Squid Game Season 3 had taken the world by storm, where it picked up the tension from the cliffhanger ending, which featured Seong Gi-hun and company’s failure to kill the Front Man. The final season continued to captivate fans with its unforeseen plot twists, surprising the audience, and even teased a spin-off version of the show in the final minutes of the last episode.

Amidst minimal survivors and the show’s secret hero, the Netflix Original committed a grave injustice to the VIPs watching the show in real life. No, it’s not the death of our favorite characters. But it decided to cut corners, stripping its viewers of seeing a secret room during Game 4, which has led to a world of questions around it.

Squid Game Season 3 was a rollercoaster of emotions and has taken over Netflix as the #1 show in several parts of the world via FlixPatrol. Needless to say, the vicious survival games have kept them on the edge of their seats, giving them a nail-biting thriller, making them anticipate what’s going to happen in the next scene.

As if the games were not enough, it featured some intriguing Easter eggs that hid some secrets about the nature of the game. However, between the moral dilemma of Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) and the character redemption of Hwang In-ho (Lee Byung-hun), an important aspect of the show was cut short, leaving the fans curious. In Season 3, Episode 2, titled “The Starry Night“, the game of hide-and-seek began, where the blue team members had to hide and survive from the killers, the red team, for 30 minutes.

The rules were simple: the blue team players could open doors in the maze-like room to move around. The game also featured designated exit rooms that ensured their qualification for the next game. It was during this game that Player 120 (Park Sung-hoon), Player 149 (Kang Ae-shim), and a pregnant Player 222 (Jo Yu-ri) teamed up, having each other’s backs. The trio moved around the maze safely, avoiding coming into contact with the red team members.

Later, in the episode, when a killer finds them, Player 120 fights with him, and as they rumbled, they found a room with an “Exit” sign written in Korean. They unlocked the door using the three differently shaped keys, opening it, they were taken by surprise, which featured a room, loudly playing “Congratulations and celebrations” with a yellow light, filling the trans player with joy.

However, fans could not see what was inside that special room because Player 120 closed it and returned to inform their friends. Sadly, they could not make it because Player 333 (Yim Siwan) stabbed the trans player. The scene was heartbreaking to look at, but what made it more frustrating to watch was how the show felt it was right to keep the Congratulations room a mystery among its viewers.

The ending of Squid Game Season 3 has gone from fiction to reality, where the fandom of the show is divided over it. Some claim that the conclusion was perfect; others argue that it fell short and forcefully killed several characters, which did not make sense. At the heart of the argument was how Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), or Player 456, sacrificed himself for Player 222’s baby.

During an exclusive interview via Asia News Network, Hwang Dong-hyuk, the director of the Netflix hit, shared that he had initially planned to conclude the show in an uplifting manner, where Gi-hun would get to meet his daughter in Los Angeles. He said,

When I first started thinking about the second season, I had a vague idea that Gi-hun would return to the game — maybe to destroy it or at least help a few people escape — and then go to see his daughter in the US.

Dong-hyuk added that when the show began in 2021, the world around him had degraded even more, and inequality in class had increased, leading to the declaration of conflict between countries with no signs of ending, making the future look bleak.

Compared to when I created Season 1, the world has gotten even worse. Economic inequality has deepened, ordinary people’s lives have become more difficult and wars continue to escalate with no sign of ending. Every year, things seem to grow more serious by the day. But people don’t seem to have either the will or the ability to fix it. If things continue this way, the future looks truly bleak. That’s a reality I felt needed to be addressed.

The director emphasized that this modern tale represents those vices around the world, and the death of Player 456 was meant to underline these sentiments, which showcase how “an average or even below-average person” suffers from the interests of the rich, which has been redefined with how the show was previously seen.

With a contemporary theme hidden behind the survival entertainer, do you think the “Congratulations Room” was just a metaphor for false hope? Let us know in the comments below!