By Susanda Wolf.

In a world of ever-shifting markets, unpredictable consumers, and fierce global competition, Squid Game has become more than a cultural juggernaut—it’s a mirror reflecting high-stakes leadership, calculated risk, and human ambition under pressure.

On June 27, 2025, Netflix will premiere the third and final season of its most-watched non-English language series of all time. For CEOs and executive leaders, the final chapter offers not just entertainment, but a strategic case study in human behavior, loyalty, disruption—and the thin line between order and chaos.

Director and executive producer Hwang Dong-hyuk has promised a thrilling conclusion to the deadly competition. Season 3 picks up after the brutal betrayal of Season 2, where protagonist Seong Gi-hun faces devastating loss and realizes the depth of deception orchestrated by the enigmatic Front Man.

This isn’t just a game anymore—this is war.

Squid Game proves that a culturally specific story can achieve universal appeal. Netflix didn’t just market a series—they created a movement, complete with merchandise, real-life games, and spinoffs. The lesson? Authentic storytelling pays off.

In the hauntingly effective dystopian thriller Squid Game, 456 financially desperate contestants compete in children’s games with deadly consequences for a chance at an unimaginable fortune. Beyond its blood-soaked playground aesthetics lies a profound psychological examination of power dynamics, survival strategies, and the fragility of human connections under extreme pressure.

The Illusion of Freedom: Puppets, Not Players

The most insidious aspect of Squid Game is not the brutality of the games themselves, but the elaborate facade of choice. They are free to leave, but most of them choose to put their lives on the line. Some for greed, others because they believe in themselves or because they have no choice but to stay.

Contestants believe they’re competing in a merit-based system where cunning and physical prowess determine survival. However, in the end, they are just entertainment pieces, disposable pawns in an elaborate spectacle designed for the ultra-wealthy.

The VIPs who watch the games from behind gold masks represent the true power structure—one that is largely invisible to the players themselves. While contestants form alliances, devise strategies, and make moral compromises to advance, these machinations are merely performance for those who control the true levers of power.

Perhaps the cruelest deception of all is the players’ belief that the money is within reach. They see it. It’s there. So are the bodies of people who, like them, thought they could win. However, the shiny gold is brighter than the red blood everywhere. So they keep going, because the people that died were less strong, less smart than them. More money for the ones standing…but most of them must fall eventually.

Crisis as Character Revelation: The Masks We Drop

Squid Game functions as a psychological pressure chamber that strips away social niceties and learned behaviors. The game’s deadly stakes reveal the contestants’ core natures in ways that everyday life rarely does.

In Season One, Sang-woo, the educated investment banker, initially appears as a rational strategist but gradually reveals a calculating ruthlessness that was likely present long before his financial crimes. Ali, the exploited migrant worker, demonstrates the same trusting nature that allowed his employer to take advantage of him. Deok-su, the gangster, brings his intimidation tactics into the game, creating a power structure based on fear and betrayal until that very strategy leads to his downfall.

These games don’t fundamentally change who they are—it merely accelerate and intensifies existing tendencies while stripping away the ability to conceal them.

Strategic Survival

The show presents a brutal analysis of which interpersonal strategies prove most effective in high-stakes environments:

1. Manipulation and Deception: Sang-woo’s willingness to betray Ali during the marble game proves devastatingly effective. By exploiting trust rather than building it, manipulators gain short-term advantages.
2. Tactical Alliances: The temporary team formed in the tug-of-war demonstrates that strategic collaboration can overcome physical disadvantages—but these alliances remain fragile and conditional.
3. Intimidation and Dominance: Deok-su’s gang formation initially succeeds through fear and physical threat, but ultimately proves unsustainable. When challenged by Mi-nyeo in the glass bridge game (“If I’m going down, I’m taking you with me”), the strategy collapses spectacularly.
4. Authentic Connection: The genuine bond between Gi-hun and Il-nam (before the old man’s true identity is revealed) represents a different kind of strength—one that provides psychological sustenance even when it doesn’t offer tactical advantage. Even though even Gi-hun betrays ll-nam in their final game.

The glass bridge sequence particularly illustrates how quickly dominance hierarchies can collapse. When Mi-nyeo chooses self-destruction as a form of resistance, she demonstrates that even the most physically intimidating power structure is vulnerable when someone becomes willing to sacrifice everything to challenge it.

Desperation as Moral Solvent

Each contestant enters the game because financial desperation has eliminated all conventional options. This extreme circumstance doesn’t just change their behavior—it transforms their entire moral framework. Actions that would have been unthinkable in ordinary life become justifiable under survival pressure.

The show suggests that moral behavior isn’t simply a matter of character but is contingent on circumstances. When people are reduced to survival mode, ethical considerations become luxury items they can no longer afford. This doesn’t make them monsters—it makes them mirrors reflecting the brutal system that has trapped them.

Purpose, Redemption and the Cycle of Power

By Season 2, Gi-hun’s motivation transforms from escape to destruction—a fundamental shift from survival to purpose. His determination to dismantle the games represents a psychological evolution from victim to agent. However, his return to the system he despises leads to further tragedy, as his good intentions backfire and result in his best friend’s death.

This tragic turn reveals a profound truth about power systems: they are designed to neutralize resistance by absorbing and corrupting it as the Front Man maintains control by anticipating and befriending Gi-hun.

Gi-hun’s struggle raises the central question for Season 3: Is it still possible to dismantle corrupt systems from within, or will inevitably lead to becoming part of them? Can one person’s moral conviction overcome institutional power, or are individual acts of resistance ultimately futile?

Perhaps the most important lesson from Squid Game is that power systems depend on our collective surrender to hopelessness. They thrive when we believe resistance is futile. The greatest strength lies not in physical dominance or even strategic brilliance, but in the willingness to stand firmly for human dignity when everything suggests bending is the only rational choice.