[Editor’s note: This article contains spoilers for “Squid Game” Season 3, including the finale.]
Within the remaining episode of “Squid Recreation,” Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) utters the phrases “People are…” That incomplete sentence, that subject-verb mixture that types each the episode title and the present’s core questions lingers all through the finale, and past. Are they good? Unhealthy? Grasping? Selfless? All of it, none of it — and every part in between.
As famous in IndieWire’s spoiler-free evaluation of the season, “Squid Recreation” largely ends precisely the way you’d count on. Viewers who really feel disenchanted resulting from an absence of twists and turns could wish to think about what drew them to the present within the first place, and what it ever did to counsel an alternate denouement. This can be a present that not solely killed off most characters within the first season, however primarily promised to take action up entrance. What different course was there?
Season 3, Episode 6 opens proper the place its predecessor left off, with Gi-hun and Myung-gi (Im Si-wan) standing on raised platforms excessive above the bottom, processing the data that one among them or the toddler 222 should die within the subsequent spherical. The infant getting into the competitors strained “Squid Recreation” credulity, however solely so far as it additionally pushed the characters’ ethical boundaries.
After probably the quickest start in human historical past, Jun-hee’s (Jo Yuri) youngster is compelled to take her place within the video games, which anybody with an oz of empathy would clearly reject. The common viewer’s thoughts will outright reject it — so, after all, the cartoonishly evil VIPs lap it up. Different gamers and guards indulge the perverse twist too shortly, however that works as an extension of the “Squid Recreation” worldview: Cash makes folks do unthinkable issues, and it coaxes doubtful witnesses into compliance (particularly when dissent equals loss of life).
All this to say: Method too many individuals have been rooting for that child to die within the remaining sport, nevertheless it clearly ratcheted up the stakes for a present that usually dangers desensitizing viewers to deadly violence. After Myung-gi’s shallow try to guard Gi-hun and the newborn, he wastes no time turning on them each. In a season crammed with impeccable performances, Im isn’t any exception in a remaining scene that lays out his character’s untold depths in addition to his biggest disappointment: wanting so badly to do the best factor, however figuring out he’ll fail earlier than he even tries.
He didn’t need to harm his personal child — however knew earlier than even hitting the pink button that when the second got here, he may do it.
Myung-gi — and lots of others, most likely — is just not able to what Gi-hun does when the ultimate sport commences in earnest. Gi-hun summons his braveness and spirit in his remaining moments, defending his values whilst his mission decisively fails. He provides his life to avoid wasting one other, which is likely to be the final vestige of the previous Gi-hun who entered the video games in Season 1. That man was clumsier, much less world-weary, even smiled on occasion — and he cared a hell of loads for the folks round him.
Lee provides it his all as traditional, however with Gi-hun gone on the midpoint, the episode provides technique to his excellent costars; Lee Byung-hun because the Entrance Man, Wi Ha-jun as his brother Jun-ho, Park Gyu-young as No-eul. There’s barely any dialogue within the final moments of the sport, however all of them convey worlds of emotion with their eyes and physique language, elevating the type of philosophical character questions followers can fervently interrogate for years to return.
And as bleak and tragic as Gi-hun’s loss of life is, it’s adopted by the type of pinpricks of hope (“bursts of sunshine”) that make life value dwelling in a capitalist hellscape. Six months later, Na-yeon is cancer-free, No-eul may discover her daughter, the mom and brother of Sae-byeok from Season 1 (HoYeon Jung) lastly reunite, and the youngsters of Gi-hun and Jun-hee can have higher lives after their mother and father’ sacrifices.
It’s not a sophisticated takeaway: We do what we do — endure, fail, persist, persevere — for love. What sort of world places a literal value on love, on life? Love’s victories, nevertheless uncommon, poke by the grisly dread of of “Squid Recreation,” by no means cloying, however downright poignant. The video games will discover a technique to proceed, however the gamers and people who survive them will attempt to mitigate one another’s ache. That’s all we are able to do, and we’ll preserve doing it.
“Squid Recreation” is now streaming on Netflix.
