The ending of Squid Game divides fans. Was it good?

Beware MAJOR SPOILERS for Squid Game season 3 below!

The third and final season of Squid Game just dropped on Netflix, and the fans are sounding off. Looking at Twitter/X, I see a lot of people posting the season's most powerful moments, and there were a lot of them. Fans want justice for Player 120, maybe the purest hero in the series, who died trying to save her friends. They were terrified by the Jump-Rope game. They were moved by Gi-hun's final words, an assertion of his humanity in the most inhumane circumstances imaginable.

But not everyone is happy. All seem to agree that Jun-ho, the former detective who's been looking for the island where the Squid Games are held since last season, ended up being pretty useless, especially since he and his brother, who runs the Squid Games, didn't get a proper reunion.

Some fans go further. "[I]n my opinion, this ending sucked and felt like a cash grab for an american squid game," complains one. That opinion is prevalant on the Squid Game Reddit, where dwell the hardest core of fans. Topics like "What the hell was season 3," "The ending f***** sucks," and "Last season was a flop...." are common and popular.

The third season just came out, and I think people are going to need time to sort through how they feel about it. But in the interest of getting discussion going, I have thoughts now...

Is this a worthy end for Squid Game?

Overall, I really enjoyed the third season of Squid Game, although "enjoyed" might be the wrong word; I gripped the edge of my couch so hard I tore out the fibers, which I think is a sign the show did something right.

As always, Squid Game presented us with a series of devilishly inventive games for the contestants to play, brought to life by what had better be an extremely well paid team of production designers. The maze in the Hide-And-Go-Seek game, the bridge in the Jump-Rope game, the geometric towers in the final game...each was visually spectacular. I can't see myself forgetting those set pieces anytime soon, another sign the show did something right.

I liked a lot of the characters, too, although many of my favorites died off sooner than I'd have liked, including the heroic Cho Hyun-ju and the good-hearted Jang Geum-ja. By the end, Gi-jun was left alone with a pack of anonymous assholes, but that needn't be a drawback; I thought a lot of them came into their own during the final game, which was thrillingly tense to watch.

But having Gi-hun be the only likable character by the end did give the final stretch a mean, bleak feeling. Season 3 is the darkest of the series. Gi-hun dies, but nothing really changes. The billionaire VIPs who finance the games get away. The Squid Games go on, as we see in the final scene where Cate Blanchett, of all people, plays a recruiter who's drafting a new person into the games, not in Seoul but across the ocean in sunny Los Angeles. The Squid Games have gone global.

When people say they're disappointed in the ending, I think they're reacting to this lack of change. In a very real way, evil wins. But again, I don't see this as a problem as long as it's an earnest expression of creator Hwang Dong-hyuk's viewpoint, and I think it is. He's talked a lot about his dim views of both capitalism and democracy, both of which take their lumps in Squid Game. “Coming into Season 3, because the economic system has failed us, politics have failed us, it seems like we have no hope,” Hwang told the Los Angeles Times. “What hope do we have as a human race when we can no longer control our own greed? I wanted to explore that. And in particular, I wanted to [pose] that question to myself.”

"I don’t have the answer. But I have to admit, honestly, I think I’ve become more cynical, working on ‘Squid Game.’"

Watching Squid Game, you can feel that cynicism seeping off the screen. I don't think an ending where goodness prevailed and the games were brought down would have felt earned. But the show isn't devoid of hope. Gi-hun keeps his moral compass through to the very end, when he gives up his life so that a baby, the daughter of player 222 born in the arena, can live. And that act of self-sacrifice ripples outward. It convinces the rogue Squid Game guard No-eul to keep living, and she's rewarded later with a potential reunion with her daughter. Even the Front Man, who runs the Squid Games, may have been touched; he goes out of his way to make sure Gi-hun's daughter gets what remains of his winnings. Gi-hun's good act may be a pinprick of light in the darkness, but the darkness does not drown it out.

I also think Hwang's critiques of capitalism and democracy are open to critique themselves. If there's one thing about Squid Game season 3 I thought was a consistent let-down, it was the depiction of the billionaire VIPs, who were drawn too broadly to be credible on a show where the character drama is usually grounded and granular. The VIPs are cornerstones in this violent, exploitative system; we should loathe them, but we can't, because they're too cartoonish to be taken seriously. I honestly wonder if something was lost in translation when it came to the script or the acting or the directing, because the scenes with the VIPs are noticeably more stilted and cringey than the ones with the players.

Squid Game S3 Cr. No Ju-han/Netflix © 2025 | Squid Game

Is Squid Game becoming a franchise?

So the VIPs fell flat for me. But for the most part, I see the things fans are taking issue with as artistic choices that provide a good jumping off point for discussion. I think asking whether an ending is "good" or "satisfying" is a bit reductive, since those things are always going to be subjective. But does it get you thinking? Does it get you talking? Those are more measurable, and I think the ending to Squid Game does both.

That said, there's a possibility that Hwang Dong-hyuk intended to end with something more conclusive, but held off because he knew Netflix was working on an English-language spinoff show, with Fight Club director David Fincher rumored to be attached. Was Cate Blanchett's cameo supposed to prime us for what comes next? I'll reserve judgment for when and if that happens, but if this ending was designed mainly to promote what's next, that would lower my opinion of it.

But for now, I enjoyed my time with Squid Game, brutal as it is. I do feel like it had something to say about the world, and I think it said it with bloody panache.

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