This study examines the unusual recurrence of maternal sacrifice narratives in three consecutive cases within the six episodes of Squid Game 3. Focusing on the instrumentalization and spectrum of these narratives, the analysis employs close readings of scenes, dialogue, and mise-en-scène, while selectively applying three theoretical frameworks. First, the Hero’s Journey provides a lens to identify how the deaths or attempted suicides of peripheral characters are instrumentalized as devices for stage transitions. Second, critiques of Women in Refrigerators and Fridging are adopted to trace the gendered bias of such sacrifices and to interrogate discourses on the invention and reinscription of maternal ideals. Third, concepts from Jung and Neumann regarding Mother Archetype, particularly ambivalence and polarity shift, are mobilized to explore the possibilities of extending maternal archetypes and mapping their spectrum.
The findings are as follows. Geum-ja Jang, through the mediation of her hairpin, enacts a polarity shift within the ambivalent Mother Archetype. After choices that traverse blood and non-blood relations, she collapses psychologically and, through her last words, re-missions and awakens the hero. Jun-hee Kim gives birth to the infant who becomes the central device of the Hero’s Journey and, by sacrificing herself, transfers the number 222 to her baby. She is rendered both as an archetype of the Good Mother, elevating the theme while simultaneously being fixed as a symbolic figure. The baby girl, deprived of choice and voice, is also fridged, despite surviving. No-eul Kang, under the symbolics of the gun, exhibits the strongest and most frequent polarity shifts and an extension of motherhood beyond consanguinity; witnessing the hero’s final act, she halts her suicide attempt, offering a variation on fridging—yet this still serves as evidence of the hero’s influence and the significance of his journey.
Taken together, these three cases of maternal sacrifice are deployed—unlike routine deaths in the death-game genre—as core devices that actuate the operating principles of the Hero’s Journey, while each articulates a distinct position along a spectrum of the Mother Archetype. By pairing a critique of narrative instrumentalization with an inquiry into archetypal spectrum, the study lays groundwork for subsequent creation and criticism, proposing a balanced approach to future discourse on maternal representation.