Squid Game Season 3 Ending Explained: Who Is The Ultimate Winner?

This article contains discussions of suicide.

In case the title of this article didn't give it away, we'll be discussing every single aspect of the ending of Squid Game — so massive spoilers lie ahead! If you haven't finished the season, stop reading and come back later!

"Squid Game," the South Korean series helmed by writer and director Hwang Dong-hyuk that became an international sensation when it premiered on Netflix at the end of 2021, is over ... or, at least, the first go-around is finished. Spanning three short seasons, the series focused on a mysterious and massive game staged on a remote island in South Korea, which the audience watches as we follow the series protagonist Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), a guy down on his luck and in desperate need of cash who becomes the 456th player in said game. With a prize of 4.56 billion won (the currency in South Korea), it's easy to see why people want to play these twisted versions of children's games like "red light, green light" in the first place. When Gi-hun and his fellow players realize that hundreds of them will die in the process, though, they get a sense of the truly unhinged stakes.

So how does this all come to a close? Who wins, and is it Gi-hun or someone else? Let's break down everything you need to know about the series finale of "Squid Game."

First, let's just briefly recap everything that brings us to the events of the series finale of "Squid Game." Against all odds, Gi-hun ekes out a victory in his first games, though he loses friends like his childhood buddy Cho Sang-woo (Park Hae-soo) in the process. (After winning, Gi-hun visits Sang-woo's mother, played by Park Hye-jin, and introduces her to a young man, Park Si-wan's Kang Cheol, in need of a home; put a pin in that, because we'll come back to it later.) Even though he's told to board a plane to America that will reunite him with his daughter, Gi-hun decides to team up with a detective, Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon), to infiltrate the games and bring them down for the inside.

That's why Gi-hun returns to the game of his own volition in Season 2, though his plan fails pretty much immediately when, upon waking up in the arena, he discovers the GPS chip inside of a false tooth is missing from his mouth. Forced to play the games again without any help, Gi-hun, more resigned this time around, manages to stay alive yet again, but at the end of Season 2, he tries to stage a player-led mutiny against the guards. Unfortunately for Gi-hun, his new ally and new player 001, portrayed by Lee Byung-hun, is the game's master, the Front Man, whose name is Hwang In-ho ... and naturally, he betrays Gi-hun and several players are killed in the mutiny. (By the way, this Front Man twist? It's recycled from Season 1.)

At the beginning of Season 3 of "Squid Game," Gi-hun is furious that the mutiny failed — and largely blames his fellow player Kang Dae-ho (Kang Ha-neul), who promised to go get more ammunition for their stolen guns but simply abandoned the effort. In the final season's second episode, the players engage in a horrifying version of hide and seek where the seekers are armed with knives and ordered to kill the hiders; Gi-hun uses this opportunity to murder Dae-ho in revenge. During this game, Season 2 standouts Cho Hyun-ju (Park Sung-hoon) and Park Yong-sik (Yang Dong-geun), who wore the numbers 120 and 007, perish, and Kim Jun-hee (Jo Yu-ri), Player 222, gives birth to her baby.

Sadly for Jun-hee, she also grievously injures her ankle during hide and seek, completely taking her out of the running for the next game, which is a dangerous version of jump rope that sends plenty of players plummeting to their death. Gi-hun, the baby, and the baby's father and Jun-hee's estranged boyfriend Lee Myung-gi (Im Si-wan), Player 333, all make it across the chasm safely, but Jun-hee chooses to take her life on her own terms, knowing that she can't possibly compete, and jumps. The newborn baby girl is given her mother's number, 222, and added to the games as a competitor. That brings us to the very last game — another iteration of the titular "squid game" involving moving between circles, squares, and triangles, which is now played on perilous pedestals upon which players have to choose who amongst them dies. The players are winnowed down to Myung-gi, Gi-hun, and the baby, and Myung-gi wants to kill his own child, pushing Gi-hun over the edge (though not literally). After a tussle, Myung-gi falls to his death. Gi-hun says to his audience — meaning the Front Man and odious VIPs — that the players are humans, not "horses," and dies by suicide just as Jun-hee did before him by plummeting off the pedestal. This leaves a newborn baby, Player 222, as the sole winner.

Something we haven't discussed quite yet is the saga of Kang No-eul (Park Gyu-young), a North Korean defector who lost her husband and daughter and accepted an offer to join the game as a guard in Season 2. Throughout Season 3, she protects Player 246, Park Gyeong-seok (Lee Jin-wook), knowing — after she met him pre-game while working at an amusement park as a mascot — that he has a very sick daughter who needs him at home. After pretending to kill him so that he can escape the island, No-eul finds her own file in the compound, showing the audience that the guards, just like the players, are monitored and tracked ... and just cogs in a machine as well.

After Gi-hun's death, the series finale of "Squid Game" jumps ahead by 6 months and reunites with No-eul, Gyeong-seok, and his daughter Na-yeon (Park Ye-bom) back at the amusement park once again. Na-yeon is much better and No-eul is receiving a caricature from Gyeong-seok, who doesn't recognize her because she never unmasked herself while saving his life. No-eul wishes them both the best and, after receiving word from an ally that her daughter might be alive and living in China, heads to the airport to catch a flight, concluding her story in a hopeful way. We'll get more in-depth with each of these major plot points throughout the article, but as No-eul tries to find her daughter, Jun-ho finds the infant player 222 with her winnings in his home — clearly delivered safely by his half-brother In-ho — and Gi-hun's daughter receives her father's uniform and winnings from In-ho as well. In the very last moment of the episode, the Front Man is in a car in Los Angeles and sees his new recruiter, played by living legend Cate Blanchett, directly telling us the games will continue elsewhere.

In an in-house interview with Netflix's Tudum after the entire third and final season of "Squid Game" dropped on Netflix, creator Hwang Dong-hyuk revealed some of the intentions behind the finale's events. Obviously, he had to address one enormous question: did Gi-hun have to die? Apparently, the answer is yes.

As Hwang put it, Gi-hun's sacrifice, which ensures that an innocent newborn baby will not only emerge safely from the game but never worry about money for likely her entire life, is basically the point of the show. "The message I wanted to communicate was that if we solely pursue our immediate self-interest, and refuse to self-restrain, sacrifice, or bear any costs — and if we don't put our heads together — we have no future," Hwang said. "Gi-hun's self-sacrifice to save the baby is the message we need to hear today. This character, who is thrust into the game, endures everything, and then jumps back in to end it, is the one who should deliver this message."

Hwang executed this beautifully, if you'll excuse the pun; Gi-hun gives his life to ensure the future of another, and it's striking that the other he chooses to save is the only truly innocent figure in the entire game. Speaking of the baby, she's a symbol for a larger message, according to Hwang.

Ensuring that, again, the only innocent in the entirety of "Squid Game's" entire story emerges as the winner — even though, since she is a newborn, she doesn't even know what just happened — does imbue some hope into this otherwise very bleak show, and according to actor Lee Byung-hun, he views the Front Man's final major act — saving the baby and giving it to his brother, whom he knows is a good and honest man and an officer of the law — as a sign that the character has some humanity left. "That actually highlighted the fact that he has that last remaining piece of humanity deep down somewhere. That's the agreement that director Hwang and I came to. That's how I played my character," the actor told Tudum in the same feature. "Front Man has that last piece of benevolence remaining inside of him."

For Hwang Dong-hyuk, he believes the baby represents a hopeful future ... which might mean that the games cease to exist (in South Korea, at least, largely because the compound where they took place is destroyed; put another pin in that, though). "Ultimately, the baby represents the future generation," Hwang revealed. "I believe we also have the responsibility and duty to try everything that we can in our power to leave a better world for the future generation. The baby coming out [as] the winner was in line with the meaning of 'Squid Game.'"

Throughout her two-season run on "Squid Game," No-eul is a tough and inspiring figure, but it's hard to imagine — at least for a while there — that she could ever truly find any happiness. She actually considers death by suicide after destroying the file room in the compound. "She's someone whose inner light has all but faded, drifting deeper into the night," director Hwang Dong-hyuk says. So what happens? As Hwang told Tudum, seeing Gi-hun give his life for the baby changed her perspective and inspired her to keep going. "A flicker of hope and pull towards life reignites within No-eul," Hwang said. "I wanted to show her rising again, reclaiming her will to live, and giving life another shot."

No-eul's story ties into that of a player from Season 1, Sae-byeok, whose younger brother Kang Cheol is the young man traveling with Sang-woo's mother that we mentioned earlier. Kang Sae-byeok (Jung Ho-yeon), who was also a North Korean defector, played this dangerous game in the first place so that she could win the money and reunite her brother and mother ... which happens at the airport as No-eul departs for her flight. Even though Cheol is too intimidated to even interact with his long-lost mom at first, Sang-woo's mother, who has been his mother figure for some time now, encourages them, making Sae-byeok's long-held dream into a reality.

"Sae-byeok tried to send money to the North, dreaming of bringing her mother over so that the three of them could be reunited and live happily together," Hwang said. "She held onto that hope — a sliver of light like the break of dawn."

It's safe to say that, despite the fact that he deeply loves his daughter Ga-yeong (Jo Ah-in), Gi-hun was probably never going to win any awards for father of the year. This also explains why, when In-ho — the Front Man — goes to find Ga-yeong to deliver Gi-hun's player uniform and the sum total of his winnings, Ga-yeong is furious at her father, blaming him for leaving and telling In-ho, in no uncertain terms, that she has no desire to ever see him again. Sadly, her wish is granted; In-ho tells the young woman that her father is dead. At the very least, Ga-yeong now knows that her father didn't choose to abandon her, which likely gives her some closure.

Still, Gi-hun's actor, Lee Jung-Jae, weighed in on this unexpected scene in the Tudum article ... and his reaction was, honestly, really funny. "When I saw the scene where the Front Man goes to see Ga-yeong, I thought 'Gi-hun's going to be so mad he's going to rise from his grave and just jump out of the coffin,'" Lee joked. "That's how upset he was going to be!" (Honestly? He's probably right! After learning that his "friend" from the games was the Front Man, Gi-hun did try to kill the guy, only to be told that another Front Man would simply take his place.)

Obviously, we have to talk about the two-time Academy Award-winning actor — who's regarded by many as one of our best living performers — who shows up right at the end of "Squid Game." After finishing up with the show's other characters, we see Front Man being driven through Los Angeles only to see Cate Blanchett, clad in a crispy suit with her hair pulled sharply back, playing the traditional game of ddakji that Gong Yoo's Recruiter in South Korea used to get players into the games. (It involves throwing and hitting pieces of red and blue paper, and the Recruiter's job is to keep the downtrodden subject involved as they make higher and higher bets and then basically strong-arm them into the game when they can't afford to pay up.) Blanchett, like the Recruiter before her, slaps the unhoused man she's targeting in between each turn, and it certainly seems to set up a future where perhaps Blanchett will play a new recruiter. When you add in the news that David Fincher, one of Hollywood's most revered directors who worked with Blanchett on 2008's "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," is apparently developing a spin-off of "Squid Game" set in the United States, it seems to point to the fact that Blanchett could potentially be the next face of the budding franchise.

So why Blanchett? "We thought having a woman as a recruiter would be more dramatic and intriguing," Hwang Dong-hyuk told Tudum in an article about this unbelievable cameo. "And as for why Cate Blanchett, she's just the best, with unmatched charisma. Who doesn't love her? So we were very happy to have her appear. We needed someone who could dominate the screen with just one or two words, which is exactly what she did." Hwang continues, "If Gong Yoo is the Korean Recruiter, I thought she would be the perfect fit as the American Recruiter, bringing a short but gripping and impactful ending to the story."

Lee Byung-hun, for his part, described this final shot as "truly an ending that fits the [show's] name" before continuing: "Personally, I interpret it as, despite all of the noble efforts of so many people, the world still continues as it was before." That is, at the end of the day, the devastating truth ... these games will likely continue on as long as they can. So what of the Front Man's future?

Based on the sheer popularity of "Squid Game," which became a sensation all over the world after its first season dropped, it feels like we'll probably get more spin-off than just this still-mysterious one potentially helmed by David Fincher. With that said, will we get a spin-off centered on the Front Man ... and specifically, Lee Byung-hun's Front Man?

We learn a little bit about this Front Man in a major Season 3 flashback, and the bit we learn is horrifying. We already knew that In-ho became the Front Man after winning his own game years before the series begins, but what we didn't know until Season 3 is that he was offered the chance to kill his competitors in their sleep the night before the final game, and he took that opportunity. (He makes the same offer to Gi-hun, who doesn't follow through.) There's still so much to learn about In-ho's past, present, and future, and it feels notable that he and Cate Blanchett's recruiter make direct eye contact while she torments her latest victim, clearly suggesting that the two know each other. Is In-ho passing the torch, or is he in Los Angeles to help launch these new games? Only time will tell, but for now, this particular "Squid Game" story has come to a close.

"Squid Game" is streaming on Netflix now.