[This story contains MAJOR spoilers from the Squid Game season three finale, “Humans are…”]

No one has more anticipation around the release of the final season of Squid Game than its creator, Hwang Dong-hyuk.

“For the past six years, there hasn’t been a single day that went by without me thinking about Squid Game,” says the writer and director of every episode of Netflix‘s most globally popular show of all time. “This is something that has completely consumed me.”

After launching with season one in 2021 to global appeal, it was a no-brainer for Hwang and Netflix to continue their partnership. Seasons two and three were made back to back, with the second season launching six months ago before the third and final season now releasing on Friday with the South Korean dystopian drama’s final six episodes. There are reports that filmmaker David Fincher is developing an English-language spinoff for Netflix, though sources tell The Hollywood Reporter that Squid Game‘s ending (which includes a final-scene cameo from a prior Fincher collaborator, described below) is not intended to set up any future stories “at this time.”

As Hwang had promised, the final episodes do conclude the story of his protagonist, reluctant hero Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), the indebted father who won the deadly Squid Games in season one and returned to take them down in seasons two and three. Despite his valiant efforts, however, Gi-hun doesn’t make it out of this story alive. Instead he sacrifices himself so the newborn baby of another player, Jun-hee (Jo Yu-ri), can survive. The baby — whose mother and father, Lee Myung-gi (Yim Si-wan), aka Player 333, both died during the games — ultimately takes on his mother’s role as Player 222 and wins the Games.

The duality of bleakness and hope in the ending of Hwang’s anti-capitalist thriller leaves viewers with much to think about, especially with the final scene of the series featuring a surprise cameo from Oscar-winning actress Cate Blanchett as the Recruiter for an American version of the Squid Games. The scene either shuts the book on the story by making the cyclical point that the Games will go on, or opens the mega-successful franchise to continue on with a possible continuation spinoff series. (Netflix has not yet commented.)

Below, The Hollywood Reporter spoke to Hwang via a translator after watching the first five episodes of the final season (the finale was not screened ahead of time for press) to talk about Squid Game‘s final, timely message and possible future, while also revealing what he struggled with the most in crafting Gi-hun’s ending: “If season three is met with as much love as people loved season one, then I think I’m definitely going to feel less empty about saying goodbye,” he says.

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In our 2024 The Hollywood Reporter cover story ahead of season two, you attributed the mass appeal of your Korean series to the rest of the world finding these characters and their stories to be unique. How did you lean into that when making seasons two and three back to back?

I don’t know if I was aware of what to lean into particularly, but because so many people loved the story and the characters in season one, that experience gave me a lot of confidence. I think I was more aware, if not anxious, about how other people were going to react to the story when I was creating season one. But in seasons two and three, based on that foundation that I had gained through the success of the first season and all of the love, I was able to tell the story the way I wanted to tell it.

You also said that seasons two and three, and particularly the new voting aspect with the Os vs. the Xs, was inspired by the direction the world was going in at the time. I felt constantly disappointed that the Os always won — no matter how bad the Games got, they voted to continue playing. What are you saying about modern society with the majority of the players voting for their own demise?

Recently, whether it’s within Korea or in America, things that I’ve gone through, either directly myself or events that I read or hear through the news, it seems to me that around the world, the conflict that begins because of election and votes is just getting worse. It is exacerbated. Elections have always put a divide among people. We pick sides and we go through conflicts during elections. However, I think in the past, up to some point in time, we tried to at least listen to one another. I think we had more tolerance of each other.

However these days, I do not think that is the case. The conflict and divide that comes from taking different sides in an election is becoming more and more extremist, where people no longer think that other people can be different from you. It’s more of, “I’m right, and all of you are wrong.” And it also leads to a lot of violence. On top of that, there is so much populism and propaganda, as well as AI-generated fake news and an algorithm-based consumption of news. All of that leads to a lot of extremist thinking, and so many people are misled because of those things. I wanted to reflect all of these current events in Squid Game.

It was equally disturbing to watch the VIPs delight in the tragedy of the Games this season. Why did you want to return to the VIPs and focus on them more in season three?

You are right that the role of the VIPs has gotten bigger compared to season one. Here is where I was coming from: In the past, the people who are symbolized through the VIPs were behind the curtain, right? They were veiled and hidden while controlling politics and society. However, I feel like more and more these days, the people who do the controlling rise above the surface more. They let people know that they’re backing [whatever it is] they’re paying the money for and financing these decisions.

In the past, the VIPS were hidden. But recently, and I think this is more so in America than in Korea but also true in Korea, they become so much more obvious. They reveal themselves, letting people know that they’re the ones in control and the ones in power. I wanted to explore that a little bit. And I think that’s a connection with the anti-oligarchy movements and the way the discourse is happening these days.

You raised the stakes by not only having a very pregnant player (Jun-hee), but then having her newborn baby officially join the Games. I think we all felt secure that the show would not kill off a pregnant woman. But after she had the baby, we saw her make this self-sacrifice where she killed herself to give her child a better chance. Going into the finale, viewers remained worried about the fate of this baby. Did this storyline feel like a risk? What does the baby represent?

Since it is the finale, I thought that raising the stakes and taking a bigger risk in true Squid Game fashion was the right way to go. Through that, I wanted to expose to an even a more accurate degree the rock-bottom of humanity and also shed light on even brighter hope. I believe that through the baby, Gi-hun is able to show those themes in a more detailed way.

I believe that all of us are able to live in this world the way we do due to the efforts and struggles that our previous generation went through in order to give us a better world. And the reason we need to try to right the course of the world is because we want to give a better world to our future generation. So in our story, the baby not only represents human conscience, but also the future generation for whom we need to fix the way we are.

You said going into season two that this third season would bring about the conclusion of Gi-hun’s story. We’ve watched for three seasons the evolution of his character, and we see how broken down he is by the end. What was the biggest challenge in figuring out how to end his story?

The biggest challenge I would say was, how far did I want I want to throw Gi-hun down the pit, and then from where do I make him rise up again?

At the end of season two, he fails the rebellion. He loses the people that he had gone to rebellion with, including, of course, his best friend. But I wanted to dig even deeper than that in season three. The process of Gi-hun’s arc where that immense amount of guilt that he carries and all of that tragedy through the rebellion, it just completely consumes him and he cannot take it any longer. So he projects that immense guilt onto this character Dae-ho [Player 388], who failed to return with the ammo [during the rebellion]. Gi-hun struggles in order to escape this immense sense of guilt and that leads him to, as you see in [episode two during Hide and Seek], kill someone for the first time, based on his guilt. This means that now there is blood in Gi-hun’s hands. He commits an irreconcilable original sin.

And so depicting and writing the process of that character arc where Gi-hun is in that state and how he comes back from that? That was the biggest challenge. That was what I struggled the most with. As for what I came what I came up with, hopefully after watching the entire show, the audience will understand and support the conclusion.

You offered up some spinoff ideas previously. You’ve talked about wanting to revisit the time gap between seasons one and two, and possibly explore backstories for other players and guards. Do you feel that the show ends in a way that could set up a continuation spinoff, or are you more interested in traveling back in time if you did continue this franchise?

I think the story ended in a manner where it doesn’t need a further story to be told. So I am not too interested in telling a story that continues on from the conclusion. If I were to do a spinoff someday, I think I would rather choose to go back and see what happened during that time gap [between seasons one and two]. But this is something that we are just tossing around, so as for when or how a spinoff might come about, it’s still up in the air.

I know you lost several teeth when making season one due to the pressure, and I read that you lost two more teeth due to the stress of making this final season. The finale was so secretive that it was held back from press ahead of release. How challenging has it been for you to keep this all a secret, and how are you feeling now that you’re finally able to launch the final season?

As you said, there were so many secrets. There were rumors about leaks, sometimes fake news, all of which I constantly get on social media and check and follow up on. I personally got so many questions from people around me. People would ask me, “What happens to Gi-hun? What happens to these characters? What games are going to be there? Just say yes or no.” (Laughs.)

So to be free from all of that fear and burden, I do feel relieved. But as we are releasing the show and saying goodbye, for the past six years, there hasn’t been a single day that went by without me thinking about Squid Game. This is something that has completely consumed me for the past six years. So to know that I have to say goodbye, I admit, I do have the sense of almost a loss, or I feel quite empty, to be honest. But I hope that if season three is met with as much love as people loved season one, then I think I’m definitely going to feel less empty about saying goodbye.

The Jump Rope game felt like a character this season; it was so visceral watching that game. Was that something you were proud to have accomplished when you look back at season three?

It wasn’t as hard to write the game Jump Rope, but it was definitely one of the harder ones to film. In the writing process, the most challenging were the fourth and sixth games [Hide and Seek and Sky Squid Game], because of their psychological aspect. Jump Rope was relatively easier to write. But then once I had the actors up there on set, we had to make sure that everybody jumped at the same beat. There was a lot of CGI involved to add the sense of height, as well as have the rope. Then on top of that, we had to use a lot of sound effects for the rope. So speaking of manpower and just the amount of time we spent in creating it, it took so much more to create Jump Rope. I think this game may be visceral, as you put it, because it really requires all five senses to see what’s going on. I hope the audience finds it very thrilling.

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The final season of Squid Game is now streaming on Netflix. Read THR’s take on the finale cameo and how it could set up a spinoff.