The Gospel According To Squid Game
finding hope and love even in the bleakest places
(Spoilers included)
I’m back again with spiritual reflections—this time from Season 3 of Squid Game.
Against popular opinion, I thought the season was brilliant—and ended the only way it could’ve ended.
Many viewers found it too bleak. The players are faced with impossible choices: a mother kills her own son, a father considers sacrificing his newborn for money, and others take lives simply because they can.
But I didn’t find it hopeless.
Instead, I began to understand the lens through which we’re meant to watch this show—and maybe even the lens through which we should view our world.
We sometimes forget that the participants in the Squid Games aren’t ordinary citizens living stable lives. They’re among society’s most desperate and marginalized—many are criminals, addicts, debtors, or those society has abandoned entirely.
Given their circumstances, it almost makes sense that many would act selfishly, even savagely. That’s what the game masters are counting on—that the players will behave exactly as predicted: cruelly, violently, and without regard for others.
So when I watch Squid Game, I watch it with the assumption that most players, shaped by suffering and scarcity, will act in deeply broken ways.
That’s the nature of sin in a fallen world.
But it’s in that darkness that flickers of goodness shine even brighter.
Take the elderly woman who kills her son. On the surface, it’s a horrific act. But if you look closely, it’s an impulsive, grief-stricken choice—meant to stop her son from becoming a monster, from killing an innocent newborn child.
Her guilt overtakes her afterward, and she ends her own life.
But this same woman had spent most of the game protecting a pregnant mother—sacrificing her own comfort for another’s safety.
Then there’s the transgender girl. She’s easily one of the strongest players and could’ve made it far. But instead of playing for herself, she chooses to protect two vulnerable women—and dies in the process.
Moments like these echo with quiet humanity.
A reminder that goodness still flickers in the dark.
And of course, there’s Gi-hun.
The unlikely hero. The weary soul. The instrument of change.
In the final game, with over 30 million dollars on the line and a newborn baby’s life hanging in the balance, Gi-hun makes a choice almost no one else would.
“We are not horses. We are people. And people are…”
He doesn’t finish the sentence. He just falls.
And with that, he sacrifices his life—leaving the baby as the sole survivor of the games.
A symbol of innocence. A glimmer of hope in a world drowning in wickedness.
Gi-hun’s final act stuns the game masters.
His sacrifice is illogical. Counter-cultural. Undeniably human.
Some viewers were disappointed that the story ended this way—that Gi-hun died, and no justice system was overturned, no systemic evil destroyed. Others said the ending felt unfinished.
But I think that’s exactly the point.
Squid Game isn’t trying to prove whether humans are good or evil. And it’s certainly not trying to tie everything up with a neat bow—where justice prevails and evil is vanquished.
It’s trying to show that, in a fallen world, humans are capable of unexpected good.
And that sliver of goodness?
It points me to a good God—still at work, even in a broken world.
We want happy endings. We want the hero to win. We want evil punished and goodness rewarded.
But the Old Testament doesn’t always read that way either.
When I was younger, I struggled with the harshness of God in those stories—entire cities wiped out, people put to the sword, even women and children.
It felt brutal. Ruthless. Overwhelming.
But lately, I’ve come to understand that if we read those stories solely through the lens of wrath, we miss the bigger picture.
The point of the Old Testament isn’t to fixate on human wickedness.
It’s to highlight God’s relentless pursuit of redemption.
Even when people rebel.
Even when they forget Him.
Even when they fall short—again and again—God raised up someone. However broken, however unlikely.
To stand in the gap.
To remind people there was still another way.
Moses. Esther. Deborah. David. Isaiah.
They were not perfect people.
But they were willing people.
Hopeful.
And maybe…Gi-hun is one of those.
Not the Savior.
But a symbol.
A flicker of the Light.
The reality is, we won’t save the world.
We won’t fix all its fractures.
We won’t undo every injustice.
But maybe that was never the point.
Maybe the goal isn’t to save the world—but to let God use us to shift the needle, even just a little.
To stir one heart.
To plant one conviction.
To make one small difference.
Gi-hun gave his life hoping his sacrifice might spark something—that it might tip the scale, change a mind, or redeem a moment.
But Jesus?
Jesus gave His life with complete certainty.
Not hoping change might come—but knowing it would.
Not wondering if hearts could be saved—but securing salvation for every heart that believes.
That’s what makes Jesus different.
And that’s what makes His cross not just a tragic death—but our only true hope.
So yes, Squid Game is bleak.
But what I appreciate about it is that even in the midst of its darkness,
I see glimpses of the gospel.
And I remember—we don’t have to die trying to save the world.
Because Jesus already did.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” —John 3:16
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