Observe: This comprises spoilers for Squid Recreation‘s remaining season.
As Squid Recreation’s third season wraps up with a finale titled “People are…,” we’re left pondering find out how to full that phrase. Trying again over three seasons of primary-colored units splattered with gore, that open assertion can be an open query to the viewers.
Squid Recreation is the type of present you may’t be too passionate about having fun with. At its core, the spectacle is gladiatorial; it’s bloodsports, the type of factor a contemporary viewers can watch with good conscience solely as a result of it’s fictional. 456 determined and indebted persons are scooped off South Korean streets to compete in lethal youngsters’s video games, with every dying including extra money to the pot; the final participant standing wins an unlimited money prize. The melding of brutal violence with playschool aesthetics solely amplifies the state of affairs’s perverseness.
Squid Recreation exists inside that paradoxical style wherein some horror is portrayed and condemned, but perpetuated season after season as a result of, finally, the horror is what brings within the viewers. Evil can by no means be utterly defeated, as a result of Netflix will all the time need extra episodes. With the baton handed on to America on the shut of season three, I’m left feeling that South Korea received out on the proper time. But for all of the darkness in its idea, the center of Squid Recreation’s narrative harbors a kernel of sunshine.
Though Gi-hun just isn’t a Christian character, he lives out the type of self-sacrifice to which Christians are known as.
Having gained the video games in season one, Seong Gi-hun (Participant 456) returns in season two with the hope of shutting them down. We’re on his aspect—in fact we’re—but we all know that he can’t succeed. For the present to exist and proceed, the great man should fail. We’re not sadists (hopefully); we don’t wish to watch Squid Recreation as a result of we take pleasure in watching folks get violently murdered. We look ahead to the fun of seeing a hero face lethal peril and overcome it. If Gi-hun died moments into the primary sport, we’d in a short time lose curiosity.
Though Squid Recreation serves up a roster of sympathetic characters, it’s Gi-hun whose arc takes us by means of the entire collection to a sobering however satisfying finish. He, alone of all of the contestants, performs with no intention of profitable the cash. To willingly enter right into a world of vice and violence as a way to save these entrapped by it, understanding that it’d imply your personal dying, is a really Christ-like factor to do. Regardless of the darkness of the present’s theme—maybe, in actual fact, as a result of of it—Gi-hun’s goodness radiates all through the narrative.
He’s not an ideal image of Christ, by any means. Caught out and foiled, disillusioned, compromised, and depressed, Gi-hun stumbles and staggers his approach by means of gruelling episode after episode, embodying a way more relatable human expertise.
Democracy is the twist in seasons two and three. After every sport, the surviving contestants can vote to proceed enjoying or finish issues there and cut up the present winnings. Gi-hun turns into the prophetic voice, pointing the best way out of dying and into freedom, but like most of the Bible’s prophets, he finds himself within the minority. Greed and worry plague the bulk, lots of whom are glad to serve up one other human sacrifice if it should assist them repay their very own private money owed.
Let down by democracy, Gi-hun applies himself and a band of followers to the zealot route. As is echoed in so many fashionable superhero motion pictures, the one technique to beat violence is with violence. His revolt although, is crushed. He’s betrayed by a coward and a Judas and is returned to the video games in abject defeat.
Earlier than despair can set in, although, he’s given a way to channel it. When season three opens, Gi-hun has, for the primary time, stepped off the righteous path and surrendered to the demon of the video games. In a slasher model of hide-and-seek, he has eyes just for vengeance, looking down the cowardly Kang Dae-ho (Participant 388), whom he blames for the failed coup. His vengeance, nonetheless falteringly, is fulfilled. Then comes his darkish night time of the soul. He entered the video games hoping to free folks from dying and now he has blood on his fingers. He’s like many Christians who set out filled with zeal for God however find yourself tripping over their very own sins and flaws to search out themselves sprawled within the mud with the remainder of humanity.
Having hit all-time low, Gi-hun is thrown an surprising lifeline. Whereas his thoughts had been set on vengeance, the opposite sympathetic characters had been making their very own sacrifices to guard the pregnant Kim Jun-hee (Participant 222) lengthy sufficient for her to provide start. New life enters the realm of dying. With Jun-hee’s allies gone and her dying all however assured, she turns to our dejected hero to guard her baby. Compassion delivers him and offers him a purpose to maintain going.
Gi-hun is offered, nonetheless, with one final probability at deliverance by means of violence. His once-ally reveals himself to be the video games’ Entrance Man and gives him a knife. He can slay the opposite gamers of their sleep and stroll away free with the child. It’s the identical selection the Entrance Man was given when he performed the video games, however the place he gave in to the best way of the blade, Gi-hun refuses. To spare the depraved and endanger the harmless is a ridiculous determination in a world the place the phrase “People are…” is adopted by “…simply our bodies.” However for Gi-hun, as it’s for the Christian, refusing to select up the enemy’s weapons for what looks like the larger good is to emphasise the sacredness of human life.
When he enters the ultimate sport with child 222 strapped to his chest, the percentages don’t look favorable. There are three elevated podiums and an extended drop. Three deaths are required, one per podium. What might have changed into an uninteresting shoving match turns into a harrowing case examine in thoughts video games and barbaric negotiations. With every participant eradicated the stakes are shifted, inserting Gi-hun in numerous dilemmas till a final fateful determination. On the finish of all of it, he finds himself alone on the rostrum with the child and one remaining dying required.
There may be, in fact, just one proper determination. But the associated fee just isn’t so simply embraced. It’s one factor to defend an harmless in opposition to violent attackers. It’s fairly one other to know, in chilly silence, that the one approach the harmless can stay is should you step out into nothing and plummet to the concrete flooring under.
“People are…” he murmurs, and falls. He has given his reply.
Squid Recreation typically reveals people at their worst, whether or not it’s the dehumanizing voyeurism of the VIPs, the twisted morality of the sport makers, or the cut-throat avarice of the gamers themselves. In every of those examples, we see people who’ve succumbed to their baser instincts. In distinction, Gi-hun walks the slim path, the more durable highway, persevering by means of numerous sufferings till he lastly lays down his life in order that one other would possibly stay. He dies in obscurity, with solely enemies watching him. The one he died to avoid wasting won’t even keep in mind him.
Gi-hun just isn’t Jesus, but in some ways he bears the traits of the struggling servant spoken about within the prophets, an archetype fulfilled in Jesus after which, naturally, in those that observe him. The apostle Paul, in reflecting on his personal expertise of following the best way of Jesus, describes it in methods I think about Gi-hun would acknowledge: “We’re in each approach, however not crushed; perplexed, however not pushed to despair; persecuted, however not forsaken; struck down, however not destroyed” (2 Corinthians 4:8-9).
Though Gi-hun just isn’t a Christian character, he lives out the type of self-sacrifice to which Christians are known as. And if Christians are the primary fruits of a brand new kingdom, which means the decision is prolonged to humanity at massive. “People are…” Gi-hun intones, earlier than enacting humanity at its finest. For these of us watching from the consolation of our residing rooms, his remaining phrases are an invite.
