Wait. Are they gonna kill the baby?
Okay, fine, I’m gonna come right out and ask it: Are they gonna kill the baby? I know this is television and 99 times out of 100 shows that aren’t Game of Thrones or House of the Dragon are not gonna kill the baby. But this is Squid Game. Yanking the audience’s heartstrings as hard as possible until the damn things snap is what Squid Game does. So I’ll ask it again: Is Squid Game gonna kill that goddamn baby?
Before you dismiss the possibility, consider the fates of all the other gentle souls who’ve braved the games over the course of Seasons 2 and 3. Geum-ja, the kindly old lady? She killed herself after killing her son to stop him from killing the baby’s mom. Jun-hee, the injured young mother? She kills herself in this episode, flinging herself off a cliff rather than try and fail to get past the Jump Rope obstacle, leaving her baby’s fate in Gi-hun’s hands.
It goes on. Hyun-ju, Geum-ja and Jun-hee’s kind but formidable friend and defender? Murdered accidentally-on-purpose by Myung-gi, the baby’s father. Min-su, the timid young man who got into debt through no real fault of his own? Reduced to a zoned-out pill-popper who’s experiencing the events befalling him like an acid-tripping soldier near the end of Apocalypse Now. Jung-bae (Lee Seo-hwan), Gi-hun’s lovable-loser buddy? Executed by the Front Man before Gi-hun’s very eyes.
And his killer? The seemingly kind-hearted player 001, Young-il, who Gi-hun believed to be his friend until the Front Man unmasked and revealed the ruse in this very episode. This results in one of Lee Jung-jae’s most dramatic face journeys to date, which is really saying something.
This hour-plus episode is divided into two sections. In the first, the surviving two dozen players attempt to best the Jump Rope game. Some are intent on killing each other first and foremost, which forces Gi-hun to deck and kill some asshole who keeps pushing people off the edge when they make it to the other side. It’s only through Gi-hun’s good graces — and his willingness to squash a man’s eyeball with his thumb on screen — that anyone else survives at all.
