Instructor at the end, season 3

On December 27, 2024By Littum

Spoiler alert! The following contains details from the season 2 finale “Octopus game.”

How is Gi-hun going to get out of this one?

The final moments of the second season of Netflix’s smash hit “Squid Game” are some of the most brutal and harrowing of the entire season, and they end with a bang. After leading some of his fellow players in a rebellion against the games, Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) sees his rebellion instantly put down. The man he thought was an ally in the game was actually the villainous frontman (Lee Byung-hun), who dons his mask just in time to kill Gi-hun’s best friend Jung-bae (Lee Seo-hwan) in front of him. And then the credits roll.

Now more people are dead, the frontman has won, the fighting can continue unabated, and Gi-hun’s life is in danger. Where do we go from here? And why end on such a big cliffhanger?

“Gi-hun has a tremendous sense of loss, defeat and guilt weighing on him,” says Hwang Dong-hyukthe series’ director and creator. “When he’s just filled with complete, utter loss and guilt after all his attempts (to stop the fights) failed, I thought it was the appropriate ending to close out the second season.”

It’s an abrupt and shocking finale that leaves a lot to be answered in the show’s third season, due out in 2025. Hwang and actor Lee Jung-jae spoke to USA TODAY through translators to break down the shocking and brutally violent final episode, and which fans can expect from Season 3. Spoiler alert: These obnoxiously rich VIPs will be showing up again.

The front man played Gi-hun throughout the season

“It’s really a showdown between Front Man and Gi-hun that’s at the heart of the plot,” Hwang said of the second season’s theme. The front man “wants to make sure he destroys all of Gi-hun’s purposes,” and completely wipe out the man and crush his spirit.

Lee didn’t mince words about Gi-hun’s position at the end of the season: “The Front Man totally played Gi-hun and used him in every possible way.”

“The frontman decided that he will allow the players to cast a vote after each round because he believes… that they still don’t want to leave because of their greed,” Hwang said. “Ultimately, the story reflects capitalist society and how it drives people to this competition. There is no room for losers. The winner takes everything and the losers are driven to lose their humanity.”

Where did Gi-hun’s rebellion come from?

Gi-hun did everything he could to stop the games, Hwang and Lee say, and when he couldn’t think of anything else, he took up arms and was willing to kill for it. He and his allies plan to overpower the pink-jumpsuited “soldiers” who run the games and start an armed rebellion aimed at overthrowing the facility’s overlords.

“He chooses violence,” Hwang said. “He chooses to physically fight the system and overthrow the system, which fails again. The price he has to pay for that is losing his best friend Jung-bae.”

Lee says the character he plays in Season 2 is a “completely different man” than the crooked, silly gambler Gi-hun started out as in Season 1. “He’s full of revenge and he doesn’t want any more.”

He sees echoes of current political unrest in the “Squid” stories (in Lee’s native South Korea, massive political protests has recently taken place in the midst of a constitutional crisis).

“I think it really reflects our community,” Lee said. “I think the ‘Squid Game’ arena is actually a miniature of our society. When you find that your political system is unjust, or if there’s a dictatorship, or there’s just an unjust society, then there maybe a coup. People will take it to the streets, or there will be people who want to add a system in some way. We see it all the time in the news, and I think it was a great metaphor that we see in the last section of. ‘Squid Game’.”

What about the VIPs?

Season 1 of “Squid Game” included “VIPs,” wealthy spectators who enjoyed watching the poor farmers fight and die while betting millions on the outcome. They won’t appear at all in Season 2, but Hwang promises they’re not gone.

“You’ll get to see the VIPs in the third season,” he says. “They’re coming. They’re on their way. Their helicopter is flying over the island now.”