Latest news with #Season3
Indian Express
3 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
Squid Game director reveals real-world figures who inspired VIPs: ‘They no longer hide behind a curtain'
The Squid Game series was inspired by some real-life experiences of director Hwang Dong Hyuk. In the show, we mostly follow the players, poor and desperate, ready to kill each other for money. And while we kept slamming some players for behaving selfishly, the show makes it clear that the real villains are not the players, but the ultra-rich watching from the top. These are the VIPs, treating the lives of people they consider beneath them as nothing more than a circus for their amusement. In a recent interview with Time magazine, director Hwang opened up about how some of the biggest tech billionaires and those in power inspired the role, and whether some of the characters have real-life resemblance. The VIP's first appeared in season 1, episode 7 and were shown as filthy rich people gulping alcohol, speaking English, wearing gold animal masks, and betting on the players' lives. They treat it like gambling on horses. In Season 1, they stayed in their luxury rooms and watched everything from behind the scenes, pampered and protected by the Front Man, played by Lee Byung Hun. Later, it was revealed that Oh Il Nam was the head of VIP's who played as player 001. He was dying, so he created the game for fun, a jab at how the rich are disconnected from human life and suffering. In season 3, however, these VIP's get down into the game themselves, take off their masks and kill people with their bare hands. Also read: Squid Game Season 3 ending explained: The truth about Gi Hun's fate, the mystery woman, and all survivors Director Hwang Dong Hyuk said this was intentional. He wanted to show how the rich no longer even bother to hide their power. 'In the past, those that really controlled the system and maintained power were hidden behind the curtain, almost like this big unseen conspiracy. However, it's no longer the case, especially in America,' Hwang told Time. 'We talk a lot about oligarchy these days, but these so-called big tech owners, they step up, telling everyone who they're backing with their money. They willingly take their masks off, almost as if to declare, 'We're the ones running everything. We're the ones in control,' he added. Director Hwang said that while the concept of the VIPs is not based on one person, while writing the final script, he started seeing some familiarity with the current scenario in the world. Like Elon Musk, for example. 'Elon Musk is everywhere these days, right?' Hwang said, adding, 'Everybody talks about him. Not only is he the head of a huge tech company that controls the world almost, but he's also a showman. After writing [Season 3], of course I thought, 'Oh, some of the VIPs do kind of resemble Elon Musk.'' The director even revealed that, although it was very unintentional and he didn't plan it that way, one of the VIPs also resembles US President Donald Trump. Also read: Squid Game 3 ending: 7 burning questions answered in Netflix thriller finale; future possibilities explored Hwang, during the interview, also revealed how his own struggle with money and the 2008 financial crisis shaped this story. He spoke about the recent political fights in South Korea, referring to the president's impeachment, and even the US Capitol attack on January 6, 2021, when some Trump supporters stormed into the building. All these events made him realise the extent people go when driven by hate and greed. He feels that people have forgotten how to disagree and now outright disregard others as evil. And with the rise of AI, algorithms, and fake news, Hwang began to ask: 'Are elections even working anymore?' In the second-last episode, players are even told to vote on who to kill next, and one option is to eliminate the baby in Gi Hun's hands. That's when one Player says, 'Let's vote on who should get eliminated, and keep it democratic, like they're not talking about murder.'
Express Tribune
3 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
Cate Blanchett shocks fans with Squid Game season 3 cameo
Cate Blanchett makes a surprise cameo in the final moments of Squid Game Season 3, which was released globally on June 27, 2025. She plays a mysterious recruiter in what appears to be a US based extension of the deadly game. The scene is set in Los Angeles, where Blanchett's character engages in a game of ddakji with a man on the street mirroring the original recruitment method from Season 1. After delivering a slap and handing over the familiar invitation card, she walks away, while the Front Man observes the interaction from a distance. The brief yet impactful appearance has led to immediate speculation about a potential American spin-off of the series. Show creator Hwang Dong-hyuk confirmed Blanchett's involvement was kept under wraps and praised her for filming the scene in a single take. He noted her charisma and precision made her an ideal fit for the teaser-style role. Though Netflix has not officially confirmed an American version of Squid Game, industry reports suggest development discussions are underway. Blanchett's cameo is being interpreted by fans and critics as a strategic setup for a global franchise expansion. Season 3 continued Seong Gi-hun's journey and expanded on the international scope of the Squid Game operations. Reviews have been mostly positive, praising the show's sustained tension, thematic complexity, and the unexpected twist in its closing moments. Blanchett's role, brief but symbolically loaded adds a new layer to the series' evolving universe, possibly positioning her as a central figure in future installments beyond South Korea.
The Review Geek
9 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Review Geek
Squid Game – K-drama Season 3 Episode 5 Recap & Review
Episode 5 Episode 5 of Squid Game Season 3 begins with No-eul entering the base via a vent. Gi-hun returns to the bunker and tries to kill the rest of the players, starting with Player 100. While In-ho watches, it cuts to a flashback of his game. Old Man aka Chairman Oh makes In-ho the same offer. And while he is shaken, In-ho kills the remaining 5 members. At present, Gi-hun stops after he hallucinates Sae-byeok. Trouble is afoot for those on the sea. The pursuit team gets closer to 246 by tracking his boat. Jun-ho keeps searching for the island and In-ho finally radios him. He tells Jun-ho to stop or he will die. Jun-ho refuses. No-eul sneaks into the Officer's room and makes him delete the digital records of 246. Before she can kill him, he reveals that there is a hard copy but only he and the Frontman have access to the archives. Once they are in the elevator, he attacks. They reach the floor but lose the gun in the elevator. The Officer wonders if No-eul has feelings for 246. She reveals that she is doing it for his daughter. We learn that her daughter died in North Korea. The Officer reveals that he is partial to her not because of their shared hometown but because he too lost a loved one. He stabs her and lazily follows as she crawls. While he monologues, she reaches the elevator and shoots him with the abandoned gun. The final game is Sky Squid Game with 3 rounds. The players need to push one or more alive players off a tower to move to the next round. Round 1 begins on a square tower. If they do not eliminate anyone within 15 minutes, everyone will be killed. Each tower has a button they need to press to start the timer and the round. Unable to decide on which Red Team member to kill, the Blue Team agrees to be democratic and vote on their victims. But there is one problem – they need to separate Gi-hun and the baby, so they have 3 targets for all 3 rounds. Myung-gi suggests killing Min-su first to get it over with. Min-su doesn't make it easy but Myung-gi takes out the pole in the middle of the tower and pushes him off. Min-su hallucinates Se-mi and apologises to her before falling to his death. No-eul looks for 246's file in the archive and finally finds it. The players move to the second tower. Gi-hun realises that he has the upper hand as he sets up base on the edge. If the Blue Team kills him and the child now, they will have to pick among themselves for the last round. As the team frets, the hyper 203 starts the timer and Round 2 begins. He insists that Gi-hun will pick his own life over the kid but the rest know that 203 is wrong. Frustrated, 203 gets violent. Myung-gi interjects with an idea. On the sea, the pursuit team finds 246 and shoots at him. He shoots back but he soon runs out of bullets. Before they can kill him, Jun-ho finds them and kills the pursuit team. Back to the game, the Blue Team plays Rock, Paper, Scissors and the loser tries to convince Gi-hun that they will draw lots on who to kill. All they need is for him to join them in the center of the pillar (where they plan to grab the child from him). If he refuses, Plan B is for the loser to grab the child while Myung-gi pushes off Gi-hun with the pole. Unsurprisingly, Gi-hun refuses to move and the loser attacks. But Myung-gi pushes off the loser. Everyone is shocked and Myung-gi tries to convince Gi-hun that he is the child's father. The Blue Team thinks he is lying but Gi-hun recalls Myung-gi trying to help Jun-hee in the jump rope game. Seeing that Myung-gi has the pole and Gi-hun has the knife, the Blue Team suggests drawing lots for real. As the two hesitate, the team suddenly betrays their own member, Player 39 and breaks his leg. They offer to kill 39 in the next round but Gi-hun refuses, wanting to play fair. Having had enough, 203 and another player attack him. After a scuffle, Gi-hun and Myung-gi kill them. Player 100 is nervous as he tries to agree to whatever Gi-hun wants. However, Myung-gi pushes him off, citing that the prized money has just increased. Gi-hun doesn't look happy but it gets worse as 39 decides to kill himself. Gi-hun and Myung-gi try to stop him but he refuses to be anyone's pawn. He jumps off and the round ends. Only Gi-hun, Myung-gi and the baby remain at the end of Squid Game Season 3 Episode 5. The Episode Review It is always Myung-gi taking it too far, isn't it? With the crypto, with the Hide and Seek game and now with killing Player 100. If he hadn't been greedy, it wouldn't have come down to him, his kid, and Gi-hun. Great work, Myung-gi! Squid Game Season 3 Episode 5 is a pretty good penultimate episode, otherwise too. No-eul finally goes head-to-head with the Officer and we learn a whole lot about her. Their dynamic is also explained as they not only know each other from before, but they have a closer bond due to their shared experiences of losing a loved one. Jun-ho makes some headway too and we can rejoice. It only took the poor guy two seasons, 12 episodes and a couple of years in the Squid Game world. We do wish the show had left some more important characters for the final game. Killing Min-su and then the rest of the Blue Team did not pack the emotional punch as Season 1's penultimate episode. It also made Gi-hun and Myung-gi's survival predictable, as no way the final showdown would consist of inconsequential characters like Player 100. Previous Episode Next Episode (coming soon) Expect A Full Season Write-Up When This Season Concludes!
Yahoo
14 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'Squid Game' Season 3 cast, creator on the meaning behind the baby in final season
When Hwang Dong-hyuk's series Squid Game first premiered on Netflix in 2021, it absolutely took the world by storm as a thrilling and engaging story that people quickly became obsessed with. Four years later we're saying goodbye to the show that made a firm stamp on pop culture internationally, with an incredibly emotional, brutal and brilliant third season. After the Season 2 cliffhanger where our lead, Player 456, Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), saw his best friend killed in the rebellion, and he comes face-to-face with The Frontman, things only get more heartbreaking from there. But as devastating as the game gets, it continues, leading to a shocking of the most impactful and interesting story elements in Squid Game Season 3 is the fact that Jo Yuri's character, Jun-hee, Player 222, gives birth to her baby during the Hide-and-Seek game. In the game half the players are trying to find the exit of a maze, with the use of keys of different shapes, while the other half of the group has to kill one of the players on the opposite side. Pregnant Jun-hee teams up with Geum-ja, Player 149 (Kang Ae-sim), and Hyun-ju, Player 120 (Park Sung-hoon), but as Jun-hee starts going into labour, Geum-ja has to deliver the baby. With so much of Squid Game being an evaluation of humanity, having a baby, this new life in the game was a particularly compelling choice. "It was critical to telling the theme and exploring the theme of the story, because Squid Game is a story through the character Gi-hun, we get to ask these questions. Do we still have humanity left in all of us? Do we as a human race have what it takes to turn the path the world is in for the better?" Hwang Dong-hyuk explained to Yahoo Canada, with a translator, about the importance of including a baby in the story. "The more and more we live out our lives I think it's inevitable that we become pessimistic, we become very cynical of everything that's unfolding." "And as you see the character Gi-hun, as a human being he hits absolute rock bottom. But despite all of that, are we going to give up? That's one of the questions I wanted to ask. And when we ask ourselves that question, I got to thinking that it is our duty to try to do something to better the world so that we can leave the future generation a world that is better than how we first found it. And it's important for all of us. It is a mission, a duty and a responsibility for all of us to not give up on our efforts to yearn for a better world, and I was able to do that through the baby." "I had so much trust in the actress, Jo Yuri. Although she's very young, she's very resilient and strong, and she meticulously prepared for all the scenes," Kang said said with a translator in a separate interview about working closely with her costar in Season 3. "And I just had so much trust in her and I felt like she was my own daughter when I was filming Squid Game together with her." But the baby's birth also leads to one of the most devastating moments in the show. In Season 2 we established the relationship between Geum-ja and her son, Yong-sik, Player 007 (Yang Dong-geun), but in season three things take a horrifying turn. Hyun-ju finds the exit to the maze and as she's going back to get Jun-hee and and Geum-ja, she's killed in the game by Myung-gi, Player 333 (Yim Si-wan), who is the father of Jun-hee's baby. "I knew that there were worries and concerns about myself being a cisgender actor playing a transgender character, but because Hyun-ju is such a cool, multi-layered character with such a good heart, I received so much love and support, and Hyun-ju received so much love and support, so I am very grateful about that," Park Sung-hoon said, via a translator. "And I think maybe she died a little too early. I'm so sad to let her go." But then Geum-ja's son finds his mother, Jun-hee and the baby. He tells his mother he needs to kill Jun-hee to save himself from death. That's when Geum-ja stabs her own son, protecting Jun-hee and her newborn child, with the guards ultimately killing him t the end of the game. "There were both scenes in seasons two and three that brought tears to my eyes," Kang Ae-sim via a translator. "I remember watching one of the clips together with the actor who played my son, Yang Dong-geun, for a promotional shoot, and we were watching the scene and we cried together, because it just was so sad and heartbreaking. And I'm a big fan of Yang Dong-geun myself. He is a great artist, musician and actor in Korea, so I was very happy to work together with him, but it broke my heart even more so." Grappling with what happened in the game, and what she did to her son, Hyun-ju dies by suicide. As the story continues, the decision is made that the baby becomes a player in the game. But first, both Jun-he and her baby must participate in the Jump Rope game. Jun-hee has a severly injured foot, so Gi-hun takes her baby and is able to successfully get the newborn to the other side of the platform. But with when Myung-gi tries to help Jun-hee in the game, saying that he wants to keep their baby safe too, she corrects him by saying that little girl has nothing to do with him, and she wants him to stay away from both of them. "I felt so much for [Jun-hee] in that moment," Jo Yuri said, via translator . "And that scene was actually my audition scene for the character. So it was a scene that I kept very close to my heart." "That was very emotionally difficult, and it's just a such a sad scene," Yim Si-wan added. "And while filming, I definitely felt that energy emanating from Jo Yuri as well, and felt that she was doing such a terrific job in portraying the intensity of that moment." "Definitely it is my hope that he will be understood more in terms of where he's emotionally coming from, but I am also concerned that he will be subject to more criticism and more hate." Because she won't be able to participate in the game with her injury, Jun-hee steps off the platform, falling to her death. Leaving her young daughter with Gi-hun to help her survive the rest of the game. While we won't completely spoil the ending of the show, we'll say the final episode starts in a way that may be surprising for fans, with respect to what happens to Gi-hun. But following him on this fascinating story has been incredibly moving, particularly as we see how his faith in humanity has evolved. "I thought very highly of the way Gi-hun thinks or views the world, and also his decisions," Lee Jung-jae said, with a translator. "Gi-hun is not the smartest guy. He's not the most capable guy either, but the way he thinks of others in his life and the other people that he meets, I think very highly of that." "And also from seeing the character Gi-hun as myself, I would ask myself, would I be capable of making such decisions like Gi-hun did? I wish I could have the courage that Gi-hun had to be able to make those decisions. So I loved seeing Gi-hun's decisions and his journey, and I am very grateful, and also happy that I got this opportunity to think about these issues by portraying Gi-hun, and also the opportunity to share those conversations with our Squid Game fans."
Forbes
17 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Critics Cheer But Fans Sour On Netflix's ‘Squid Game' Season 3
Lee Jung-jae in "Squid Game" Season 3. Netflix's Squid Game Season 3 has critics cheering but most fans feeling the opposite, at least according to Rotten Tomatoes. Squid Game Season 3 began streaming early Friday morning. The release of the third season of the acclaimed psychological conspiracy thriller comes just over six months after the release of Squid Game Season 2 on Dec. 26, 2024. Squid Game Season 1 was released on Sept. 17, 2021. The official summary for Squid Game Season 3 reads, 'The third and final season of Squid Game follows Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) after losing his best friend in the game and being driven to utter despair by The Front Man (Lee Byung-hun), who was hiding his true identity to infiltrate the game. Gi-hun persists with his goal to put an end to the game, while the Front Man continues onto his next move and the surviving players' choices will lead to graver consequences with each round. 'The world eagerly awaits to see the grand finale written and directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk, who has vowed to bring the epic story to its deserved closure. Can we hope for humanity in the cruelest of realities? Fans all over the world are counting the days until the final answer is revealed.' Squid Game Season 3, which consists of six episodes, also stars Yim Si-wan, Kang Ha-neul, Wi Ha-jun, Park Gyu-young, Park Sung-hoon, Yang Dong-geun, Kang Ae-sim, Jo Yuri, Lee David, Roh Jae-won. As of Friday midday, Squid Game Season 3 has earned an 89% 'fresh' rating from RT critics based on 28 reviews. Fans, however, don't share the same sentiment as critics, and give Squid Game Season 3 a 45% 'rotten' rating on RT's Popcornmeter based on 100-plus verified user ratings. By contrast, Squid Game Season 1 earned a 95% 'fresh' rating from RT critics and an 83% 'fresh' Popcornmeter score. Season 2 of Squid Game, meanwhile, earned an 83% 'fresh' rating from RT critics, while audiences gave the season a 63% 'fresh' score on the site's Popcornmeter. RT's Critics Consensus and audience summary for Squid Game Season 3 is still pending. What Are Individual Critics Saying About 'Squid Game' Season 3? Clint Worthington of is among the top critics on Rotten Tomatoes who gives Squid Game Season 3 a 'fresh' review, writing in his review summary, 'It's tough to say what new lessons we've learned from Squid Games 2 and 3 that 1 didn't already hammer home with blunt force. But the ride was altogether unforgettable, even if just through the thud of thematic repetition.' Nick Schager of The Daily Beast also gives Squid Game Season 3 a 'fresh' rating on RT, writing, 'As taut, startling, and unhinged as ever. Moreover, it mercifully avoids falling victim to its preceding episodes' shortcomings on the way to its do-or-die finish.' Also high on the third season of Squid Game is Judy Berman of TIME Magazine, who writes on RT, 'Despite all the indignities to which it's been subjected, the show closes with its most unsparing season yet, an indictment of societies where money trumps humanity that roots out all forms of complicity -- especially our own.' Angie Han of The Hollywood Reporter is the only top critic on RT who gives Squid Game Season 3 a 'rotten' rating so far, writing in her review summary, 'It brings me no pleasure to report that the third and thankfully last of Squid Game seasons only confirms that we, like Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), should've left that cursed island behind for good after his first victory.' All six episodes of Squid Game Season 3 are now on Netflix.
