NetflixWarning! Spoilers ahead for Squid Game Season 3.Squid Game Season 3 was billed as the last season of the show, but that’s not at all true. Even besides the fact that you can play the official Squid Game mobile game, the show ended with a shocking cameo: Cate Blanchett appeared as a Recruiter, playing ddakji with a prospective player in a back alley of Los Angeles. Most fans assumed this was showrunner Hwang Dong-hyuk passing the baton to David Fincher, the acclaimed filmmaker who is developing a US-based English-language spinoff of the series. But is that even necessary? What is left to explore of this show’s central premise? Honestly, the real American version of Squid Game may already exist. The final scene of Squid Game Season 3 showed an American recruiter roping people into a new Squid Game. | NetflixSquid Game has clearly resonated with American viewers, breaking Netflix records for viewership. If that’s true, then why do we need an American version? There seems to be a few schools of thought. Some think to create an English-language version of the high-stakes story to make it easier to watch, even though Netflix has a dubbed version of the original. Others think it’s to continue the anti-capitalist satire and criticism from an American lens, but debt is absolutely a universal language. The only thing that would change is how the players would accrue that debt. One of the biggest arguments for an American version of Squid Game is that it could depict the same story of the Korean games, but with American playground games instead of Korean ones. Sure, we’ve got Red Light Green Light, Marbles, and Jump Rope, but other games like Mingle, Gonggi, and even the eponymous Squid Game itself don’t exist in American culture. But this argument isn’t even supported by the Season 3 ending: Blanchett’s recruiter is playing ddakji, not an American equivalent. It’s possible that whatever version of Squid Game exists in America keeps the games as-is.Squid Game: The Challenge introduced a mother and son as players a year before the original show did the same thing. | NetflixIn a way, we already have an American version of Squid Game. Squid Game: The Challenge was a reality competition show that sought to replicate the games themselves, prize money and all. The only difference was, thankfully, the stakes: players weren’t shot when they lost; instead, an ink pack under their uniform exploded, and they crumpled to the floor. At the time, this show was dismissed as “missing the point” of Squid Game itself, replicating the very thing the show was trying to critique. But it may just be the perfect American adaptation of the show. Sure, it’s unscripted, but what’s more American than a reality competition show? It proved that Squid Game was correct just by showing what people are willing to do for money. The Challenge even introduced a mother-son pair of players a year before Squid Game Season 2 did the same thing. Squid Game showrunner Hwang Dong-hyuk didn’t even want to make Seasons 2 and 3, and the story was stretched thin between the two chapters. An American remake would only rehash these now-tired messages in a different language, even if the man behind The Game is behind the camera. Squid Game Season 3 is now streaming on Netflix.