SPOILER ALERT: This text incorporates major spoilers from the “Squid Game” series finale, now streaming on Netflix.
Halfway through the ultimate season of Netflix’s “Squid Game,” a serious character is introduced who finally ends up having no lines and is usually played by a robotic doll: Jun-hee/Player 222’s (Jo Yu-ri) newborn daughter.
The prop is a key figure through the series finale, and is at the middle of the ultimate moral battle between Gi-hun/Player 456 (Lee Jung-jae) and The Front Man/In-ho (Lee Byung-hun). (Read our “Squid Game” character guide should you’re lost.)
While Jun-hee has been visibly within the third trimester of her pregnancy (Myung-gi/Player 333’s is the biological father) since she was introduced into the games at first of Season 2, the very fact the child was actually born in the course of the Squid Game was a twist for even star Lee Jung-jae, who wasn’t expecting “Squid Game” creator and director Hwang Dong-hyuk to go that far.
“Once I first read the script, once I read the part about this baby being born, I used to be just in quite a shock myself, too — I assumed it was an ideal element within the story,” Lee Jung-jae said. “And as for the VFX, we actually had a robot inbuilt the form and weight of an actual newborn baby. So the robot had actual facial expressions. It might wiggle like a newborn baby, and the burden was quite realistic. In order that helped me loads with my performance.”
Jo Yu-ri as Jun-hee in “Squid Game 3”
Courtesy of No Ju-han/Netflix
Gi-hun agrees to guard the newborn in any respect costs before Jun-hee sacrifices herself for her child, and he holds to that promise until the very end — giving up his own life for the child’s. The explanations for Gi-hun’s motivations to place this child — to whom he has no outside relation — before himself and his likelihood to get out of the games again are manifold, in response to Lee.
“Those who have come into Squid Game, the players of the sport, they’ve chosen to be there — but that’s not the case for the child,” Lee said. “And so I feel from Gi-hun’s standpoint, that’s certainly one of the the explanation why it becomes very vital for him to guard the child, because that baby didn’t make that alternative to be there. And in addition, Gi-hun, being the person who he’s, who has such a great heart, he desired to help the child’s mother.”
One other motivating factor is Gi-hun’s ongoing battle of morals with The Front Man/In-ho running the games to entertain the VIPs.
“A newborn baby represents innocence, and I feel there’s one other theme that’s expressed through the birth of the child, where it is a component of Gi-hun’s struggle of wanting to guard innocence in a cruel and brutal world, which is the games,” Lee said. “And once you see the VIPs, it’s almost as in the event that they welcome the child being born, since it’s a newly added entertainment factor to their spectacle. And so by showing that, the contrast between the VIPs, who wish to use this for their very own entertainment, and Gi-hun’s struggle to guard the child, I feel that story structure itself really makes it nail-biting and unpredictable. And I assumed it was an incredible idea and capability of Director Hwang.”
The Front Man/In-ho and Gi-hun differ of their beliefs about humanity until In-ho has a change of heart after Gi-hun’s sacrifice, but even before that, Lee Byung-hun says he saw The Front Man’s sliver of sympathy for the child.
“With the child’s birth, it definitely really rattles The Front Man, and shakes something inside him,” Lee Byung-hun said. “While his facial expressions are masked, when he’s with the VIPs, he seems like it’s almost his duty to appear to be completely prepared and completely in charge of the situation. The fundamental setup of the story is that he includes the child within the games because he desires to entertain the VIPs. Nevertheless, I consider that deep down, under all of that, an element of him does that because he wants to present the child a likelihood, and he wants the child to survive. I feel you’ll notice once you watch these seasons that The Front Man seems to have a special place in his heart for Jun-hee and the child, and I consider that is due to his actual personal experiences along with his wife and child.”
After much time spent together under false pretenses in Season 2, Gi-hun and The Front Man/In-ho share their first scene together in Season 3 toward the top of the series when The Front Man reveals his true identity to Gi-hun. When Gi-hun meets The Front Man in his office, he finally learns that this is similar man who played alongside him within the games as his friend in Season 2. Up until that moment, Gi-hun had no concept that In-ho was the one behind all of this, and was the one who killed his best friend Jung-bae.
“The extent of betrayal and the sensation of realizing that he had been mocked and deceived and ridiculed almost, and realizing that that is the one who had killed his precious friend, Jung-bae — I feel the emotions that I felt as Gi-hun in that moment, even once you compare it to all of my past characters throughout my profession, it’s probably the most intense ones, where the sense of in search of revenge got here so naturally,” Lee Jung-jae said. “And I feel it really was something that allowed me to feel that sense of rage and and revenge in a really intense way against each the VIPs and The Front Man.”
During that showdown between Gi-hun and The Front Man, which is the ultimate scene they share together in “Squid Game,” The Front Man makes Gi-hun the identical offer In-ho was given by Squid Game creator Oh Il-nam when he entered the competition years ago: the prospect to stab all the opposite players to death of their sleep, saving himself and the child. In-ho making the offer is each a selfish and a selfless one.
“That scene, I had a variety of different emotions going through me because the character,” Lee Byung-hun said. “While it’s true that an element of him really wants to save lots of Gi-hun and the child, even greater than that, and stronger than that, is his purpose, his major purpose of wanting to completely make Gi-hun’s beliefs which are deemed noble to be collapsed. And I feel it was almost a test where The Front man is considering, ‘Irrespective of what you do, you’re going to find yourself like me.’ And so when he hands him the knife, if Gi-hun did what In-ho did prior to now, obviously, that will have probably driven In-ho into even greater despair, because that only proves that there is no such thing as a hope. I feel an element of him would even have felt a way of victory.”