About That Squid Game Finale Cameo …

Spoilers follow for season three of Squid Game, through the series finale “Humans Are …,” which premiered on Netflix on June 27. 

Back in 2021, after Squid Game introduced the incredibly handsome and manipulative Recruiter, you wanted Gong Yoo to slap you in the face. An understandable desire! But now, a rival for your affections: Cate Blanchett’s representing the newly revealed American arm of the Squid Game, and she’s winding up to smack you in the kisser, too.

Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean a Squid Game spinoff is in the works; it could just be that Blanchett wanted to do a quick cameo before she possibly retires from acting to devote more time to lambasting leaf blowers. Or maybe a U.S.-based prequel or sequel is a possibility, given that Netflix has gone all in on Squid Game expansion as much as it can — official merchandise, an immersive experience in New York City, the reality show Squid Game: The Challenge — and this scene is meant to gauge interest from viewers for a Stateside continuation of the story. Anything could occur in our currently tumultuous TV times. Regardless of whether this scene is a one-and-done, though, it puts an exclamation point on Squid Game’s overarching observation about economic disparity affecting us all no matter where we’re from or who we are.

Before this ending scene, “Humans Are …” closes the loop on Squid Game’s long-running plots. Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), who at the end of season one abandoned his daughter living in Los Angeles to re-enter the game and destroy it from within, is one of three final players, alongside Player 333/Lee Myung-gi (Yim Si-wan) and the baby daughter of Player 222/Kim Jun-hee (Jo Yuri), who also happens to be Player 333’s daughter, too. Gi-hun promised Jun-hee he would take care of her child, and he defends Baby 222 from Myung-gi’s inscrutable motivations. After the two fight, Myung-gi dies, and Gi-hun (who previously had admitted regret over how absent a father he was) throws himself off the edge of a rock tower so that Baby 222 can win, a move that shocks the game’s exhaustingly chatty VIPs into somber silence.

Once Gi-hun dies, things move quickly. After years of searching for Squid Game island, Detective Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon) finally makes it there, finds his brother Hwang In-ho (Lee Byung-hun), a.k.a. the Front Man, and demands answers from him, only to be completely ignored. The Front Man turns his back on the younger brother he shot at the end of season one (Lee’s unflappability has always aided that character’s overall discomfiting vibe) to retrieve Baby 222 and order the evacuation of the island. All the Squid Game employees and VIPs seem to make it out, as do Jun-ho and the traitorous Guard 011/Kang No-eul (Park Gyu-young), who sets fire to all the game’s archives. 

Six months later, Squid Game seems to be mostly forgotten — the police didn’t investigate, and knowledge of it never reached the public. The Front Man is still moving through the world as an elite, seemingly supported by the resources game creator Oh Il-nam (O Yeong-su) poured into it. Off-screen, the Front Man entrusts Baby 222 and a bank account with the baby’s winnings to Jun-ho; on-screen, he travels to Los Angeles to visit Gi-hun’s daughter. She hasn’t heard from her father in years and has decided to “pretend he doesn’t exist,” but when the Front Man tells her Gi-hun has died and gives her his bloody track jacket and prize, she’s devastated — and probably pretty confused, because everything the Front Man carries is emblazoned with the Squid Game logo. 

On the way out of the city, as the Front Man drives past an alley where Blanchett is playing ddakji against a seemingly unhoused man, it’s our turn to be confused. Lee’s customary inscrutability doesn’t tell us anything about whether the Front Man expected to see her here, so it’s up to us to ask some questions. How did Squid Game make it to the U.S., and why did it retain all of its South Korean flourishes? Who runs this version of the game, and where is it held? Did Il-nam and his clients set up these international editions, and if so, how long have they been operating? Could the VIPs in America be South Korean, like the VIPs in the Squid Game we’ve been watching are all foreign, as a commentary on globalization and the wealth gap? And can we call this a cliffhanger, to contrast with Squid Game’s other concluded story lines?

I don’t think so. When Blanchett’s character pauses throwing down ddakji cards colored red and blue, like the American flag, and shares a look and nod with the Front Man, their interaction supports the series’s larger cyclical point about how the promise of this competition can work anywhere where people are downtrodden, desperate, and yearning for a second chance. Hope is a dangerous thing, Squid Game insisted, and it transcends borders. The whole thing feels more like a button on Squid Game’s “capitalism bad, people sad” through-line than any kind of actual tease about a spinoff. More essential is another question: Hwang probably had carte blanche to do anything with these final two seasons of Netflix’s most-watched show ever, and he chose to feature a Cate Blanchett cameo. Can someone ask this man if he’s a fan of 22 Jump Street, or what?