‘Squid Game’ Star Kang Ae-sim Explains the Immense Guilt Geum-ja Feels After Shocking Season 3 Twist

Note: This story contains spoilers from “Squid Game” Season 3, Episode 3.

When “Squid Game” star Kang Ae-sim first read what happens to her character in Season 3, she was shocked.

“Geum-ja is a person who thinks only of her own son, but she ends up killing her son because she wants to protect another life, the newborn baby,” Kang told TheWrap. “She feels an immense amount of guilt after having killed her son. And without her son, she’s nothing, she’s empty and she’s lost everything.”

Geum-ja and Yong-sik (Yang Dong-geun) unknowingly entered the Squid Game as a mother-son duo. Yong-sik originally entered in the hopes of winning enough money to pay off his gambling debt, and Geum-ja followed suit, risking her own life to pay of the debts of her son. Throughout Seasons 2 and 3, the pair were inseparable as Geum-ja rebuked her son for his shortsightedness and Yong-sik tried to keep his mother alive. But during Season 3’s game of hide-and-seek, their collective luck comes to an end.

Before the game begins, the two agree that Geum-ja should hide and that Yong-sik should seek, a role that requires him to hunt down and kill at least one other player to stay in the game. Geum-ja quickly aligns herself with her de facto family in this horrific world, Hyun-ju (Park Sung-hoon) and the pregnant Jun-hee (Jo Yu-ri). It’s an especially tragic game for the trio as Jun-hee goes into labor and Hyun-ju loses her life while trying to protect them. But the most horrifying moment happens in the final seconds of hide-and-seek.

Yong-sik finds his mother, Jun-hee and her newborn baby beside the maze’s exit. As the clock counts down, Yong-sik is aware that he hasn’t yet killed anyone, which means if he doesn’t act quickly he will be killed by one of the guards. That’s when he turns on the exhausted Jun-hee, who’s clutching her baby. Geum-ja acts before he can hurt Jun-hee, removing the knife hair pin she’s kept hidden for so many challenges and using the device to kill her own son.

“She used it to cut the cord between the baby and the mom, but she also used the same hairpin and the dagger to stab Yong-sik, her own son. I thought that was very ironic and very tragic as well,” Kang said.

To prepare for this staggering betrayal, Kang thought for a long time about where Geum-ja was emotionally in this moment.

“I thought about how women can get pregnant, and then they hold a baby for nine months in their bellies. Then when you give birth to a baby, it’s like bringing a whole new universe to this world. She just witnessed that with Jun-hee giving birth to a newborn baby, and I bet her whole brain is just focused on protecting that baby because she just witnessed that whole new universe being born,” Kang explained. “Even if it’s her own son, she had to hurt him to make sure that the baby was kept safe. That was the one thought that was filling her head.”

The tragic killing takes place at the end of Episode 2. But it isn’t until Episode 3 that the series chronicles its aftermath. After Geum-ja asks Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) to protect Jun-hee and her baby no matter what, she hangs herself with her bedsheets in the middle of the night. Though Yong-sik’s murder may have shocked Kang, Geum-ja’s suicide didn’t given how devoted she was to her son.

“It was only natural that she took her own life. As an actress, this was a very impressive scene and moment that I could portray. I was happy to portray that scene,” Kang said.

“Squid Game” is now streaming on Netflix.

The post ‘Squid Game’ Star Kang Ae-sim Explains the Immense Guilt Geum-ja Feels After Shocking Season 3 Twist appeared first on TheWrap.