Diksha Sundriyal
The third and final season of Netflix’s ‘Squid Game’ brings Seong Gi-hun’s story to a close as he faces the consequences of his choices. The season picks up where Season 2 left off, in the wake of the devastating failure of Gi-hun’s rebellion, which ended with the deaths of almost everyone involved in it. Now, with three more games remaining, he seems to have lost his desire to continue. But while he might be done with the game, the game is not done with him. By the end of it, he finds himself in a unique position to make a choice that completely alters the course of his journey. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Squid Game Season 3 Plot Synopsis
With Gi-hun’s failed rebellion, the Squid Games continue with three more games. The Keys and Knives game leads a lot of players to lose their lives. This includes Cho Hyun-ju (Player 120), who is killed by Myung-gi, and Park Yong-sik (Player 007), who is killed by his own mother when he tries to kill Jun-hee (Player 222). Later, his mother kills herself too, but before that, she seeks out Gi-hun and pleads with him to get back in the game as he is the only chance that Jun-hee and her baby, who was born during the Keys and Knives game, have. The old woman’s death knocks some life back into Gi-hun, and in the next game, he takes responsibility for the baby. However, he is not able to save the mother, who decides to kill herself rather than let Gi-hun endanger himself for her.
Meanwhile, Detective Hwang continues his search for the island and soon discovers Captain Park’s betrayal, which kills most of his team. No-eul helps Player 246 escape, but is forced to return when she discovers that her boss, the Masked Man, knows exactly who 246 is and where to find him and his innocent daughter. She decides to destroy all the players’ records, and in the process, she ends up killing the Masked Man and burning down all the records. In the final game, Gi-hun takes it upon himself to save the baby at all costs, even if it means fighting all the remaining players, all of whom seem to place more value on money than on the life of a newborn.
Who Wins Squid Game Season 3?
The last game brings back the Squid Game, but with a twist. This time as well, the players have to force the other players out of the circle, triangle, and square boundaries, but this time, going out of the boundary means falling several feet to one’s death. To encourage the nine players (which includes Myung-gi, Min-su, and the baby) to continue playing, they are given a hint during their final dinner. If the nine of them can come to a conclusion about which three players to kill, the remaining can take away the winning, divided equally amongst all. Of course, this doesn’t mean that they can’t kill more than three people, and that’s what everyone fixates on.
Seeing Gi-hun, the baby, and Min-su as the weakest links, the others, including Myung-gi, decide that those three should be the ones to go. When the day of the game arrives and they are introduced to the rules, they understand why they were asked to pick three people. The problem is separating the baby from Gi-hun, because if both of them die at the same time, the remaining six will have to fight amongst themselves to decide whom to kill next. On the first level, they vote to kill the baby, but Myung-gi intervenes and convinces them to kill Min-su first.
On the second level, when the others try to separate the baby from Gi-hun, Myung-gi kills one of the others, showing that he had been trying to save the baby all this time because he is the father. This leads the others to panic, and they try to come up with an alternative. When they choose another player they consider the weakest, they beat him to a pulp to take him as a “lunchbox” for the next level. Once they throw the guy off, all the others can get away with billions of won. However, things get out of hand when Gi-hun refuses to go forward with the lunchbox idea and tries to help the wounded guy. The ensuing altercation leads Myung-gi to kill two more, while Gi-hun kills another. Myung-gi thinks about using the lunchbox guy for the final level, but the man refuses to let them win at his expense and kills himself.
Seong Gi-hun Makes the Ultimate Sacrifice
In the end, only Myung-gi, Gi-hun, and the baby are left. Seeing that one of them has to die and it cannot be the baby, Gi-hun offers to kill himself so that the baby can be with its father. But then, Myung-gi refuses to let Gi-hun cross over to the third level, which means that he is ready to kill the baby to get the prize money. This convinces Gi-hun that Myung-gi is not worth his sacrifice, so he makes his way to the last level, where the fight between the duo leads to Myung-gi falling off. This would have led to Gi-hun and the baby winning, but the problem is that they didn’t press the button to mark the beginning of the game, which means that Myung-gi’s death is not counted.
This means that either Gi-hun or the baby will win. While the VIP guests think that Gi-hun will now kill the baby, it becomes clear that he has no intention to do so. Instead, he decides to kill himself, ensuring that the baby will be safe. Before this, he looks towards the spectators, including the Front Man, declaring that the players in the game are not horses but humans. In a way, this is his call for the host to do the right thing and give the money to the baby. In a way, he knows that the game’s twisted sense of dedication to the rules means that the baby will get the prize money one way or another. So, he jumps off, falling to his death, with Jun-hee’s baby becoming the sole winner of the game.
What Happens to the Baby? Why Does the Front Man Leave the Baby for Hwang?
Whoever wins Squid Game, no matter how they get there, will get the billions of won that were promised at the beginning of the game. The problem with this edition is that the winner is a baby, who is just a day old. Both his parents died during the game, and it has no one to take care of it until it is old enough to make use of the prize money. The other players consider this possibility too, which is why they find it redundant to let the baby be one of the winners, let alone the sole winner. They use this argument to try and have it removed from the game, claiming that the money will go to waste as the baby doesn’t have anyone to take care of it.
However, Seong Gi-hun has played and won the game before, which is why he knows that whatever happens, the baby will get what was promised to it. More importantly, he has met the Front Man, and despite all that went down between them, he knows that masked man will do right by the baby. This is exactly what happens in the end. As Detective Hwang zeroes in on the island, with the Coast Guard on tow, the entire island is emptied out, and the whole building is rigged with explosives so that the authorities don’t find anything of worth.
Before leaving the building, the Front Man gets the baby out as well. Six months later, he leaves the baby in Hwang’s apartment. Because Hwang is his brother, the Front Man can trust only him to take care of the baby. With the money that the child has to its name, the Front Man could have paid anyone to babysit it, but he cannot continue to stay in touch with the winner. And ruthless as he might be, he still has enough heart and soul not to give away the baby to just anyone. More importantly, he cannot trust anyone not to be corrupted by the prize money and abandon the baby. So, he leaves the baby and the money to Hwang.
Through this, he ensures a good future not only for the baby but also for his brother, who has now left his job as a cop and is looking to start a new chapter of his life, for which he needed money. For the past few years, he was obsessed with the game because he was looking for his brother. But the final meeting between them, brief as it is, gives him the closure he needed, and he is ready to move on from this fixation and focus on his own life. The money will certainly help him do that, and he is also righteous enough to take care of the baby properly.
Who Takes Gi-hun’s Money? What does Front Man give to Gi-hun’s Daughter?
After Gi-hun won Squid Game in Season 1, he received billions of won, which he then used to buy the Pink Motel, where he set up his headquarters to focus on the search for the Recruiter, so he could find a way back to the games. When he decides to reenter the games, he still has a majority portion of his money back at the motel, and only Detective Hwang and Woo-seok know about it. Because Gi-hun dies in the game, he cannot come back to reclaim his money. Still, when Hwang goes back to the motel, the money is gone, and someone has wiped out all the video footage to keep their identity from being revealed.
While Hwang and Woo-seok wonder where the money went, as they briefly consider that Gi-hun might have survived and come back for the money, they never entertain the possibility that the Front Man could have taken it. While it seems that Gi-hun was operating in secret, it later turns out that the Front Man seemed to know more than he let on. This means that he was aware of the motel and the money, too. When Gi-hun dies, he knows that the money is still out there. Under different circumstances, he wouldn’t have cared about the money, but over the course of the games, he develops a sense of respect for Gi-hun.
It is out of this respect that he feels the obligation to take care of Gi-hun’s affairs. So, instead of letting the money fall into Hwang, Woo-seok, or anyone else’s hands, he takes it away, puts it in a bank, and gives it to Gi-hun’s daughter, who now lives in America with her mother. She’d left years ago, but Gi-hun had tried to stay in touch with her. After winning the games, he thought about going to America, but then he changed his mind and decided to find the Recruiter instead. This cut him off from his daughter. So, when he dies, the Front Man finds her and tells her about Gi-hun’s passing. He leaves her his jersey, as well as a card with all the money that her father had before her died, which would be millions of dollars.
Is there Squid Game in America? What does Cate Blanchett’s Character Mean?
Having given Gi-hun’s daughter his belongings and his money, the Front Man drives away. On the way, the car stops next to an alley, where he notices a man and a woman playing ddakji. This is similar to what the Recruiter used to do in the subway in South Korea to get poor and desperate people to play the game. It is clear that the woman (in a surprising cameo by Cate Blanchett) is the Recruiter, and the way she keeps winning shows that she is trying to get the man prepped for becoming one of the players in the game. Before the Front Man moves on, he and the Recruiter look at each other, and their shared look of acknowledgment reveals that they both know exactly who the other person is.
Or at least, they know that the other person also works in the same circle, which would be a rare thing to come across randomly on the other side of the world. This confirms that even if the island in South Korea is gone, this doesn’t mean that the games have stopped. In fact, they are no longer limited to South Korea. Considering the international clientele in the VIP section, it makes sense that some of the guests would have wanted to replicate the same thing in their countries. The Front Man just happened upon a Recruiter in action in a completely different country. The fact that he is not surprised by this means that he knows that the game is in action all over the world, which means that an endless world of possibilities has opened up for the world of ‘Squid Game.’
Why does No-eul go to China? What Happens to Sae-byeok’s Mother and Brother?
With the games finally coming to an end, the show wraps up all the loose ends, which include No-eul’s journey. She went into the games as a guard because she needed the money to look for her daughter. But then, she discovers that her daughter has been declared dead, or at least, that’s what it says in her file in the Front Man’s office. The realisation that she has been chasing a wild dream of a reunion with her daughter leads her to break down. She destroys all the records, though she’d intended to destroy only Player 246’s, and then prepares to kill herself because she feels she doesn’t have a purpose anymore.
No-eul haș the gun in her mouth and is ready to fire when she hears the cries of Jun-hee’s baby. This pulls her back into reality as she is reminded of her own daughter. This is quite a fortunate turn for her because the authorities are on their way to the island, and the Front Man has the whole place rigged to blow up. By the time everything goes up in flames, No-eul is far away from all the mess. Later, it is revealed that she has been keeping tabs on Player 246 and his daughter, even though he has no idea that she is the one who saved his life.
In an unexpected turn of events, she gets a call from the guy she’d hired to find her daughter. He tells her that he has discovered that the girl could be in China. Even though the file in Front Man’s office said that her daughter is dead, No-eul can’t help but jump at the possibility of them being wrong. She immediately books a ticket to China, where a meeting has been arranged to get her to her daughter so that she can either reunite with her once and for all, or come to terms that her daughter is gone for good.
Meanwhile, the show also ties up the story of Sae-byeok from Season 1. She entered the game because she needed the money to bring her mother out of North Korea and have her reunited with her brother. Before she dies, she makes Gi-hun promise that he will finish what she started. He diligently works to keep this promise, and even though he dies, he succeeds in giving Sae-byeok what she wanted. Her mother finally comes to South Korea and is reunited with her brother, fulfilling Sae-byeok’s dying wish and the promise that Gi-hun made to her.
Read More: Squid Game Season 3 Episode 1 Recap: Keys and Knives
