I thought they were just doing the acknowledgement nod people do. “Oh, hey!”
Do we have any sense that Number One is going to stop running the Squid Games in Korea?
Was it though? Or was the whole Fight Club thing imaginary? Maybe he was just misinterpreting the nods. I mean, Tyler Durden was imaginary, or rather, the Narrator was actually Tyler..
OK, finally finished the 3rd series.
Even though it was highly predictable and somewhat cliched, I found myself more invested in most of the characters than I expected. I do have some problems with the way they tied up all the various threads but I give it a thumbs up.
I missed there being some sort of resolution between Jun-Ho (the detective) and In-Ho (the Front Man). Jun-Ho yelling across the arena to In-Ho, who ignores him and takes the baby away leaves their story unresolved. The viewer knows that In-Ho took the offer from Oh Il-Nam (Player 001 in the first series and the original host) to kill all of his competition with the knife when they were drunk and passed out, and that’s how In-Ho won the 28th Squid Game and presumably was then recuited to be the Front Man. But Jun-ho never learns that and is left in the dark.
He offered the same deal to Gi-hun who kept true to his morals and didn’t kill the others. IMHO, In-ho is trying to prove to himself that people are ultimately self-serving in order to justify the choices he has made, but Gi-hun proves him wrong and shakes his world view.
It’s not sure if the Korean Squid Game will continue. Clearly they still are funded since the payoff to Player 222 still happened. They evacuated the island, presumably all the VIPs got away in their private helicopters, but the final scene may indicate the games have move to the US. Or it may mean that there’s more than one Squid Game in operation. Either way, there’s still a market for the Game and there are still people willing to back it.
All the story lines had resolutions except for No-eul (guard #11). We don’t get to see her resolution with her daughter, or if her daughter is even alive. Not sure why they chose to leave that story line open ended.
I assume they mentioned that the Officer’s family member in North Korea died because of a lack of a kidney to explain the whole organ harvesting operation, but it’s pretty weak motivation for all that complexity and risk.
There were too many complex story lines and characters to really care about all of them. You knew that the truly evil ones were going to die satisfying deaths; the greedy old businessman, the shaman, Thanos and his sidekick so there wasn’t much suspense. It was fairly clear that someone was going to have to sacrifice themselves for the baby. I assumed it was 456 but thought somehow the baby’s father might survive to take care of her.
I thought she read her file and it indicated that her daughter was dead (and so the organizers knew her daughter was dead but they were stringing her along).
But during the closing they showed the agency had enabled a reunion so they weren’t scam artists. The man seemed genuinely interested and helpful, so it sounded like there was real hope.
That guy wasn’t a scam artist; I think he genuinely didn’t know if her daughter was dead or alive. But the game organizers knew the daughter was dead. I don’t think No-eul was still working on getting her daughter back at the end of the series. (It’s been a while since I saw it, though.)
I interpreted that as the game organizers thought the daughter was dead, but it’s not clear how they would know for sure. Either way, it’s a fairly minor point that she didn’t have resolution and everyone else did.