Squid Game Season 3 Mostly Sticks The Landing
The games are over, but do we really want a rematch?
Squid Game Season 1 cost showrunner Hwang Dong-hyuk blood, sweat, and tears — literally. In 2024, he told the BBC he lost about “eight or nine” teeth while making the first season. Teeth are a finite resource, so why would he come back for not one but two seasons after that? “Money,” he said.
Hwang developed enough story to cover Gi-hun coming back to the deadly Games for one more round. All 13 episodes were all filmed in one batch, but last summer Netflix announced it would split the episodes into Season 2 and Season 3, released seven months apart. As a result of this, Season 2 was exciting, but disappointing, as it was really only half the story. Now, we have the other half, and it’s somehow simultaneously satisfying and unsatisfying, finishing the saga with only a few hitches.
Last we left Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), he was reeling from a failed attempt to get the players to rebel against the games themselves. He watched as his best friend was murdered in front of him, and now is returned to the dorm with a resigned look at the rest of the games. With the addition of a pre-game poll on whether or not to continue, he knows if everyone just saw sense he could walk away, but most of the people who were on his side didn’t survive the uprising.
Just like in Season 2, there are only three games shown across the six episodes.
That said, there are still some familiar sympathetic faces. Kim Jun-hee (Jo Yu-ri) is now heavily pregnant, and her ex Lee Myung-gi (Im Si-wan) is trying to figure out how to play the game while protecting her and their unborn child. Also caught in an alliance dilemma are mother-son pair Jang Geum-ja (Kang Ae-shim) and Park Yong-sik (Yang Dong-geun), who are still working together as the numbers dwindle. There’s also the surprisingly well-handled trans character Cho Hyun-ju (Park Sung-hoon), who barely survived the riot. But the problem with the back half of a Squid Game is that not all of our favorite characters can reach the end.
That’s probably the biggest problem with Season 3: It’s only the last half of the series, with none of the character-establishment we saw in Season 2, and all of the brutal character elimination we see in the final episodes of Season 1. There is one bright spark, though: the non-gaming side plots involving Detective Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon,) still on his quest to find the island where the Games take place, and Pink Guard Kang No-eul (Park Gyu-yeong), who broke rank to rescue a familiar face during the riots.
There are only three games left to be shown, so much of the screen time is dedicated to these two on their quests to find personal vengeance through destroying the Games, one from the inside-out, the other from the outside-in. Both subplots are full of conspiracy thriller elements that find something new to say, but the action inside the game is more of what you expect, with surprisingly repetitive — yet heartbreaking — plot twists.
No-eul’s quest as a defected Pink Guard quickly becomes one of the show’s most compelling plotlines.
Seasons 1 and 2 both contained plenty of backstory sequences showing the satire of classism and capitalism that established all of the players’ participation in the first place, but Season 3 doesn’t get to that until the very last moments, when we get the ending we’ve waited for since 2021. I’m not allowed to say much, but there’s a nice sense of finality for the series... up until the final five minutes, when the story goes in a completely different direction.
Netflix isn’t nearly done with Squid Game: the streamer has already released a reality competition show spinoff, and David Fincher is making an English language series instead of, apparently, directing the Social Network sequel. But at least now, Gi-hun can stop putting his life in danger for our enjoyment, and this season is a fitting Closing Ceremonies for at least this version of the Games.
