After much anticipation, Squid Game 3 was released on Netflix on June 27, 2025. Directed and written by Hwang Dong-hyuk, the last season in the series consists of 6 episodes with a runtime of 55-60 minutes each. The story carries on from the last season where Gi-hun and other participants organized a rebellion against the game makers.
The recurring cast of the series included Lee Jung-jae as Seong Gi-hun, Lee Byung-hun as Hwang In-ho/Frontman, Wi Ha-joon as Hwang Jun-ho, Im Si-wan as Lee Myung-gi, Kang Ha-neul as Kang Dae-ho, Park Gyu-young as Kang No-eul, Park Sung-hoon as Cho Hyun-ju, Yang Dong-geun as Park Yong-sik, Kang Ae-shim as Jang Geum-ja, Jo Yu-ri as Kim Jun-hee, Lee David as Park Min-su, Lee Jin-wook as Park Gyeong-seok, and Roh Jae-won as Nam-gyu.
Squid Game 3 Recap
First episode of Squid Game season 3 shows the moment when player 246 (Park Gyeong-seok, who has a sick daughter) is about to get shot. However, he does not die at this moment. Kang No-eul, the North Korean masked guard, shoots at the side of his abdomen and asks him to pretend to be dead. Since his organs were not damaged his body was sent for harvesting by other guards. No-eul then tries to befriend the guards involved in organ harvesting and asks him to show around the workroom. When they reach there, No-eul shoots everyone except the doctor and asks him to save Park Gyeong-seok.
Meanwhile, Gi-hun is transported back to the participant quarters in a coffin but unharmed. When he gains consciousness, he seems traumatized with how the things unfolded and he was the sole survivor. With 60 participants remaining and 35 dead, more money is added to the piggy bank. While Gi-hun urges the guards to kill him when they come for the next round’s processing voting, they handcuff him to a bed.
Since most of the people not in favor of continuing the game were dead, the majority voted in favor of continuing the game. On the other hand, Detective Jun-ho continues his search for the island with analyzing the drone operator’s death. When the boat captain tells the Frontman how close they came to discovering everything, he orders him to kill everyone, including Jun-ho.
Game 4 – Hide and Seek
While moving to the gaming area, the participants saw the bodies of people who died during rebellion, hanging from the ceiling. For the game of hide and seek, the 60 contestants were divided equally into two groups of 30 by picking out a ball from a mixture of blue & red balls. Participants with blue ball were given a vest of the same same color and a key. Each contestant’s key had a different shape, either circle, triangle, or square. They were tasked with hiding for 30 minutes by unlocking room door in the maze and finding the exit behind some of the doors.
Participants who picked red ball were also given red vests and a knife. Their task was to seek the blue vest participants and kill at least one, to pass the round. Before the game started, all the contestants were given the chance to swap their color. The mom and son duo swapped places, as son didn’t want his mother to kill someone. Kim Jun-hee and Lee Myung-gi also swapped for the same reason, as he didn’t want his pregnant ex to feel guilty for killing someone.
As the blue vested participants were ushered into the maze, they were given 2 minutes to hide. As soon as the game started, the seekers showed no mercy and killed whoever they could find. Myung-gi and Nam-gyu team up and kill more than one person, to increase the money prize. Myung-gi had promised Jun-hee that he would save her, once he secures his place in the round. Unknown to him, Jun-hee’s water breaks in the middle of the game and she is helped by the mother, Jang Geum-ja, Cho Hyun-ju, to give birth to a baby girl safely.
While looking for Jun-hee to protect her, he kills Cho Hyun-ju, who was standing in the doorway to take Geum-ja and Jun-hee to the exit door. Seeing that Jun-hee had seen him kill her ally, he goes away as he was accompanied by Nam-gyu, who wouldn’t have spared them. As Jun-hee and Geum-ja make their way to the exit door, which can be opened by putting in the 3 keys with different shapes together, Geum-ja’s son finds them. He couldn’t kill anyone and when he sees Jun-hee and his mother about to exit, with the timer about to run out, he tries to kill Jun-hee.
Geum-ja tells him to kill her but he approaches Jun-hee instead. To save her, Geum-ja stabs him with the knife hidden in her hair stick. On the other hand, Min-su finds Thanos’ cross shaped pills case accidentally dropped by Nam-gyu. He takes a pill and starts looking for Se-mi, who was already killed by Nam-gyu in the previous season. He comes across the shaman, who belittled him in order to get away, but Min-su hallucinates that she is Nam-gyu and kills her. Gi-hun also takes part in the game, not to survive but to kill Kang Dae-ho, whom he blames for everyone’s death as he didn’t go back with more cartridges.
Gi-hun kills him after a long chase, not with the knife but his bare hands. He tries to kill himself with a piece of broken knife but the timer runs out by then and a masked guard shoots the piece out of his hand. Some of the VIPs are also shown, cosplaying as the masked guards to get a feel of the game in person. Only 25 people remain after the game ends. While the organ harvesting workroom, No-eul shoots the doctor once he fixes Park Gyeong-seok’s bullet wound and gives him a guard’s uniform (016) and tells him to go to his quarters.
When the chief running the workroom finds out about the shooting, he inquires No-eul, who asks him to let her and guard 016 go away on a boat, or she would expose his harvesting system to others. After coming back to the living quarters, Geum-ja pleads Gi-hun to protect Jun-hee and her child going forward and tells him that other rebel participants death was not his fault. He doesn’t pay much heed but Geum-ja hangs herself at night, due to her guilt of killing her own son.
As for Jun-ho, he was able to find the island where the Frontman shot him, while loan shark Choi Woo-seok expresses his suspicion about boat Captain Park and looks for his house to gather evidence. He break’s into the Captain’s house and sees his picture with Salesman (Gong-yoo), but the pet dog attacks him which leads to Woo-seok shooting him. He tries to escape and finds a pot under the dog house. The pot contained a mask guard’s uniform and bundles of notes hidden under it. However, the police catches him red handed.
Game 5 – Jump Rope
The remaining 25 participants are moved to another game of Jump rope, after a consensus vote. The participants see Young-hee from red light, green light game and another character, Cheol-su. They stood facing each other, separated by a narrow platform. They were given 20 minutes to cross the platform jumping while Young-hee and Cheol-su would swing the rope. Jun-hee fractured her leg during hide and seek and couldn’t even walk properly. She gives her child to Gi-hun, to take it safely, while he promises to come back for her.
Gi-hun crosses the bridge first safely and other follow him. However, the person who comes next starts pushing people after him, as they tried to jump to the safe platform. In the tussle, many fall to their death, including the guy who started pushing. Jun-hee remains on the other side while the timer runs out. Gi-hun tries to go back but she stops him and jumps off, instead of getting eliminated by the guard.
Although she dies, the VIP and the Frontman decide to let her baby girl take her place in the game and be treated as a participant. While 8 adults survive, when the announcement notifies 9 people, the remaining participants question why the baby is included and urge to kill her. To prevent the contestants from killing the baby during night time, the Frontman gives them a hint for the next game, where they have to kill 3 people anyway to survive and walk away with the money. He also treats them to a lavish dinner.
As the participants fall asleep, a guard takes Gi-hun to Frontman’s room. He presents Gi-hun with a knife and gives him the option to kill all the remaining people in their sleep. This way, he could walk away with the money and the child unharmed. He also reveals his identity to enrage him and sow the seed of mistrust in others. At the same time, a flash back shows Frontman as a contestant, being presented with a similar knife by the creator of the game, Chairman Oh (001). It shows that by killing everyone in their sleep, the Frontman won the game.
Once back in the living quarters, Gi-hun tries to kill the old man with 10 billion debt, but he couldn’t proceed with it. He thinks about Sae-byeok and goes back to his bed. Meanwhile, Woo-seok warns Jun-ho about Captain Park’s identity from the police station and right away, Captain tries to kill everyone onboard. Jun-ho stops him from killing the last person and along with him, tries to find the island. No-eul escapes with Park Gyeong-seok on a speedboat but her chief tells her to come back as he realizes the Gyeong-seok’s identity. No-eul comes back but tells Gyeong-seok to escape.
She ambushes her Chief and tells him to delete the file on Gyeong-seok, so nobody would go after him. But the Chief tells him that their a hardcopy on the Frontman’s floor, which can only be accessed by him. She forces him to go there on gunpoint but he tries to tackle her in the elevator. After some back and forth, she shoots him despite getting gravely injured.
Game 6 – Sky Squid Game
The 9 contestants, including Gi-hun carrying the child, Min-su, Myung-gi, and other make their way to the playing arena where they see 3 pillars in the shape of a circle, triangle and a square. An elevator takes them up on one pillar where the game would start once they press the button on the floor. They are given 20 minutes to push at least 1 person off the pillar to pass the round and move to the next pillar and do the same thing untill the timer ends on the 3rd pillar.
The other contestants gang up and decide to push off Gi-hun and the child. However, Myung-gi convinces them to push Min-su off in this round, so they could separate the child from Gi-hun. Everyone hesitates to push Min-su, in case he grabs them as well. Myung-gi then takes out the pole in the middle of the pillar and pushes Min-su off with it. As the round ends, a platform extends for the participants to move to the next pillar. They immediately try to separate the child and push Gi-hun. But Gi-hun tries to manipulate them into picking a draw pushing whoever picks the short end.
While they try to figure out how to proceed, Myung-gi changes his stance and pushes another man off the pillar. He reveals to everyone that it’s his child and he would never kill the baby. This disrupts the majority and they start to fight among themselves, while Myung-gi pushes off everyone except Gi-hun and his child. As the platform extends for them to move to the last pillar, Myung-gi threatens Gi-hun to give him his child. Gi-hun tries to reason that even if he gives the child and stays behing, Myung-gi has to push his own child or jump off for the game to end.
Despite deadly argument, Gi-hun makes it to the last pillar and as their fight continues, Myung-gi and Gi-hun slip off the ledge of the pillar. However, Gi-hun, grabs an exposed iron rod to save himself from falling and Myung-gi grabs Gi-hun’s coat. The seam of the coat rips apart and Myung-gi falls to his death. Unfortunately, they hadn’t pressed the buzzer for the third round to start, thus, Myung-gi’s death couldn’t be counted. Gi-hun contemplates his next move as VIP guests think that Gi-hun would obviously push the child.
In a turn of events, Gi-hun places the child in the center, presses the buzzer and jumps off the pillar to end the game with his death. No-eul, who burns Gyeong-seok’s file with others, also finds a file on her where her daughter is claimed to be dead, who was said to be left behind while escaping from North Koea. She decides to shoot herself as well but decided not to after witnessing Gi-hun saving the child.
Who Wins Squid Game 3 and What Happens in the End?
With all the other participants dead, the child (222) becomes the winner of Squid Game 3. Before jumping to his death, Gi-hun comments that they are not horses but humans. As the game concludes, Jun-ho also reaches near the island where the games are held and finds Gyeong-seok trying to escape the guards in a boat. With his help, Jun-ho finally steps onto the island and Gyeong-seok is sent back to safety with the help of coast guards, called by Jun-ho.
However, the Frontman realises that they are at the verge of being exposed and presses the evacuation button that also turn on the timer on the bombs that would make the island explode. While breaking in, Jun-ho sees the time bomb and rushes to find his brother. He sees his brother aka Frontman, picking up the child and going away. Jun-ho also escapes the island as it burns. The scene then cuts to a man in suit, presumably the Frontman, breaking into Woo-seok’s motel room, where Gi-hun had stored his prize money.
The show takes a 6 month leap and shows Gyeong-seok working at the amusement park as a sketch artist and No-eul sits in front of him. She reveals that she used to work at the park and gives his daughter, who seems to have recovered from her illness, a candy. While walking back to her her car, she receives a call that her daughter has been found and is somewhere in China, which relieves her. Detective Jun-ho also picks up Woo-seok from prison, as he gets released after serving a sentence for his previous crimes a gang member.
Jun-ho tells him that Gi-hun’s money was not there when he went back and they discuss their future plans. When Jun-ho comes back to his house, he finds the child on the dining table with a black envelop. It contained the squid game card which declares the child as the winner and a gold debit card. Jun-ho goes to the ATM to check the account balance and discovers the amount to be 45,600,000,000 won.
It cuts to the airport where Sae-byeok’s brother looks on as his mother coming from North Korea walks up to him. They hug each other. No-eul is also shown to be flying to China, to her daughter. The scene again cuts to LA, USA, where the Frontman walks up to Gi-hun’s daughter’s house and introduces himself as his acquaintance, who wants to give her a ribboned box. She tries to close the door in anger but stops when he tells her that her dad has died and the box contains his final belongings. She takes it as the Frontman drives away.
When she opens the box, it contains his player suit with his number 456, and an envelope with the squid game card and a gold debit card. The Frontman is shown driving through the city when the sound of ddakji is heard again. He open his window to see a woman (Cate Blanchett) making a homeless man play the game of ddakji and smiles while looking back at the Frontman.
Squid Game 3 is available to watch on Netflix.
Also read: Super Rich in Korea Review: Diving Into 5 Individual’s Opulent Lifestyle
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