The final-ever episode of Squid Game is really two episodes. In the first half, we spend a final few minutes playing the Squid Games themselves. In the back half, the show takes a beat to chill and reflect on how far it's come, and how far it may still have to go.
The previous episode ended with only three players left alive: Gi-hun, Myung-gi, and Jun-hee's newborn baby, psychotically inducted into the games at the request of the VIPs. The rules of the final game state that at least one of them must die; after that, the remaining players split the prize money.
I didn't expect Myung-gi to make it this far into the games, but he's always had the brain for it. He is the ultimate utilitarian, always calculating the odds and doing what's best to advance his own interests. He suppresses all the better angels of his nature to do this, like when he killed people during the Hide-And-Go-Seek game not because he liked it, but because it would thin the herd and let him take home more of the prize money.
But he's starting to crack. How could he not, with his own baby now one of the final three players? Still, he starts the episode off by trying to maximize efficiency. He crosses over to the third and final tower, pulls the long metal poll out of the floor, and makes an inhumane demand of Gi-hun: hand over the baby. He doesn't intend to save the child, but rather to leave Gi-hun on the second towerand then drop his own baby over the edge of the third, taking home the full grand prize for himself.
Myung-gi's plan didn't make a lot of sense to me. Myung-gi asked something of Gi-hun, but the plan required that both Gi-hun and the baby die, which means there was no reason for Gi-hun to cooperate. It's not Myung-gi's best plan, probably because he's starting to lose it. He's emotional, screaming at Gi-hun that he's willing for all three of them to die here. Gi-hun offers to sacrifice himself so that Myung-gi and the baby can live, and after watching Gi-hun for three seasons, I fully believed that he was telling the truth. But Myung-gi doesn't; he's been so selfish for so long that his ability to trust people is broken beyond repair.
In the end, Gi-hun does hand over the baby, but then leaps to the next tower as the bridge starts to retract, which sets off a fun action sequence. It's middle-aged man vs young man, pole vs knife, selfless vs selfish. The two of them end up dangling from the edge, with Myung-gi literally hanging on by a thread. He falls to his doom, and suddenly Gi-hun and the baby are the only ones left.
At this point there's only thing Gi-hun can do: the right thing. He voluntarily falls off the tower, dying so that the baby can live. He may not have brought down the Squid Games like he wanted, but he did save an innocent life.
This is the end?
Meanwhile, Jun-ho finally arrives on the island. What's more, he's alerted the coast guard to its location, but it's too late to make any difference. The Front Man knows he's coming and initiates a good old-fashioned self-destruct sequence. He literally pushes a big red scary button and we see a 30-minute countdown begin. It's classic supervillain stuff.
I assume the VIPs make it out okay; we don't see anything of them after Gi-hun's death. The guards evacuate the premises. That includes No-eul, who burns the records of all the contestants, including those for Gyeong-seok, whom she's been trying to protect all season. When she looks over her own records, we learn that her daughter, whom she left behind after she fled North Korea, has died. Finally we have the key to understanding her; everything she's done in the games has been out of guilt and regret. Her final good deed done, she's about to take her own life when she sees Gi-hun sacrifice himself for the baby. That gives her the inspiration to blend in with the rest of the guards and flee the island.
The Front Man collects the baby and hightails it out of there, although not before having one last stare-down with his brother Jun-ho. But they don't actually have a conversation. Jun-ho leaves as well, the island goes up in flames, and that's the end of that.
Epilogue
But it's not the end of the episode. "Humans Are..." takes its time telling us what happens to the survivors. Generally speaking, the parts of Squid Game that don't deal with the actual Squid Games are the least compelling, but I felt the show had earned a breather. I liked getting to relax during this final segment.
The epilogue is laid back and surprisingly upbeat. We learn that Choi Woo-seok went to prison after breaking into Captain Park's house a few episodes back, but it was only for six months. Jo-hun picks him up from jail, and everyone seems to be in decent spirits. Woo-seok is going to fix up the motel where Gi-hun was staying while he was trying to expose the Squid Games, and Jo-hun is moving on with his life; he's not sure what he'll do next, but he's done with the police force. I liked seeing these characters get a chance to just live their lives after the hell they just went through.
When Jo-hun comes back to his apartment, he gets a surprise: Jun-hee's baby, the winner of the 2024 Squid Games, swaddled in Gi-hun's Squid Game uniform. The implication is that the Front Man, real name In-ho, dropped the baby off; Jun-ho's mission, should he choose to accept it and I think he will, is to take care of the child, with the help of her $33 million in winnings.
Meanwhile, No-eul returns to the theme park where she used to work to check in on Gyeong-seok, whose daughter has recovered from her bone cancer and is bouncing around the park. No-eul doesn't reveal to Gyeong-seok that she was the guard who helped him. It's a sweet scene.
Moments later she gets a call from South Men, North Women, the organization she was working with in season 2 that tries to reunite North Korean families that have been split up. Apparently, her daughter may actually be alive in China. The last we see of her, she's boarding a plane to China, hopefully on the way to her own happy ending.
Because the show has tortured us enough and is ready to play nice, we also get some post-mortem resolution for Kang Sae-byeok, the contestant who fought all the way to the end of the Squid Games with Gi-hun in the first season. South Men, North Woman manages to reunite her brother with her mother; you'll remember that the reason Sae-byeok participated in the Squid Games in the first place was to get money to try and get her mother out of North Korea. After so much death and malice, it's a nice relief to see some things work out for these characters, even the dead ones.
Finally, the Front Man travels to Los Angeles to deliver what remains of Gi-hun's winnings to his daughter Ga-yeong, someone else we haven't seen in a while. Once again, I liked how the episode takes its time tying up these loose ends; not only does it gives us a sense of closure, it lets us sit back and reflect on what the show did, and what it meant.
And maybe think about what comes next? Because the last thing to happen in Squid Game is the Front Man rolling down a car window in downtown LA and seeing someone in a suit playing ddakji with a random dude; clearly, the person in the suit is a recruiter and the random dude is about to be drafted into the American version of the Squid Games. Oh, and the recruiter is played by Cate Freaking Blanchett, winner of multiple Academy Awards and Hollywood A-lister. And may I just say, she has more gravitas with her one single line ("As you wish") than any of the English-speaking VIPs did all season.
What did we learn?
There's been a lot of chatter about an English-language spinoff Squid Game, not a remake but rather another series set in the same world. The ending certainly seems to gesture in that direction.
Does that mean this whole series was just setup for something else? It's true that "Humans Are..." left lots of things unresolved, or at least didn't resolve them as conclusively as a lot of fans were probably hoping. The Squid Game facilities on that one South Korean island are blown up, but does that matter when there are who-knows-how-many other facilities around the world? The VIPs, the people bankrolling this barbarity, got away. The games go on.
You could look at that and say that nothing was accomplished, but that might be the point. Squid Game creator Hwang Dong-hyuk has talked openly about his cynicism regarding capitalism, democracy and the world in general. I think part of the reason Squid Game has resonated with so many people is because it captures a feeling a lot of us have about modern life: that wealthy elites are hoarding all the resources and making the rest of us fight for scraps. People are caught in systems designed to keep them down and desperate. Ending Squid Game with the abolition of the games would have been dishonest; they keep going in this world as they keep going in ours. That's a bleak reading, but it's one I think Hwang Dong-hyuk could come by honestly.
Instead, the victories in Squid Game come in the form of smaller, more personal acts of goodness. The Squid Games are designed to make people embrace their worst instincts, but despite everything, Gi-hun never loses his moral compass, even giving up his life for another. That inspires No-eul to keep living, which means she has that many more chances to do good.
Even the Front Man may have had a change of heart, however small. He's still in the Squid Game organization, but I don't know if he was required to make sure Gi-hun's remaining money went to his daughter; he may have done that out of respect, for Gi-hun and for the sliver of humanity he still has remaining to him. He made sure Jun-hee's baby has a good home. Like No-eul, I think he was inspired by Gi-hun, although not enough to completely break with the Squid Games.
There's something regressive and defeatist in that message: inhumane institutions persist, and all we little people can do is cherish the small moments of happiness afforded to us within them, without hope of real change. And yet those victories are real. This is a muted ended, but not a hopeless one.
And yes, maybe they really are saving the abolition of the Squid Games for a sequel series. We're in the age of the never-ending franchise, after all, and there is money to be made. But we can cross that narrow metal bridge when we come to it. For now, I say to everyone who made Squid Game possible: thanks for the bloody memories.
Bullet Points Are...
- Biggest unanswered question: Who was the woman making those announcements over the PA system this whole time? Is she really on the island, or was that an electronic voice? Someone tell her story...
Episode Grade: B
More 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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