Squid Game Season 3 Gives The Show's Best Character A Smaller Role (But That Ruins Everything)

Take off that imposing mask unless you're the Front Man himself or you're all caught up on Squid Game season 3! Spoilers lie ahead!

"Squid Game" can, at its best and worst, be a relatively straightforward fable about good versus evil, the haves versus the have-nots, and so on and so forth. That's why the Front Man, the leader of the games played by well-known Korean actor Lee Byung-hun, is a particularly fascinating figure on the massively popular Netflix series created and run by Hwang Dong-hyuk. We learn, through the work of his half-brother and detective Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon) — the Front Man's real name is Hwang In-ho, and he's also a former cop — that In-ho won the games in 2015 and has been working for the shady, mysterious organization that runs them ever since.

At the end of Season 1, the Front Man unmasks himself to reveal his face to both the audience and Jun-ho, who's shocked to see his own brother; In-ho shoots his brother but possibly ensures that the injury isn't fatal, and Jun-ho ultimately does survive. By the time Season 3 rolls around, Jun-ho is hot on In-ho's trail — despite the fact that the boat he's on as he tries to find the island that hosts the games is run by a corrupt ship captain controlled by In-ho himself — but what is In-ho doing? Not much, honestly! He makes a disgusting and devastating offer to the series' protagonist — former winner turned vigilante Seong Gi-hun, played by Lee Jung-jae — and skulks around. That's pretty much it, which is really disappointing when you remember his trajectory in Season 2. Let's unpack what the Front Man's role was in season 2, why he might be sidelined in season 3, and what he's stuck doing instead of being interesting.

In Season 2 — after the big reveal that In-ho and Jun-ho are half-brothers — we get a lot of screen time with In-ho, because he actually enters the game as a player. Putting aside that this is a lazy narrative choice (only because it's exactly what the guy who created the games did in Season 1), it's still pretty interesting to watch In-ho literally unmask himself and join the fray as Player 001. (Again, that's the exact same number the other interloper wore, but whatever.)

In-ho ostensibly joins the games to really stick it to Gi-hun, who won the previous year's games, refused to board his required flight out of South Korea, and ended up rejoining as a player. In the process, though, he makes actual and meaningful connections with the rest of the players, pretending his name is Oh Young-il and he ends up telling Gi-hun the story of why he joined the game in the first place; though this seems like yet another ruse, In-ho tells the actual story. It goes like this: In-ho's wife, who was suffering from a terminal illness, discovered that the two were going to have a baby, so In-ho tried to find an organ donor to save both his wife's life and that of their unborn child. In the process, he accepted money from a criminal (presumably to purchase said organ) and was accused of bribery, leading to his expulsion from the police force.

In-ho "joins in" the player mutiny that takes place at the end of Season 2 of "Squid Game," but quickly disappears amongst his own guards and tricks everyone, including Gi-hun, into thinking he's dead. One would think that, with In-ho back as the Front Man, this would give him some exciting stuff to do in Season 2. One would be wrong about that, unfortunately.

So what does the Front Man do in Season 3 of "Squid Game?" After learning more about the people competing in these dangerous games — games that offer a prize of billions of dollars — he simply goes back to watching them die without an ounce of remorse. This is, in its own way, a fine narrative choice; it's not like In-ho suddenly becomes a "good guy" because he met a few fellow players. The problem is that he doesn't really get anything cool to do except faff around with the VIPs, a group of non-Korean people with far too much money who travel to this remote, hidden island to watch people fight to the death over a cash prize ... and this sucks particularly hard, because the VIPs are annoying and probably the worst part of "Squid Game" as a whole.

The one big thing that In-ho does before the series finale of "Squid Game" is that he confronts Gi-hun without his mask. Now that Gi-hun knows that his former ally Player 001 is actually the guy in charge, he's horrified, but In-ho has a proposition. The night before the very last game — which, like it was in Season 1, will be the titular "squid game" involving "hopping" between shapes — In-ho gives Gi-hun a knife and tells him that, after all of the other players ate and drank their weight in food and wine, Gi-hun can give himself a huge leg up in the last game. Specifically, he can murder his fellow players in his sleep.

This is actually interesting, but it may be too late; after seeing a lot of In-ho during Season 2 of "Squid Game," it's disappointing to see him so heavily sidelined in the show's third and final season. Regardless, "Squid Game" is streaming on Netflix now.