This article contains spoilers for Squid Game season 3.

All Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) wanted to do was save lives.

That is Player 456’s singular focus from the moment he wins the 33rd edition of the titular games in Squid Game season 1 and persists through the 36th edition of the games in season 2 and season 3. Though he could have easily absconded to Los Angeles to reunite with his estranged daughter, Gi-hun uses his ₩45.6 billion prize winnings to establish a sophisticated surveillance apparatus to find the mysterious Recruiter (Gong Yoo) and infiltrate the contest. Upon donning his “456” green tracksuit once again, Gi-hun does whatever he can to convince his competitors that he’s “PLAYED THESE GAMES BEFORE!” and that they really need to listen to him to save their own skins.

Of course, humans are … well, humans are complicated and none of Gi-hun’s fellow humans heed his warning. The candidate pool of lives to be saved shrinks from round to round as the piggy bank prize pot grows. By the time the Squid Game competitors respond to the introduction of a literal infant as Player 222 into the game with murderous rage, Gi-hun knows he has to switch tactics. He was never going to be able to save everyone and perhaps not even most of them. The best he can do now is to save someone. So he does exactly that, making it to the very last round of the games once again and sacrificing himself to save the most vulnerable soul.

And that’s why Squid Game has a happy ending! OK, that’s obviously not quite true. As we mentioned in our season 3 review, Squid Game is one of the most intensely dark and cynical pieces of popular mass media ever produced. No story boasting close to a 99.8% morality rate could ever end “happily.” Still, that doesn’t mean it can’t end with at least some semblance of victory or hope.

Whether the dumbass VIPs who watch these deadly games realize it or not, Seong Gi-hun won the 36th Squid Game competition. Sure, his name won’t go down in the ledger of winners and his next of kin won’t receive any additional prize winnings (beyond his 2021 purse, of course) but he won them all the same. That’s because he did the one thing that the game is designed specifically to discourage: he made a sacrifice.

Time and time again in Squid Game, players are given the opportunity to make the selfless choice – from offering mercy to a wounded opponent to voting to end the contest altogether – and every time they balk at the chance. This is not because they are bad people. It’s because they’re simply people. The same circumstances that made them desperate enough to enter the games in the first place persist throughout and make them desperate enough to continue. The game’s creators, now represented by Front Man Hwang In-ho (Lee Byung-hun), understand that dynamic and design the games to exploit it. It’s not enough for a rich VIP to torture some poor wretch. They could do that in the privacy of their own mansion. What’s truly satisfying to them is to put on a grand, expensive production in which people are prompted to torture themselves.

Gi-hun’s sacrifice, however, breaks that kayfabe. He opts out. He doesn’t play the game. And for that, he “wins” even as he dies. The Front Man, who like Player 456 has also “PLAYED THESE GAMES” immediately understands the impact of Gi-hun’s choice in a way that the other observing VIPs don’t. As the arrival of the Coast Guard triggers an evacuation sequence, Hwang In-ho goes through the motions, a defeated man. He barely even responds as his brother Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon) appears and trains a rifle on him. Instead he silently exits the island, “winner” 222 in tow, and heads off to safety.

Later on he takes the extraordinary measure of breaking into Seong Gi-hun’s motel hideout and stealing what remains of his original ₩45.6 billion to gift to his surviving family in Los Angeles. This is almost certainly not standard operating procedure for Squid Games. Surely, the Front Man’s responsibilities don’t extend to finding the next of kin for every former winner and delivering them in a bespoke Squid Game-branded box upon their passing. This seems very much like a freelance operation and it’s an acknowledgement that something has changed here.

Seong Gi-hun not only “won” the 36th edition of Squid Game, he introduced doubt into the system that could one day provide kindling for the games’ ultimate demise. After all, the number of folks who are aware of the games existence and are invested in their destruction has now grown from roughly one (Jun-ho) to many (Park Gyu-young’s Pink Guard 011 No-Eul, Jun Suk-ho’s Woo-seok, Lee Jin-uk’s Player 246 Gyeong-seok, and presumably Player 222 herself eventually). That’s not enough to mark the end of the games, but it just might mark the beginning of the end of them.

The only question now, however, is if Netflix will ever let that end arrive. The streamer, bless it, has been accommodating and patient about allowing Squid Game creator Hwang Dong-hyuk to refer to season 3 as the ultimate end of the story. Because it is for him. Give or take a prequel or two years down the line, Hwang has expressed that season 3 represents the conclusion to this saga even as a glance at Netflix’s earnings results reveals there’s no way that that can be the case. The presence of a certain Hollywood megastar in season 3’s final scene makes that extra clear.

Interestingly though, the gobsmacking inclusion of Cate Blanchett as a new recruiter in the final moments of season 3 appears to have been a Hwang-led choice and not a Netflix one, with the writer/director telling The Hollywood Reporter:

“I didn’t end it on that note in order to deliberately leave room for further stories to happen. Gi-hun and Front Man, through these characters, the Games in Korea have ended. And because this story started out with me wanting to tackle issues about the limitless competition and the system that’s created in late capitalism, I wanted to leave it on a note highlighting the fact that these systems, even if one comes down, it’s not easy to dismantle the whole system — it will always repeat itself. That’s why I wanted to end it with an American recruiter. And I wrote that scene wanting an impactful ending for the show, not in order to open rooms for anything else.”

The presence of a recruiter in Los Angeles presumably recruiting for an American Squid Game doesn’t immediately repudiate Gi-hun’s victory. As Hwang himself says “it’s not easy to dismantle the whole system.” Gi-hun’s sacrifice won’t immediately bring the games to a halt. Hopefully, however, it will be the opening salvo in a grander political awakening that will one day take down that system. Maybe a contestant in the Cate Blanchett games will pick up the torch and continue the mission. Or maybe they won’t. What matters in the moment of Squid Game‘s ending is that the games’ demise is a distinct possibility for the viewer to dream upon.

But of course, the rest of the story won’t reside in the viewer’s imagination forever. As sure as the sun will rise tomorrow there will be more Squid Game on the way. Even if Cate Blanchett doesn’t make her way into David Fincher’s rumored American Squid Game, there will be an American Squid Game and that will undoubtedly be followed by titles like Squid Game: London, Squid Game: Paris, Squid Game: Tokyo, and gods knows what else.

Squid Game going global coincides with the series’ themes nicely. After all, it’s not like the vagaries of modern capitalism are isolated only to Seoul. At the same time, however, Seong Gi-hun’s sacrifice will become more and more diluted as fresh iterations of Squid Game arrive without a clear ending in sight. Perhaps that was always the fate of a global phenomenon on a streaming service. For now though, the show’s ending works and Gi-hun’s sacrifice matters. Let’s try to remember it while we can.

All six episodes of Squid Game season 3 are available to stream on Netflix now.

This article contains spoilers for Squid Game season 3.

By the show’s very nature, Squid Game is no stranger to ripping beloved characters from our grasp just as we’ve come to appreciate them. Even the characters we love to hate tend to come and go just as quickly, forcing us and the other players to leave them behind and move forward. But with season 3 picking up where the game left off in season 2, it’s not quite as easy to leave some of these fallen players behind, especially not a personality as big as Thanos (T.O.P.) was.

Thankfully, season 3 finds some unique ways to carry on the complicated legacy of Player 230 Choi Su-bong a.k.a. Thanos. Nam-gyu (player 124) and Min-su (player 125) both handle their “grief” with markedly different approaches. In episode 1 “Keys and Knives,” Nam-gyu (Roh Jae-won) tries to appeal to Min-su (Lee David) as Thanos did, even going so far as to do an impression of his fallen friend to try and lighten the mood.

DOES THIS COUNTS AS #thangyu? HELP 😭🤍 pic.twitter.com/aaPXPWc6Ub

— angel thanos 🪽 (@svshux) June 27, 2025

In the next episode, Nam-gyu takes his Thanos mimicry to another level by spending the entire game getting wasted on Thanos’ drugs and doing yet another impression of his friend, as though embodying his personality is enough to bring him back to life. He says “I’m Thanos. Let’s go another way. We’ve got to kill half of humanity, but we’re running out of time,” which is surprisingly layered for someone high out of their mind. It’s not only a commentary on the Hide-and-Seek game they are currently playing, but also refers to the ethos of Marvel’s Thanos, the character that his friend named himself after.

A few episodes later and it’s Min-su’s turn for a drug and grief-fueled spiral. Min-su finds himself in possession of Thanos’ drugs in episode 4 and spends the rest of his time on the show zooted and paranoid, just as Thanos was before he was killed (the Squid Game Thanos, that is – we don’t know what kind of drugs the actual Mad Titan was on, if any). 

But whereas all of these callbacks to Thanos and his big personality have been done by other characters, the legend himself finds a way to make an appearance in episode 5. High on the mysterious pills, Min-su hallucinates Thanos and T.O.P. actually returns to reprise his role for this brief cameo, telling Min-su “My brother, I missed you.”

this part of the thanos hallucination 😭 the most unserious guy pic.twitter.com/VSbDK8w1sI

— nanis SG S3 !!! (@daehoist) June 27, 2025

No matter your feelings about Thanos as a character, his presence – literal, imagined, and otherwise – is important to the final two seasons of the show. Losing him affects Nam-gyu and Min-su profoundly and influences their decisions moving forward.

In a show that usually forces us to move on from one gruesome death to the next in rapid succession, bringing Thanos back (among others) in these various forms was a welcome change of pace. It lets us see that these deaths do affect the players – even those who seem to relish all of the bloodshed and the money it brings them. We’ve seen the grief of the games in the aftermath through Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), but now we get to see how grief manifests while the games are still happening. It reminds us that even the “villains” of the games care about each other in their own strange ways.

This article contains spoilers regarding the games introduced in SQUID GAME season 3 (but no major spoilers about their results). 

Squid Game season 3 is unique among the global phenomenon’s three seasons. Not only does this batch of six episodes represent the ultimate end of the series (or so Netflix claims), it’s also the first season to not begin with a new edition of the titular games. That’s because creator Hwang Dong-hyuk’s vision for a season 1 follow-up grew so large that it needed to be split in two. Why the 2024 edition of Squid Game became two separate seasons and not merely a “Part 1” and “Part 2” is anyone’s guess…but hopefully it means Hwang got paid more.

In any case, Squid Game season 3 introduces fewer games than either season before it. But what these final three matches lack in quantity, they more than make up for with bloody carnage. This is another round of terrifying children’s games, curated for maximum tragedy. Read on for our breakdown of every game included in Squid Game season 3 below and get a reminder of season 2’s contests here.

Game Four – Hide-and-Seek

While some Squid Game contests are highly specific to the show’s South Korean setting, others are more widely found on playgrounds the world over. “Hide-and-Seek” is one such game. Among the most famous children’s games ever (possibly second only to “tag”), Hide-and-Seek is very simple: hiders hide and seekers seek. If a hider stays hidden for the duration of the game, they win. If a hider is discovered by a seeker, they are eliminated. And this being Squid Game, “elimination” takes on a very literal context.

In Squid Game‘s version of this event, teams are divided into hiders and seekers through use of a gumball machine. Those who receive a red ball are assigned as seekers and given a small knife to kill their prey once found. Those who receive a blue ball are assigned as hiders and given a key that will open one of the many doors in the maze-like play area to hide. Unfortunately, a door can be unlocked only once and not re-locked, making sedentary hiders particularly vulnerable … unless they team up to find the maze’s promised exit.

Game Five – Jump Rope

As teased in season 2’s post-credit scene, the iconic “Red Light, Green Light” doll Young-hee gets a new assignment in this edition of Squid Game. She holds one end of a rope suspended over an elevated platform while her “boyfriend” Cheol-su holds the other end. You can kind of see where this is going, right?

Yes, game 5 is a relatively straightforward game of jump rope with typically deadly consequences. Players must advance from one end of a thin walking bridge while periodically jumping to avoid Young-hee and Cheol-su’s swinging rope. If they make it to the other side, they move on to the next round. If they don’t, they fall to their deaths. Notably, the fifth game of season 5 “Glass Stepping Stones” also incorporated height as a deadly element. Jump rope, however, does not assign players a crossing order – creating predictable chaos.

Game Six – Sky Squid Game

The final game in the 2024 edition of Squid Game is similar to the final game of the 2021 edition but with one major addition. It’s “Squid Game” played in the sky. The rules of squid game were slightly confusing to many Western viewers who weren’t familiar with the four square-esque format that involved players prowling around an interconnected circle, square, and triangle.

Sky squid game simplifies things by separating the circle, square, and triangle into isolated platforms high up from the ground. The players first gather on the square and at least one must be pushed off for all surviving players to advance to the triangle. Then at least one player must be eliminated again within the time limit for the surviving players to advance to the final circle. If at least one player is eliminated from the circle within the time limit, whoever remains is the ultimate winner of the games.

The careful wording of “at least one” player must be ejected from each shape creates for much politicking and treachery.

All six episodes of Squid Game season 3 are available to stream on Netflix now.