Squid Game (Season 3)

After failing to put an end to the games in the last season, Seong Gi-hun is dragged back into the fold and forced to play the deadly Squid Games once more. 

That's right, Seong Gi-hun’s punishment for starting an uprising… is to be kept alive for some reason. Every one else is killed. Everyone else has their corpse displayed for all to see. But Seong Gi-hun inexplicably gets to live, and it’s never really explained why. 

I assume Front Man In-ho wanted to keep him alive in order to teach him a lesson of some kind, but what that lesson may be is not exactly clear. As a matter of fact, most of In-ho's decisions are never explained. I still have no idea why he joined in to play the games in the last season! And that lack of context did make for a frustrating experience. 

Now, I know the second season received mixed reactions in general, but I personally enjoyed it. I was okay with how certain events played out because I thought the final season would be able to bring everything together. Unfortunately, I don't think the season brought anything together. In all honesty, I think this is the worst season of the series so far. 

The problems that I had with the second season definitely carry over to this new one; In-ho's character motivations are never made clear; Jun-ho's search for the island is still painfully slow; the themes are incredibly heavy-handed (more so than usual!); and some of the performances are downright awful. The English-speaking performers are particularly bad for some reason. 

Plus, most of the characters die in this season, which leaves the audience without anyone to root for.  Because, there are plenty of interesting characters in this show, but most of them end up dying for nothing. Watching these characters die for no real reason definitely made for an infuriating experience. It was hard to enjoy the story being told when no one was given the chance to grow. 

And even if a character did learn to grow, that growth didn’t lead to anything satisfying. Case in point: Seong Gi-hun grows from being a selfish character to a defiantly selfless one, but his selflessness doesn't have a huge impact on the story being told. It definitely has an impact, but one that doesn't affect the grand scheme of things.

The world that Seong Gi-hun exists in remains unchanged. And even if he managed to grow as an individual, he probably would've ended up in the same place regardless of that growth. Meaning that, if Seong Gi-hun never actually entered into the Squid Games, he would probably find himself in the exact same spot anyway. So what was the point of everything?  

Maybe the fact that nothing has changed is the point. Maybe the lesson that In-ho tries to teach Gi-hun is that nothing can change. Maybe Squid Game is trying to tell us that the world is fucked and there's nothing anyone can do to change it. How cynical is that?

Funnily enough, creator Hwang Dong-hyuk claims that the show is supposed to have a more uplifting message; that he hopes the series will teach people to help each other, especially during times of economic struggle. And I can kind of see that. After all, it is easy to be disgusted by all of the horrible, greedy, and unspeakable things that people do in this series. But that message is kind of undercut by the fact that the characters who do help each other end up DYING FOR NOTHING.

And the characters that live end up making questionable decisions in this season. Decisions that definitely felt oddly out-of-character for some reason. So, despite what Hwang Dong-hyuk has to say about it, Squid Game seems to tell a cynical story about how capitalism brings out the worst in us; that anyone who tries to stop the system will be devastated; and that good people will be crushed by the selfishness of others. That’s the message that I took away from this series, at least. It’s hard to take away any other message when you watch the little guy fail to bring down the giant corporation. Especially when that corporation is moving forward with an American version. 

So, maybe Seong Gi-hun’s quest was always doomed to fail. Because, on a meta level, Netflix was never interested in stopping the Squid Games in the first place; you know, on account of how it makes them too much money. And that’s exactly why, despite the fact that this is the final season in the main continuity, the Squid Game IP will continue with spin-off seasons in the future. 

Spin-off seasons that I am interested in watching, I might add. I just wish that the mainline series reached a better conclusion. And I’m not saying that Seong Gi-hun needed to stop the games; I just wish that his actions would’ve had a bigger impact on this world. That way, his specific story could have felt way more satisfying. 

I know it’s unrealistic to think that one man could take on a mega corporation on his own, but it sure would’ve been nice to see that man put some kind of dent into the establishment. Because the world already sucks as it is. But I didn’t need this show to remind me of how cruel and unfair life can be, I just needed it to reach a satisfying conclusion in its own right. And I definitely think that it failed to do so. 

So, Squid Game Season 3 would, unfortunately, not get a recommendation from me.