I feel like only a show as popular as Squid Game could get away with titling an episode "▢△◯." Call it the episode formerly known as Prince. Old people get it.
After the last, slightly slower episode, we are back on a breakneck spiral down into the depths of moral relativism, ratcheted along by yet another stupendously creative and well-realized game of death. I want to honor Hwang Dong-hyuk for creating, writing and directing the show. I want to honor Seong Gi-hun and the other actors for making it believable. But I really want to honor the production designers for realizing these bloody nightmare-scapes. I feel like I will be walking through these strange spaces in my head for years, whether it's the starry maze from Hide-And-Go-Seek, the narrow bridge from Jump Rope, or the geometric towers from this episode.
But we'll get to that. First, we pick up with Gi-hun, who's just received two things from the Front Man: a dagger and a suggestion: kill the rest of the players in their sleep and leave the game with Jun-hee's baby. But you never believed Gi-hun would really do that, did you? The extreme stress of the Squid Games brings out the worst in some people. But after after everything he's seen and taken on, Gi-hun has become more noble and self-sacrificing. He can't kill the other players in their sleep, even though they would happily do him in. Gi-hun is the heart of decency at the center of the story who makes makes everyone else him look morally filthy by comparison. But does that mean he's going to win?
The Front Man, who gave up his soul a long time ago, doesn't think so. Remember: like Gi-hun, the Front Man was originally a winner of the Squid Games. In flashbacks, we see that Oh Il-nam, the old billionaire who started the games, extended the same offer to the Front Man that the Front Man is now extending to Gi-hun, only the Front Man took him up on it. Years later, the Front Man watches Gi-hun make a different choice, forcing him to realize that not everyone is as morally bankrupt as he is willing to be.
I think there is a shred of decency left within the Front Man; if there wasn't, he would have killed his brother Hwang Jun-ho when he had the chance, rather than saving him and then spending time and resources making sure he'd never find Squid Game Island. Well, Jun-ho has found the island, so we're going to get a brotherly reunion in the finale. Maybe the Front Man will be inspired by Gi-hun and turn over a new leaf. Or maybe this time the brothers will actually kill each other. Stay tuned.
Meanwhile, No-eul the rebel guard sneaks back into the facility and confronts her boss. I don't know his name, so let's call him Foreman; he's not as high up in the organization as the Front Man but he's not another one of the grunts either. No-eul is determined to save Gyeong-seok so he can take care of his sick daughter. The Foreman gets under her skin a bit, wondering if she's this dedicated because she's guilty about leaving behind her own kids behind in North Korea. That's the closest thing we've gotten to character development for No-eul in a while, which I'm fine with; I like her as a strong-but-silent avenging badass. I have a feeling she'll be instrumental in blowing up the whole operation in the finale.
For now, she gets a great tense action scene with the Foreman, whom she forces at gunpoint to take her into the Front Man's office where she can erase any record of Gyeong-seok ever having participated in the Squid Games. But the Foreman is able to turn things around, and the two have a knock-down, drag-out battle. It's well-choreographed, with lots of peaks and valleys; at one point, No-eul is down for the count and I thought she might be done for. This is Squid Game, after all, where plot armor is thin at best.
That made her last-minute turnaround all the more satisfying. Wounded, No-eul crawls to the elevator used to get in and out of the Front Man's office. The Foreman thinks she's making a feeble attempt to escape, but really she's going for the machine gun he forgot they dropped in there. He realizes his mistake and leaps forward, but too late; she blasts him out of midair in a very cool moment. Whatever happens to No-eul in the finale, she'll always be awesome for that one.
Faulty Towers
The real meat of this episode are the Squid Games themselves, as ever. The final game is typically diabolical: the remaining nine players, including the baby, ride an elevator to the top of a very tall tower shaped like a giant square. If at least one person falls to their death, they migrate to the next tower over, which is shaped like a giant triangle, and repeat the process. Finally they make it to the third and final tower, shaped like a giant circle. Once again, at least one person must fall. Any players remaining split the grand prize amongst themselves.
It's one of the simplest games we've seen yet, and one of the best. A lot of the Squid Games, especially towards the end, seem designed to prove that human beings are, at bottom, nasty pieces of work willing to be awful to each other in the name of survival. The VIPs, who are watching from a safe distance behind glass and masks, are kind of like the Front Man; they're trying to soothe their own guilty consciousness by putting people in situations where they have to turn on each other. Then they tell themselves that this is the natural way of things, which helps them justify their own abhorrent behavior. Or maybe they have no consciousness; honestly, the VIPs are cringey and I don't like hearing from them.
But I could listen to this final crop of players all day. We don't know most of these men well, but the episode gets us up to speed very quickly. There's 203, the most cruel and sadistic of the group, always ready to choose the most violent option. 039 is a scared man who's joined up with a bunch of bullies for want of any other good options. 353 and 336 may be decent person on the outside, but here they'll do whatever it takes to live. I was impressed how vivid these characters felt despite their lack of screentime beforehand; under these extreme circumstances, everyone comes into sharp relief very quickly.
In addition to Gi-hun and the baby, we also have delicate Min-su, shrewd Myung-gi, and Player Number 100, a scumbag who I've wanted dead since more or less the first moment I saw him in season 2. I finally get my wish.
But not right away. Nudged by Myung-gi, the group first turns on Min-su, who is still high on Thanos' pills and just about at the end of his rope. I haven't known quite how to feel about Min-su for much of this run. In the end, mostly I pitied him. It was clear he was never cut out for these kinds of tests. I was sad as Myung-gi pushed him off the tower, but at least his pain was over.
Myung-gi is the one to watch in this episode; remember that he's the father of the back, something that's revealed to the rest of the group with a bit too much drama and fanfare; I guess because we already knew, I expected the others would have caught on, but they all seem surprised. At first, it's not clear Myung-gi is going to try and help his baby when Player 100 and his goons vote to toss it over the edge. I was getting antsy waiting for Myung-gi to step up. In reality he's playing the long game, talking 100 into going after Min-su instead and biding his time until his moment comes.
Myung-gi does finally join Gi-hun in trying to protect the baby from the rest of the group, but there's a mercilessness to him that makes him an unreliable ally. Remember that, back during the Hide-And-Go-Seek game, Myung-gi stalked through the maze killing people in order to increase his share of the winnings; he wasn't being sadistic, but he was still committing murder. That Myung-gi rears his head again in this episode; when all of 100's followers are eliminated and it's time for those remaining to move onto the next tower, Myung-gi pushes 100 off anyway, saying that the prize pool will be bigger with him dead. Yes, 100 is a sniveling jackass who wanted to kill a baby, so maybe Myung-gi was mad about that. But I think it was more that he really is that calculating. Myung-gi is a utilitarian monster.
Ends and means
This episode is very concerned with the different ways people approach impossible situations. It asks the question: can you kill your fellow man in an ethical way?
We know Myung-gi's approach: cold calculating efficiency. What maximizes the results in his favor? Player Number 100 uses another approach: democracy as a cover for brutality. Before he and his followers decide who to kill, they put it to a vote. So it's fair, in a way, but what they're voting to do is unconscionable.
It brings to mind what Squid Game creator Hwang Dong-hyuk has said about why he introduced the voting mechanic this season. “We live in a democratic society, and everyone has their own right to vote, but the dominant side rules,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “So I also wanted to pose the question: Is the majority always right?”
In the case of the Squid Games, the answer is no. As we see over and over again, the most selfish people in the pack vote to stay, putting the lives of their fellow man at risk. Remember Geum-ja's heartbreaking plea to the group a couple episode back, when she entreated them to leave so that the innocent child born into this hellhole could live? They ignored her and voted to stay. Squid Game seems as skeptical of democracy as it does of capitalism.
Not that we take this metaphor too far; in democratic societies, a lot of work goes into influencing people how to vote, something that isn't really covered on the show. In any case, the most defensible position seems to be Gi-hun's; he neither wants to maximize results nor vote, but to draw lots. Whoever draws the short straw dies; that's the most fair and impartial way to do this.
But Gi-hun is surrounded by people who want to put their thumb on the scale, or cover for their own sadism. In the end, Player Number 039 throws himself off the edge of the tower rather than be a part of this anymore, leaving only three people left in the game: Gi-hun, Myung-gi and the baby. For anyone to make it out alive, at least one of them must die.
See you in the finale.
Bullet Points
- Kang Sae-byeok, Gi-hun's fellow player from the first season, makes a brief appearance inside Gi-hun's head, telling him not to act on the Front Man's suggestion to kill everyone. It's a nice nod for the fans.
- I have no idea why, but in the Front Man's office, in a side room, there is a waxworks statue of Oh Il-nam, the guy who started the Squid Games who died at the end of season 1. I don't want to know.
- Out at sea, Hwang Jun-ho rescues Gyeong-seok, who's being pursued by Squid Game guards. I imagine that's the final piece of the puzzle Hwang Jun-ho needs to find Squid Game Island. As for poor Gyeong-seok, he just can't catch a break; he leaves the island, he goes back, he leaves again, he goes back again...if the show had actually bothered to fill him out as a character I'd feel bad for him.
- Is the term "lunch box" a well-known euphemism? Number 100 was talking like it was, but I'd never heard it before.
Episode Grade: A
Other Squid Game reviews:
- Season 3, Episode 1: "Keys and Knives"
- Season 3, Episode 2: "The Starry Night"
- Season 3, Episode 3: "It's Not Your Fault"
- Season 3, Episode 4: "222"
- Season 3, Episode 5: " ▢△◯"
- Season 3, Episode 6: "Humans Are..."
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