“Why did you let me live?,” Seong Gi-hun (Player 456) screams at the guards (and the omniscient organizers) in an IGN exclusive sneak peek at the first episode of Squid Game Season 3.
Still reeling after the murder of his best friend Jung-bae (Lee Seo-hwan) and the seeming squashing of his rebellion movement, Gi-hun is despondent and alone in the barracks. Alone without resources, it begs the question, what do the orchestrators of the game want with Gi-hun as the series heads into its end game?
Everyone will get their answers when Squid Game’s finale drops exclusively on Netflix June 27th.
As part of this year’s IGN Live, our host Kim Horcher sat down with creator/director/writer Hwang Dong-hyuk and actors Lee Jung-jae, Lee Byung-hun, Park Sung-hoon, and Kang Ae-sim to find out what we can expect from the last episodes of the series.
Watch IGN's interview with the Squid Game stars and directors:
Undoubtedly, the exclusive clip reflects Gi-hun’s suffering in the wake of the ruinous Season 2 finale. With no certain path forward to stop the game, or to personally get out of the game alive, Jung-jae tells IGN that his character is in despair.
“The biggest change, I would say, is definitely the death of his very close friend who he relied a lot on and whom they had gone on this journey together. What you just saw here, is the beginning of a deep change that occurs within him. That's when he begins to gain that momentum of change,” the actor pinpoints.
Series creator Hwang Dong-hyuk compares Gi-hu to Miguel de Cervantes’ tragic Don Quixote character who goes mad believing he's a valiant knight fighting imaginary enemies.
“Don Quixote is a character who thought the windmill was this monster that he had to bring down,” Dong-hyuk details. “He ran at it, wanting to bring it down, but couldn't. I believe Gi-hun is similar in the way he wanted to break down the system only to realize that he couldn't do it. After the failed rebellion, he is ridden with so much guilt because of having lost a lot of the people that he went into the rebellion with.”
Dong-hyuk says that the heavy burden of guilt will fill Gi-hun with a loss of hope and courage to start the season. “It’s almost to a point where it makes him want to just crawl deep inside himself. Season 3 is where you're going to see Gi-hun in that space.” He adds, how and where the character goes next is the main point of this final season.
"Gi-hun still continues to have hope for the world and for humanity.
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Without a doubt, Hwang In-ho, the Front Man, the game overseer who spent Season 2 actually in the game in disguise as Player 001, will take advantage of Gi-hun’s current low and turn the screws even tighter in the game.
Lee Byung-hun confirms that his character has been observing Gi-hun and expects that he will come to his way of thinking by the end of the game. Gi-hun and In-ho both won their respective Squid Games but then went on to pursue vastly different paths. In-ho becomes fundamentally disillusioned with humanity and joins the games as an insider, while Gi-hun decides to reenter the games to destroy them from the inside.
“I think that when Front Man sees Gi-hun, he sees a little bit of himself in him,” he explains. “He is reminded of himself because they do have certain similarities where both of them came out as winners of Squid Game. But to see Gi-hun return to the game filled with the determination to bring down the system, he really wants to teach Gi-hun a lesson. And watching him, he still believes that, ‘You are going to end up just like me.’ However, while he's thinking that, he sees how Gi-hun continues to struggle to hold onto his beliefs.
Watch an exclusive clip from Squid Game, Season 3:
So, I think on the one hand, because Gi-hun reminds him of himself, he does have a sense of envy that he feels because he knows that what Gi-hun is doing is not something he was able to do. And also to see Gi-hun still continue to have hope for the world and for humanity, I think a small part of him is rooting for Gi-hun to be right.”
Some might argue that In-ho killing Jung-bae is a pretty extreme lesson already, but Byung-hun says that can’t be the final blow. “It probably wasn't something that he was 100% confident in doing,” he says of his character’s mindset about killing Jung-bae. “I'm sure that he was shaking a little bit on the inside as well, but I think that the Front Man felt that this is how far he needs to go in order to teach Gi-hun the lesson that he needs to be taught. And in Season 3, it's really going to take you on a journey towards that ultimate showdown between Gi-hun, who refuses to compromise his beliefs, and the Front Man.”
As fans speculate online about how Dong-hyuk will bring this epic story to a close, the creator says he actually looked to American television to guide him in how to craft a propulsive ending he hopes will ultimately satisfy.
“Every time I used to watch American [TV] series and it would end on a really strong cliffhanger, I would just be amazed at how they managed to make it like that because it makes you really want to see more,” he says with enthusiasm.
Knowing that Netflix’s cue makes it easy for viewers to just click to the next episode, Dong-hyuk used that built-in technology to spur him to close episodes with twists that make it mandatory for the audience to keep watching.
“With every ending for every episode, I really wanted to make sure that people had to see the next episode and that they were given no other choice,” he offers. “When I was writing the script for each episode, I was always thinking, ‘Where do I end it in just the right way, in just the right moment, so that people cannot bear but to press the next episode?’ I think it came to me naturally, as I was writing.”
We’ll find out soon if he achieved his lofty goals.
Squid Game Season 3 streams June 27 on Netflix.
