One Squid Game Season 3 Episode Makes Gganbu Look Mild In Comparison

This article contains spoilers for "Squid Game" season 3, episode 2, "The Starry Night." 

Even by "Squid Game" standards, the Hide and Seek game in "The Starry Night" is a problem for everyone involved. As the fourth official event in the 2024 Squid Game, this cruel contest where the blue player team has to scramble for survival while the red team chases them with knives comes at a key point of the season. The first three games and the armed revolt at the end of "Squid Game" season 2 have culled the majority of the nameless supporting players, and the viewer has spent plenty of time getting to know many of the remaining folks. Since Hide and Seek is designed to kill at least half of the remaining contestants, this inevitably results in a number of absolutely horrifying, gut-wrenching deaths and betrayals. Doesn't all this sound a bit familiar, though? It should: Hide and Seek is a bloody, frenetic successor to the most brutal game in season 1, Marbles.

Marbles takes place in the episode "Gganbu," and some of the best characters on "Squid Game" lose their lives during it. Apart from both games being the fourth events in their respective Squid Games, they share several thematic elements. Both force players to compete directly against each other in an elaborate faux-realistic settlement area — Marbles takes us to a small village, while Hide and Seek opts for labyrinthine streets with doors that hide various childishly decorated rooms — and feature some of the saddest death scenes in the show's history. However, Hide and Seek takes things a step further than the comparatively bloodless Marbles with its nuanced "hunters and the hunted" power dynamic, which forces some players to actively kill others and creates shifting, uncomfortable alliances throughout the game.

In many ways, there's no touching the Marble game. The sad, disappointed look on Ali Abdul's (Anupam Tripathi) face when he realizes his supposed friend Cho Sang-woo (Park Hae-soo) has used cheap trickery to beat him in the marble game is one of the show's most enduring images. The game between Kang Sae-byeok (Ho-yeon Jung) and Ji-yeong (Lee Yoo-mi) almost immediately gives way to a fatalistic bonding session and a willing sacrifice, playing the viewers' heartstrings like a violin. And then there's the game between Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) and Oh Il-nam (O Yeong-su), which is essentially a morality play between the desperate Gi-hun and the (seemingly) increasingly confused old man ... and later returns to hit the viewer like a brick when the seemingly doomed Il-nam is revealed to be not only alive but the whole season's Big Bad.

This may be why "The Starry Night" doesn't outright challenge "Gganbu" by revisiting the Marble game or a variation thereof. Instead, it takes the things that the infamous game did best, applies them to a bloodier and faster-paced setting, and throws in several shock moments — up to and very much including a mid-game childbirth. The end result is efficient in its own right but still pays plenty of homage to its Game 4 counterpart. In fact, while "Squid Game" has a history of foreshadowing major player deaths, "The Starry Night" takes things to the next level by taking some noticeable key cues specifically from "Gganbu."

One of the most heart-shattering storylines in "The Starry Night" replicates the "finance guy spells doom to a pure-hearted player" arc from "Gganbu." Much like the trusting Ali fell to Sang-woo's duplicity, Hide and Seek establishes Cho Hyun-ju (Park Sung-hoon) as the nicest person in the 2024 game by far. When she returns to save Jun-hee (Jo You-ri) and Geum-ja (Kang Ae-shim) after finding an exit, crypto influencer Lee Myung-gi (Im Si-wan) rewards her bravery by very literally stabbing her in the back.

Elsewhere, Gi-hun once again shows that he's far from perfect when he succumbs to his basest instincts. In "Gganbu," he tricked Il-nam into continuing a game the old man already won, using others' perceived weakness for his own benefit. Here, Gi-hun blames Kang Dae-ho's (Kang Ha-neul) cowardice for the failure of the season 2 rebellion instead of recognizing his own responsibility and is out for blood. 

Of course, "The Starry Night" isn't afraid to add its own spices in the "Gganbu" mix, either. The show extends a hand to the viewer when the despicable shaman Seon-nyeo (Chae Kook-hee) finally runs out of luck, offering a rare "happy" death scene in the "Squid Game" pandemonium ... only to wrap things up as cruelly as possible when the desperate and distraught Geum-ja is forced to stab her own son, Yong-sik (Yang Dong-geun), as he targets Jun-hee in a last-ditch effort to survive. Geum-ja and Yong-sik are among the best "Squid Game" characters introduced in season 2 and watching them embrace each other in the middle of this absolute worst case scenario as the time runs out and the guards move in to shoot him might just get my vote for the most brutal moment in the entire series.

"Squid Game" is currently streaming on Netflix.