It is a mission, a duty and a responsibility for all of us to not give up on our efforts to yearn for a better world, and I was able to do that through the baby."
"I had so much trust in the actress, Jo Yuri. Although she's very young, she's very resilient and strong, and she meticulously prepared for all the scenes," Kang said said with a translator in a separate interview about working closely with her costar in Season 3. "And I just had so much trust in her and I felt like she was my own daughter when I was filming Squid Game together with her."
But the baby's birth also leads to one of the most devastating moments in the show.
In Season 2 we established the relationship between Geum-ja and her son, Yong-sik, Player 007 (Yang Dong-geun), but in season three things take a horrifying turn.
Hyun-ju finds the exit to the maze and as she's going back to get Jun-hee and and Geum-ja, she's killed in the game by Myung-gi, Player 333 (Yim Si-wan), who is the father of Jun-hee's baby.
"I knew that there were worries and concerns about myself being a cisgender actor playing a transgender character, but because Hyun-ju is such a cool, multi-layered character with such a good heart, I received so much love and support, and Hyun-ju received so much love and support, so I am very grateful about that," Park Sung-hoon said, via a translator. "And I think maybe she died a little too early. I'm so sad to let her go."
But then Geum-ja's son finds his mother, Jun-hee and the baby. He tells his mother he needs to kill Jun-hee to save himself from death. That's when Geum-ja stabs her own son, protecting Jun-hee and her newborn child, with the guards ultimately killing him t the end of the game.
"There were both scenes in seasons two and three that brought tears to my eyes," Kang Ae-sim via a translator.
"I remember watching one of the clips together with the actor who played my son, Yang Dong-geun, for a promotional shoot, and we were watching the scene and we cried together, because it just was so sad and heartbreaking. And I'm a big fan of Yang Dong-geun myself. He is a great artist, musician and actor in Korea, so I was very happy to work together with him, but it broke my heart even more so."
Grappling with what happened in the game, and what she did to her son, Hyun-ju dies by suicide.
As the story continues, the decision is made that the baby becomes a player in the game. But first, both Jun-he and her baby must participate in the Jump Rope game. Jun-hee has a severly injured foot, so Gi-hun takes her baby and is able to successfully get the newborn to the other side of the platform.
But with when Myung-gi tries to help Jun-hee in the game, saying that he wants to keep their baby safe too, she corrects him by saying that little girl has nothing to do with him, and she wants him to stay away from both of them.
"I felt so much for [Jun-hee] in that moment," Jo Yuri said, via translator . "And that scene was actually my audition scene for the character. So it was a scene that I kept very close to my heart."
"That was very emotionally difficult, and it's just a such a sad scene," Yim Si-wan added. "And while filming, I definitely felt that energy emanating from Jo Yuri as well, and felt that she was doing such a terrific job in portraying the intensity of that moment."
"Definitely it is my hope that he will be understood more in terms of where he's emotionally coming from, but I am also concerned that he will be subject to more criticism and more hate."
Because she won't be able to participate in the game with her injury, Jun-hee steps off the platform, falling to her death. Leaving her young daughter with Gi-hun to help her survive the rest of the game.
While we won't completely spoil the ending of the show, we'll say the final episode starts in a way that may be surprising for fans, with respect to what happens to Gi-hun. But following him on this fascinating story has been incredibly moving, particularly as we see how his faith in humanity has evolved.
"I thought very highly of the way Gi-hun thinks or views the world, and also his decisions," Lee Jung-jae said, with a translator. "Gi-hun is not the smartest guy. He's not the most capable guy either, but the way he thinks of others in his life and the other people that he meets, I think very highly of that."
"And also from seeing the character Gi-hun as myself, I would ask myself, would I be capable of making such decisions like Gi-hun did? I wish I could have the courage that Gi-hun had to be able to make those decisions. So I loved seeing Gi-hun's decisions and his journey, and I am very grateful, and also happy that I got this opportunity to think about these issues by portraying Gi-hun, and also the opportunity to share those conversations with our Squid Game fans."