Review of Squid Game / 오징어 게임 Season 3

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

I recently fell into a spell of unemployment probably during the worst time to be unemployed, as it was very hard to find a job. I was applying to hundreds of jobs, getting interviews, but no offer was manifesting for me in the near future. So during this time, I had a lot of free time, and spent a good chunk of it chipping away at the blog.

I remember when I reached around the one hundred mark I was getting discouraged and decided I needed a few days for a brain break. I took a step back then and thought long and hard about what I wanted to do, and realized I was in the financial privilege at that moment when I could just watch a few movies a couple of days in a row.

One of the other great things about this is if I want to binge watch all the television shows as they’re dropping. There are some shows I get really hype about, and I’ve been fixating on finishing all of my Korean dramas at the time they finish their streaming debuts.

I was right on top of each of the Squid Game releases, and even wrote reviews of each season on the blog. So it seemed only right to keep going out with the Korean part of the series (who knows…the ending of season 3 implies that maybe they might branch out to other countries, specifically the United States) and wrap it up by watching it all in one day.

Season 2 finished on quite the cliffhanger, so I felt like I had to know what happened in this season. I was at the edge of my seat—I had a specific soft spot for Hyun-ju, and some theories on others, like Dae-ho, and I wanted to see if I was right about what my hunch was.

Let’s get into the review! We have a lot to discuss about this final season, as it can definitely be hit or miss for some fans.

The contestants are forced to continue competing in the Squid Games after their failed revolt.

The first episode of season three begins right where we left off, which implies to me that this was originally intended to be watched in one season, not two, which I have some qualms about. But to get to the point: we see how some people are still alive after the failed revolt, but others were not so lucky and were made an example of.

Gi-hun is a bit traumatized after the events of what just happened, and we see how Dae-ho is also someone who wasn’t who he says he was. That gets him really on Gi-hun’s bad side and the consequences of that are going to come swiftly. Everyone is forced to compete in the next game despite what happened, which splits the remaining survivors onto two teams.

One team is given knives and told to kill people on the other team, while the other team is given keys and told they need to keep going and survive—and if they can, find the exit with the keys. Some major tragedies are going to take place during this game, and beloved characters may or may not survive. This is one of the most cruel games for me to watch in the past two seasons, if we’re going to be honest.

Regardless, back on Joon-ho’s boat, they still have not found the island. Suspicion falls further on the sea captain who’s taking them out to find it, and as Joon-ho and co try to figure out what’s exactly happening, we see that this guy isn’t to be trusted at all. Whether the team figures that out in time is another story.

All of this is interspersed with the wealthy English-speaking patrons who maliciously watch everything going on at the island and even take bets and pleasure about what’s happening to these people. We really see their humanity shut off, especially when an unexpected variable is thrown into the equation and they see it as a source of entertainment, not concern.

I’ll have to admit: once we start this game of hide and seek, it gets pretty gory. I watch a lot of Korean cinema in general, and know what to expect with certain kinds of depictions, but I was not expecting the level of violence that happened so quickly. I think seasons 2 and 3 should have been merged partially because of this; if you forgot what season 2 was like, the violence comes out of nowhere, making it jarring with the gap between the two seasons.

A lot of the characters also prove themselves to be very morally grey at this point as well, especially when it comes to what they would plan on doing to a pregnant woman and/or her baby. It’s horrifying to watch people slip into such a predator/primal state on a screen, but the worst thing is I can see it easily happening in real life.

And maybe that’s what makes Squid Game such a terrifying show. We turn it into a franchise and laugh about what happened, but we’re not better than the people watching the games happen. We are the elites sitting in our living rooms watching this unfold night by night, and it has become entertainment.

What you walk away with as the message ultimately shapes who you are after seeing the games unfold. In real life, this could easily happen. It might not appear the same way though—it could be war, even laughing about World War III memes in an air conditioned room as actual people are being bombed.

Overall Thoughts

I do wish we spent more time with these characters in the end. Some, like Hyun-ju, I really began to feel for them and their situations. When the time came to maybe confront their demises, it hit hard. Others, not so much. There were a lot of threads in these past two seasons, and some of the characters we needed more time with.

Some of the events did feel a little rushed, so maybe it would have been better to spread this season out more. Because it was only six episodes, it flew by quickly throughout the morning I was watching it, and plot points started coming hard and fast throughout.

I could also see how Gi-hun fell so deeply into depression after what happened with the revolt. He came into the games trying to stop it and failed. He loses his purpose, but when he’s given another reason to keep going, he follows through with that protection duty he has been bestowed until the end. And that’s an admirable trait, even if he was a bit more static in seasons 2 and 3.

Regardless, I think this was a solid end to the series. I could see some being disappointed that it didn’t end the way they wanted to, but it felt realistic to me. Not everything is a happy ending, and if you’re expecting the common man to rise up and prevail, everyone surviving and living happy endings, that’s simply not the case most of the time.

Go watch it though if you want to see how this show ends. I think it’s worth watching for sure, especially now if you can watch seasons 2 and 3 together in one shot.

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