(The editor’s note: This article contains spoilers for the “Octopus“Season 3, including the final.)
In the last section of “Squid Game”, Seong Gi-Hun (Lee Jung-Jae) pronounces the words “People are …” The incomplete sentence, the subject-verb combination that forms both the section title and the show’s core issues remain throughout the final and thereafter. Are they good? Poor? Greedy? Unselfish? All that, none of it – and everything in between.
As mentioned in Indieview’s spoiler -free review of the season, “Squid Game” mostly ends exactly how you can expect. Viewers who feel disappointed due to lack of turns may want to consider what drew them to the show in the first place, and what it ever did to suggest an alternative liberation. This is a show that not only killed most characters during the first season, but mainly promised to do so. What other course was there?
Season 3, section 6 opens exactly where the predecessor ended, with Gi-Hun and Myung-Gi (IM SI-WAN) that is on raised platforms high above the ground and processes the knowledge that one of them or infants 222 must die in the next round. The child entered the competition strained “octopus” credibility, but only as far as the characters’ moral boundaries also pressed.
After possible the fastest birth in human history, Jun-Hee’s (Jo Yuri) children are forced to take their place in the games, all of which with an ounce of empathy would obviously reject. The average viewer’s mind will reject it – so of course, the cartoon evil Vives are to pick it up. Other players and guards depend on the perverse twist too quickly, but it acts as an extension of “octopus game” world view: money makes people doing unthinkable things, and it gathers dubious witnesses to compliance (especially when the dissence is equal to death).
All this to say: Too many were to have that child to die in the final game, but it obviously rattled the efforts for a show that often risks desensitizing viewers into deadly violence. After Myung-Gi’s shallow attempts to protect Gi-Hun and the child, he wastes no time to turn on both of them. During a season filled with impeccable performances, Im is no exception in a final scene that puts out the countless depth of his character as well as his greatest disappointment: to want to do the right thing so badly, but knowing that he will fail before he even tries.
He didn’t lack To hurt his own child – but knew before he even beat the red button that when the moment came, he could do so.
Myung-Gi and many others, probably not what Gi-Hun does when the final game starts in earnest. Gi-Hun calls his courage and spirit in his last moments and defends his values even when his mission decisive fails. He gives his life to save another, which may be the last Vestigen from the old Gi-Hun that went into the games during season 1. That guy was clumsy, less world-hearted, even smiled once in a while-and he cared a lot for the people around him.
Lee gives everything as usual, but with Gi-Hun gone in the midpoint, the section gives room for its fantastic diets; Lee Byung-Hun as the front man, Wi Ha-June as his brother Jun-Ho, Park Gyu-Young as No-Eul. There is hardly any dialogue in the last moments of the game, but everyone conveys worlds of emotions with their eyes and body language, which raises the type of philosophical character issues that fans may have impressed hearing for many years to come.
And as gloomy and tragic as Gi-Hun’s death is, it is followed by the kind of neck of hope (“Bursts of Light”) It makes life worth living in a capitalist hellscape. Six months later, Na-Yeon is cancer-free, no-Eul can find her daughter, mother and brother of SAE-BYEOK from Season 1 (Hoyeon Jung) finally, and the children of Gi-Hun and Jun-Hee will have better lives after their parent victims.
It is not a complicated takeaway: we do what we do – suffer, fail, continue, continues – for love. What kind of world puts a literal price on love, on life? The victories of love, how rare, point through the cruel fear of “octopus games”, never cloying, but purely gripping. The games will find a way to continue, but the players and those who survive them will try to mitigate each other’s pain. That’s all we can do, and we keep doing it.
“Squid Game” now flows on Netflix.
