The Reel Rejects - SQUID GAME Season 3, Episode 1 & 2 Breakdown & Review | Netflix | 오징어 게임

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

A GAME OF KILLER HIDE AND SEEK!! Squid Game Season 3 Full Reaction Watch Along:   / thereelrejects   Visit https://huel.com/rejects to get 15% off your order The FINAL Season is here & it's time for our Squid Game Season 3 Reaction, Recap, Breakdown, Commentary, Spoiler Review & ending explained!! Greg Alba & John Humphrey return to the dystopian playground in Netflix’s final and explosive Squid Game season, with Episodes 1 & 2 premiering June 27, 2025. After the violent uprising of Season 2, Season 3 opens with Seong Gi‑hun (Lee Jung‑jae, Train to Busan), dubbed Player 456, wheeled back in via a coffin in a chilling first scene. Haunted by survivor’s guilt, he’s emotionally shattered and driven by the crushing need for justice and revenge. The two episodes thrust us into a deranged version of “Hide-and-Seek,” with red and blue teams battling for life, intensified by cold psychological stakes. Gi‑hun’s fractured alliance with Dae-ho (Kang Ha‑neul, Forgotten, Midnight Runners) and the return of detective Jun-ho (Wi Ha‑joon, Money Heist, Something in the Rain) deepens the narrative. Jun-ho’s quest continues as he searches for his brother, the enigmatic Front Man (Lee Byung‑hun, G.I. Joe, Masters of the Universe)—infiltrating both the games and the inner workings of the Institute. Standout moments include: Gi‑hun’s silent breakdown and explosive confrontation with Dae‑ho, The grotesquely thrilling Hide-and-Seek game, Jun‑ho’s investigative breakthrough and near-encounter with betrayals inside the Island’s power structure, & more! Main cast stars include Lee Jung‑jae as Gi‑hun, Lee Byung‑hun as the Front Man, Wi Ha‑joon as Jun‑ho, Kang Ha‑neul’s cunning Dae‑ho, Park Gyu‑young as No‑eul, Im Si‑wan, Park Sung‑hoon, Jo Yu‑ri, and more, bringing fresh tension and emotional arcs to the final season. This gritty, emotionally haunted premiere sets the tone for a savage descent into the games’ conclusion. Join Greg & John as they unpack every twist, alliance, and horrifying moment in Squid Game’s last season! Intense Suspense by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... Support The Channel By Getting Some REEL REJECTS Apparel! https://www.rejectnationshop.com/ Follow Us On Socials:  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reelrejects/  Tik-Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@reelrejects?lang=en Twitter: https://x.com/reelrejects Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheReelRejects/ Music Used In Ad:  Hat the Jazz by Twin Musicom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Happy Alley by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... POWERED BY @GFUEL Visit https://gfuel.ly/3wD5Ygo and use code REJECTNATION for 20% off select tubs!! Head Editor: https://www.instagram.com/praperhq/?hl=en Co-Editor: Greg Alba Co-Editor: John Humphrey Music In Video: Airport Lounge - Disco Ultralounge by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Ask Us A QUESTION On CAMEO: https://www.cameo.com/thereelrejects Follow TheReelRejects On FACEBOOK, TWITTER, & INSTAGRAM:  FB:  https://www.facebook.com/TheReelRejects/ INSTAGRAM:  https://www.instagram.com/reelrejects/ TWITTER:  https://twitter.com/thereelrejects Follow GREG ON INSTAGRAM & TWITTER: INSTAGRAM:  https://www.instagram.com/thegregalba/ TWITTER:  https://twitter.com/thegregalba Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Thank you to Hewle for sponsoring this video. More on them in just a bit. Squid Game, season three, episode one. You ready? Let's do it. Let's do it. Oh, boy. That's some bleak-ass shit.

Fuck me up. Boy, boy, oh, boy. uh okay a moment of silence and we just transitioned immediately talking about it okay sure why not hey prepper good luck editing this down

uh it doesn't look like a pain in the ass at it so thanks for doing that and uh if you guys can't leave a like on this video weird thing to say right now that would be a lot yeah also we're going to be covering all the square games so you got to make sure subscribe and click that bell Uh, yo, go, go for it, John. You could start us off. I mean, this was a wallop.

What are you feeling right now? What am I feeling right now? I am just basking in, yeah, the despair and the, you know, cruel edge that the show loves to throw at, you know, everyone involved in the games, especially. Some things happen that, you know, I think this is the kind of episode. that gives you certain things or confrontations that you do expect and other ones that you don't think, you know, we're looking back on this whole thing,

we're sitting there at the top when the game is being introduced going, ah, damn, mom and the sun are going to come to some kind of crossroads there. But then our girl, golly, I got to, even still, it's hard to commit every name to memory. But yeah, our badass helping mom

and newly, minted mother that I did not see happening in this episode and as you said that's a character I felt especially safe with and in all of and a great episode showcasing these actors before sending them off certainly but yeah I mean like you know as a re-entry I think you know each time even with the gap between seasons one and two like the re-entries they have given us each time have been very pointed and striking and certainly you get this sort of valley between the end of the last season and the start of this season even though we pick up pretty much immediately there's just this yeah this this valley that you get to sit with you know in terms of all the things that transpired with the mutiny at the end and for guihon you know he hasn't had the time that we've had so to see him uh throughout this you know as this silent you know black hole at the middle of the room almost has been fascinating and yeah i feel like you know i've just gone on like a jog like i'm a little like flushed at the moment

uh because this was really effective and uh and intense and it did a nice job they always do a well a good job like distributing time amongst the ensemble but here especially because Gihun is in such a particular state. I feel like the episode relies a bit more on that, but even still, Gihun still felt like this very present looming figure going through some awful, you know, sort of crisis of character, crisis of everything, really, conscience and, you know, crisis of belief and faith

and all sorts of stuff, you know, can I change this horrific machine at all? any side you know maybe not yeah um so yeah i mean i certainly feel that it's weird i feel a certain sense of catharsis i also feel a certain sense of hollowness because it's meant to leave you in a somber state uh yeah how are you feeling i'm feeling uh like i feel awful it's a year for feel bad TV. I tell you what I feel. Yeah, I guess this would be their equivalent of that one episode where Gihon thought he killed Ilnam, whatever that episode was, where they're pairing up. This might be their equivalent. Yeah, yeah. Like, it was really intense and exciting. What they

did with Gihom was, I thought, brilliant, like how silent he was. it was kind of like how he was at the end of season one after he had won the game just wondering like why me why me why am I still alive and in this moment of grief he's redirecting his blame towards this one guy

and he gets two lines it's not it's your fault too it's my fault and it takes him killing him to come to the realization that it was his fault the clarity settles in after the release of the action brilliantly portrayed by the way

brilliant acting holy shit just like so many scenes where he has to only communicate with his face and his eyes so many moments and he's always been good at that but they really relied on that for this episode

for both of these episodes very strong stuff the the bitcoin guy they said it a bunch of times and I forget it It's not Min Su, is it? No, Min Su is the young guy who's grieving over the law. That's right, yeah.

Yeah, the way how they've done his character, where he's gone from selfish to actually really caring about her, his girl. I really found myself invested in. And I like what they did with him showing. Like, he made a choice. He just has to kill one, get his kill, and then go to his girl. and but a big part of that divide that him and his girlfriend have or wants the ex-girlfriend a big divide that they have is that she's questioning like is he just interested in the money

you know is that really all he really cares about that was one of the last notes we left off on them with last season and here the second the guy who he's dismissive of finds repulsive doesn't like his eye rating suddenly he's like oh makes a good point we can make more money this way we we should kill more people and you see the choice happen in him once the proposal is made and then look at the consequences of this you know the one part with the hundju is that i think you say their name yes yes yes hund you the one part with her she had a lot of badass moments in here he felt safe with i felt safe with her really the protector wise and in the moment when she opens the door the only part that i don't like about it is

it felt so obvious like well now she's about to die yeah that was the only thing i didn't like about it was it felt very much like a like a how this would go in it you know uh it still sucked like badly and it's poetic definitely but yeah it's it's very it would have been harder if it really took you by surprise yeah yeah and then part of me wonders if like she didn't take the time to open the door and had just went back and grabbed them if the she might have had time precious seconds so yeah like what can happen in a moments of choice is shocking but what happened there with young sick and uh i don't know perhaps the mom's name what happened there at the very end i did not expect that to go down not one part of me was

like felt like i was able to was going to i didn't know what they would do at the whole time out of anyone i'm like i don't know what they're going to do with guihan i was like maybe he won't kill him yes uh and that's a one i was like yeah you know kill him you know the show kind of gives you more reasons to kill the guy especially when he's like ready to stab you know it was kind of a repetitive thing that the blue people use as a tactic that you know oh please oh god my family my life and i'm crying and then i'm going to get the jump on you now yeah but with them having a filipino mom and having like all my filipino side out here seeing like Asian mom inside that like really fucking does a number on me yeah so yeah

really really uh sunk in because she kind of even though they're they're not Filipino she looks like a lot of my family members and so it really really hit and yeah the idea of like a mom and son and after how long they they they were the two i after after uh hunju i would no i would put them above hunjou i connected with them the most. Part of my criticism with this, with season two is that I didn't feel like these new characters

were as, it felt like they were very much created for a season two, whereas like in season one, the creator of this had been working on this for so many years. So you feel just how well he knows these characters. And the actors are great. The actors bring a lot, but they were like

they weren't, the depth of a lot of them I didn't quite feel. But I really felt the depth on that trio of people and I felt like the depth got added even more onto crazy guy who was you know ask kiss and thanos the whole time um and even uh bitcoin guy like I think like in a couple of episodes they managed to enhance the depth yeah of characters that I was like all right cool like I'm feeling the depth of these guys and what they did with the mom and son there at the end yeah I get it you know and it's like you wouldn't have

you know i don't know how the mom or son would survive this squid game i don't know how they would survive these games but in that moment you know she she had to do what she had to do but the tragedy of having to take out your own son and this whole time having protected him and and she's in debt because she's taken on his debt you know yeah and for her to basically intervene on a hopeless situation and not kill him directly but sealed his fate and to leave him standing there after offering her own life like that whole bargain was so heavy and i feel like that was a moment that yeah played out in a way where i i think you know the nature of the show sets you up to imagine like a violent altercation between them but i think

it is very within or it struck me in the moment as being very within character and very sad that you know yeah the guy is wondering around he's just like i i i couldn't find anybody who i could kill and the people I did find I couldn't kill and now I don't I'm gonna die yeah and then there's this one last bargaining moment of like well if I can get to this girl by the door

you know like maybe me and my mom can still make it out and somehow I can make it up to her even though she doesn't want me to kill this girl and then the mom you know for the sake of this young woman you know yeah and her child goes commits an act that is like so pointed because like again family

is such a strong you know bond obviously but even more so just that idea that you would essentially as some might put it you know like betray like literally betray your own son sure for the for the life of this other person like there's an extra layer of not only harshness but like depending on your purview a certain like dishonorability for lack of a better word like like a cursed quality to an act like that and it's just so so very sad and so yeah to have them not in a violence violent altercation really kind of but you know just to have them sort of standing there in acceptance of the fate and this horrible hand they've been dealt after looking after each other for so long

and bargaining with the circumstances for so long and yeah it's it's kind of beautiful because they are together the full way until the end and they are able to kind of accept somehow these terms together but it's that much more heartbreaking because it's not like oh he just got, you know, slashed out there and that's how it goes, you know, which would also be sad for, for, you know, mom as a character, but it's just different. Yeah, it just hits different the way that they played that out. And I think that, yeah, it's like, I think I would imagine that the way this was shot and the way we were responding to it, you know, they probably had us, they probably want us to be thinking, oh, no, something's going to happen to the two of them.

We love the two of them. And I've liked the way that they ultimately culminated that because it just wasn't, yeah, what I had in mind or had expected, even if I had expected something to happen with them and to having Hyunju you know, dispatched. I thought that was like our death. Yeah, exactly. It's like that lulls you into a

sense of like, well, okay. You know, and then, and to the shaman lady. Like, I didn't that whole thing with Minsu was wild and like his whole, I'm fascinated to see what becomes of that guy because he just looks so wrong and off

and already is like a character who is sort of like flavored by and conducted by everyone else around him so I'm like who even would you be now you're already kind of not nobody in the looking down on you sense but like you're kind of like a blank slate

of a person in a lot of ways you know minus you know your your timid nature wherever that comes from and uh yeah just the whole the whole array of things they gave us was quite fascinating to watch and yeah like again as a cross-section of a society

and people responding to a system that is much greater than themselves this was an interesting blend of different stories to look at reject nation i've been following a specific macro plan all year well at the end of january at the end of january weighed 218 pounds here's a photo and as of this week i'm down to 173 and here's a good lighting photo. It's coming in. I'm so close.

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Fuel your body right. Even when life's busy, you will not regret it. Thank you, Hewell, for being a part of my fitness journey. Oh, absolutely. I think for the shaman lady, this is my favorite episode of hers. I'm watching it went out on my favorite episode. Because I appreciate that they really made it crystal clear. Like, she's a con artist.

Yeah. When something works out the way she says it will, if it ever does, it almost feels like she's going, oh, damn. Yeah. This might be real. Because I did find myself at times actually quite. questioning like does she really believe what she's spouting here and it had my mind kind of examining her backstory a little bit when I was watching it because I I felt in season two like this is just a caricature this is not like a real character to me and but then in this one

I started feeling more of the three-dimensional side of her and when she sees the arrow after she's like given the spiel about you know listening to God and she like looks at it I'm like all right perfect that's perfect it's like in her hubris of course would be her downfall in that very moment like if he just kept quiet she might have been fine yeah uh but she uses this methodology

of antagonism and power or tries to um you know establish some type of power and that she's greater mysticism against people yeah yeah so her her death i thought was really well done too and like the way that converged i thought was was a great convergence of what was happening with minsu's deterioration in his psychology to then go up against

this moment i love all the different processing that happened when minsu in that moment of how bursi's looking at her and he's looking for a dead girl uh the one who he feels all the skilt about and then he's seeing the guy who's been bullying and controlling him he taney the one who he blames can you check the camera really quick oh it's just doing that thing yeah uh the one who he and then after he it's similar to like guihan with the with the blaming and then taking fault and then after he kills her by seeing the guy he now comes in terms of what he's really feeling which is he feels he's responsible for her death yeah and he could have saved her you know so i think like this did a really good job on i remember my feeling with season two is at times there were moments where i was like this is a little way too expositional and how they're laying it out and i really feel like these two episodes made me appreciate the gap they took even if they shot this with the intention for it to be one big season i think in that gap they reexamined what they could do with some of the criticism that was heralded their way because it definitely was a lot more criticism was was uh thrown towards season two's execution and season one by

by kind of a lot yeah and i feel like the reexamination allowed them to go okay how how do we re-approach this then with what we've shot and i think they really took their time with their editing they really took their time with their directing this felt like very much more crafted and not just made to make a season two like it felt really thought out this whole sequence that they did here the staging and the maneuvering is very difficult to get down and there's so many crazy tracking shots going on but really to the previous episode the first one is when i already started feeling that awareness of deliberation and patience and tension. I really like these two episodes a lot.

I'm already feeling like this is going to be a really great payoff for what we got in season two because, yeah, I really, I was really connected to everything that was happening in these last couple episodes by a lot. I think we still got some setup that we're going to explore, right? you know the triangle girl and uh guy and our detective buddy we checked in with him for a minute the most off screen off the guy who they that he had the biggest set up for season two like oh this is going to be a you know like gas on the pedal

personal mission and all it's been is like i keep scanning these uh waters can't find the silence yeah i don't know man i don't know what you think something's off my buddy the captain he's saved my life all right he's been helping me this whole time I mean, that part has not been the most exciting. I am excited to see what his buddy comes up with, the guy with the gut. But how many episodes of season two? Seven. This is six.

Seven episodes of like, I got to find this island. Well, and he was only in the first part of this. So I'm like, we're already two episodes in. We've only seen my man for like a couple of scenes. And, uh, and hey, I'm not like big complaining because obviously what we have had to focus on has been great but uh but yeah i am curious as to if it will feel by the end of season three that the structuring of his story was like earned or intentional somehow or like i hope it it's brother versus brother yeah it seems very important and and yeah and vital to what

is happening at the core of the show and you know obviously we have that moment where uh you know you know, orders that, yes, everyone, including the detective, be wiped out on the ship. So there's some, you know, brewing there. But it is just an odd wrinkle to be like, oh, yeah, I was geared up for this to be one of two major plot lines. And this feels very much like a deep plot back here. But, you know, still fun to check in with. And the imagination, too, like the way that they're still able to bring in these children's games

and these very in-universe, but imaginative. sets and whatnot all this whole labyrinth of stairs and alleys and little rooms and every little room feels like a different

kids daycare center yeah uh it was like really i it was they got to like the fifth one or something and it was one with like a bunch of like construction paper formations on the wall and it was and they go wow really putting so much continued imagination into this part of the show that obviously is like a vital motif but feels so we feel so far beyond those

things and so i like that they still are you know firing on all creative cylinders crafting the demented kids game side of this too i do kind of wish this felt because i think the balance with a good squid game is that i mean i don't think calling it a squid game is the right thing but you guys know what i mean the balance is it has to still feel like you're playing a kids game and this does not feel at all this one did not feel whatsoever like you're playing some type of child's game you know it it's just it's it's hunger games it's just you have to run from the people who are going to try to kill you it's that's all it really was there's no real like craftiness or clever it didn't really feel like hide and seek to me and uh i didn't get it feels like outrun

everybody it feels yeah it feels like spread out and outrun a killer game you right yeah um it that was the that's one of like the tiny notches i would take off of this one is it didn't quite have that charm it's not quite as demented because the game of hide and seek is so simple and i think also there's just the compounding aspect that like most action or not most but a lot of action and you know horror violence is based in the act of hiding and being sought out and then stabbed so like it's it's it's a little less high contrast in terms of like we're doing something innocuous you know if they're playing tag just regular tag and then if you tag them and they died yeah like they like they

get shot i'm like okay that makes more sense yeah like you tag them in one of the pinks takes them out or something like that yeah yeah i can see that because yeah and here too you're also like i've never played hide and seek in like the full breadth of a city yeah you know but then again it is not as exciting if they were just the version i pitched i think it has to be yeah this makes for a lot of scenes that can happen yeah and it makes for more internal kind of consequences for what every character has to take on after surviving this. Yeah, you can't pass it off on the game as easily because everyone's just confronted with, I have to kill or be killed.

Exactly. Exactly. Anyway, those are our thoughts for episodes one and two. What did you guys think of this? Were you heartbroken as well? Please leave your thoughts down below. We will talk with you guys tomorrow. Night.

Thank you.