Netflix released the third and (supposedly) final season of Squid Game this weekend. (You can read our reviews of the show’s first two episodes here and here, with the rest of the season rolling out over the next few days.) To celebrate the milestone, the streamer has been letting creator Hwang Dong-hyuk out of his “Please make us another massive global streaming sensation” box to do some press, discussing many of the choices he made in bringing the story of Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), the man who just can’t seem to stop playing lethal games of marbles or red rover, to a close. That includes the surprising circumstances that lead to the conclusion of the show’s final game, its bizarre final celebrity cameo, and how he ended up accidentally getting some Elon Musk into the writing of his series.
Hwang was talking in that last case about the show’s shadowy VIP.s, the gaudily masked idiots for whom the show’s deadly games are held, and who are portrayed, each and every one, as some flavor of total dumbass. (Reminding viewers, every time they pop up, that the system imposed by the game has no deeper meaning or reason for existing than the amusement of callous, sociopathic dipshits.) And while Hwang says none of the VIPs are based on particular people, even he has to admit that he notes certain similarities, telling Time, “Elon Musk is everywhere these days, right? Everybody talks about him. Not only is he the head of a huge tech company that controls the world almost, but he’s also this showman. After writing [Season 3], of course I thought, ‘Oh, some of the VIPs do kind of resemble Elon Musk.’” Hwang noted that the increasingly active role the VIPs take in the third season—briefly dressing up like the show’s iconic Pink Guards to gun down some losing players—was intended as satire of the more mask-off nature of oligarchy in 2025. “The people who really control the power and the system, they no longer hide behind a curtain. They willingly take their masks off, almost as if to declare, ‘We’re the ones running everything. We’re the ones in control.’”
Elsewhere, Hwang has talked about the endpoint of this version of the show’s game, and how it brings the story of Gi-hun to a close—including the fact that he originally had what we can only imagine was an even darker ending in mind for the character. Talking to Variety, Hwang talked about how his protagonist exits his second round of games, giving his life so that a baby—who, for somewhat convoluted reasons, is the sole remaining player in the contest—can live. Not apparently how this was all going to go initially: “In the finale,” Hwang says, “Gi-hun makes a choice, and originally, when I was just thinking about where the story was going to take me, it was actually the exact opposite choice.” (It’s not clear if that means outright baby-killing, or just a decision to compromise his morals to stay alive, but it sounds pretty bleak either way.)
Finally, Hwang has been talking about that celebrity cameo, i.e., the extremely distracting thing that happens in the show’s final minute, and which Netflix swears is not explicitly meant as a setup for that David Fincher American Squid Game series that’s been floating in the ether for a while now: The sudden appearance of Cate Blanchett as a recruiter for what’s apparently an American version of the game. (But which still plays the very Korean game of ddakji to lure people in, for some reason.) “We thought having a woman as a recruiter would be more dramatic and intriguing,” Hwang told Netflix’s own marketing arm. “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 also notes that Blanchett was an effort to match the South Korean star power of the show’s original recruiter, massive TV star and Train To Busan leader Gong Yoo.) Also, Cate Blanchett is apparently pretty good at flipping little paper tiles: “She was amazing at playing ddakji. I believe she successfully flipped the ddakji with her first try, and we were able to get that one long take right away.” All that being said, Hwang did tell Variety that he left the door open for the show to come back eventually in some form: “I guess you could say that in a way, because when you watch the finale, while it has a true closure, I think you can still feel a sense of some kind of longing or lingering. So I think, maybe, someday, if the opportunity allows and the timing is right, maybe there’s room for other stories.”
