Squid Game Season 3 Reveals The Cruelest Special Game Of Them All

This article contains spoilers for "Squid Game" season 3, episode 5, "Circle Triangle Square."

So, that knife the Front Man (Lee Byung-hun) offers to Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) in "Squid Game" episode 4, ostensibly to help him and Jun-hee's (Jo Yu-ri) baby — aka the newly-minted Player 222 — survive the game? Turns out that the villain's motives might not be as altruistic as he claims.

In episode 5, we discover through flashbacks that the Front Man received a similar gift from the game's creator, Oh Il-nam (O Yeong-su), back when he was a mere player waiting to participate in the final game with a handful of other players. Like Gi-hun, the Front Man embraced the gift. Unlike Gi-hun, however, he used it to kill the other finalists before the last game, thus allowing him to stand on the proverbial podium alone.

Since the games have clearly been going on for quite some time and it's highly unlikely that Gi-hun and the Front Man are the only ones who would have received this exact same gift in the exact same way, this heavily implies that the knife is a recurring special game of sorts — a type of thumbs-up from the game's organizer to his preferred gladiator, intended to see if their favored player is ready to bloody their hands to emerge on top. This is a particularly brutal move because not only does it intend to turn the recipient of the blade into an active murderer, but they're also meant to catch the other finalists completely unaware while they sleep. Out of all the curveballs the game keeps throwing at its players, it's hard to imagine a crueler one than getting stabbed to death just before the finale.

It's unlikely that the people behind Squid Game have rolled out the knife option in every single game. Why bother building the set for the finale at all, if that's the case? Still, it's worth mentioning that there's plenty of precedent for such secret side games thanks to the infamous "special game" – an orchestrated night riot that takes place in the dormitory. Blades and other weapons are commonplace in these events: In season 1, the riot featured melee weapons like broken bottles and smuggled knives, while the guards sneakily distributed metal forks for the players before the one in season 2.

Apart from the organizer providing knife-themed opportunities to select players, participants have also been known to proactively take the knife to their adversaries in the night before the last game. In season 1, Sang-woo (Park Hae-soo) famously palms a dinner knife during the finalists' meal and later uses it to kill the injured Sae-byok (Jung Ho-yeon) in the last, bloody twist before the finale. This means that all of the three Squid Games that we've seen on screen in any capacity bring knives to play just before the finale in one way or another.

Some of the most terrifying games in "Squid Game" are elaborate behind-the-scenes nightmares that put the show's best characters through hell, and only the luckiest and most tenacious players reach the gruesome finale of Netflix's biggest series. However, it's often smaller moments like this brutal little knife game that show just how thoroughly corrupt and nasty this life-threatening contest can be.

"Squid Game" season 3 is now streaming on Netflix.