The finale of Squid Game Season 3, which dropped on Netflix on June 26, 2025, has left everyone speechless and reeling from the emotional depth and surprises. At the center of it all is Seong Gi-hun, played by Lee Jae, whose journey took a brutal turn in the last moments of the show. In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Lee explained why he didn’t argue with creator Hwang Dong-hyuk’s decision to end Gi-hun’s story in such a devastating way despite being shocked by the script.
Season 3 concludes Gi-hun’s story. He’s a gambler in debt who becomes a reluctant hero. He goes back to the games after the violent events of Season 2 killed his friends, including Jung-bae. In the final game, Sky Squid Game, Gi-hun (Player 456), YouTuber Myung-gi, who scams people with crypto (Player 333), and Myung-gi’s baby (Player 222) face off on high platforms. The rules are harsh: players have to push someone off to move on and they have to press a button to start each round, or the deaths won’t count. After a brutal knife fight, Myung-gi falls to his death, but Gi-hun realizes the game hasn’t even started yet. Now Gi-hun has a tough choice to make: kill the baby to win, do nothing and let them both die, or sacrifice himself. He chooses the second option and jumps off the platform after talking to the Front Man and the guests. He says, “We are not horses! We are humans.” The baby wins and Gi-hun’s death is a sweet ending to his story.
Hwang initially thought of an alternative ending where Gi-hun not only survived but also stopped the Korean games. In this scenario, he would run into an American recruiter while reuniting with his daughter in Los Angeles. As Hwang wrote that down, he felt the story was lacking in emotional punch to convey the show’s themes of humanity vs greed and capitalism. He decided to go with Gi-hun’s sacrifice as a way to convey a “powerful and meaningful” message about altruism and end the series on a hopeful note for future generations.
Lee, who has been with the show since the beginning in 2021, found it tough to go through the final script, especially the part where Gi-hun saves the baby born in bad conditions. “Reading that was really hard—very difficult,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “I was thinking, ‘How did he come up with this?!’” But even with that, Lee didn’t ask for any changes. “If Season 1 wasn’t so big of a hit or if the script was from another writer or director, I might have asked for changes or expressed my concerns,” he said. “But considering everything that has happened and my trust in director Hwang, I chose to go with his vision. I thought it was the right choice for the story.”
This is because of Hwang’s track record and Squid Game’s global phenomenon status with 1.65 billion viewing hours in the first season. Lee said the ending may be bleak, but it resonates with the show’s deep dive into human nature, where greed and revenge vs altruism and compassion. Gi-hun’s final act of heroism – saving the baby – felt like proof that he’s transformed from a self-centered gambler to someone who knows “humans are worthy of respect.”
The final episode sets up spinoff possibilities and Cate Blanchett shows up as a recruiter playing ddakji in LA. This is a hint at an American version of the games. Hwang says this wasn’t meant to be a specific project like the Fincher spinoff. It’s just to show that “the system replicates itself globally”. Lee didn’t know Blanchett was in the episode until he saw the final cut and called her one of his favorite actresses. But they don’t know each other personally, as their scenes were shot separately.
Fans are divided; some love the emotional payoff, others feel cheated. Gi-hun died and didn’t get to see his daughter. But Lee believes in Hwang’s vision, so he went along with it even though it hurt. According to Hwang to The Wrap, even the tough Front Man was moved by Gi-hun’s selflessness and took the baby and Gi-hun’s winnings to a safe place. So there’s a small glimmer of hope in a dark world. With Season 3 at #1 on Netflix, the finale’s impact is clear; we’re still thinking about what it means to be human long after the credits roll.