Squid Game, Netflix's elaborate fantasy about an arena where debt-strapped people fight each other to the death for the entertainment of amoral billionaires, has just dropped its third and final season, and the short review is that it's extremely entertaining. The second season took a while to get off the ground; we had to wait for Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), the winner of the Squid Games in the first season, to track down the organizers and return to the arena. Once he did, things got moving; the show introduced a variety of new games, each one more dastardly than the next, and the blood started flying.
Even still, I didn't think enough main characters died in the second season; it didn't feel as urgent and terrifying as the first. Squid Game makes up for lost time in season 3. This is a spoiler-free review, so won't go into specifics, but the body count is high and the violence relentless. Favorites will perish, cut down as a dwindling pool of players embrace their worst instincts for a chance at winning the grand prize. The third season made me well up often; I'd grown to like a lot of these characters, and seeing them meet tragic ends was emotional.
But with Squid Game, it's impossible to look away. The show's claim to fame are the games themselves, sickening death traps modeled after children's games. No game on this series has ever felt phoned in, and there are some absolute bangers in the third season. We get three new games, and every one is memorable. I want to applaud the production designers especially; the new arenas are incredibly inventive; if only so many people didn't die brutally inside them.
Then again, that push and pull has always been integral to Squid Game's success. You feel for these characters and don't want to see them hurt, but you're also dying to see what inhumane obstacle course they have to face down next.
The message
In fact, our lurid fascination with the savagery of the games may undercut the message of the show itself, if indeed there is one. From the start, Squid Game always seemed to be a critique of capitalism run amok. It resonated around the world because we can see our own situation in it: uber-wealthy elites hoard all the resources while the rest of us fight for scraps. But are we the players or the voyeuristic billionaires? Do we really sympathize with the plight of the people caught in the Squid Games, or are we gawking at their epic misfortune?
I think it's a little of both; if Squid Game doesn't have the central capitalism metaphor, it doesn't resonate with the zeitgeist and doesn't become a pop culture phenomenon. But it also has to be well-made and feature all those nail-biting game scenes. It's a hugely entertaining, extremely bloody show with a lot to say about our current moment.
But the message does seem easy to co-opt. The Squid Games themselves are a capitalistic nightmare, but Netflix still made bank off the series with a reality show: Squid Game: The Challenge. And there's talk of more spinoffs to come; this anti-capitalist show may become Netflix's new forever-franchise.
At the same time, the point of the show is to entertain people and make money doing it, and at this it's been extremely successful. If there is a tension between what Squid Game is or is becoming — a forever franchise that can make its parent company a lot of money — and what it's trying to say — that capitalism taken to its extremes is a vicious and barbaric institution — I don't think it's resolvable. Better to just enjoy the ride, because it's a thrilling ride, and accept whatever lessons the show has to teach when and if they come.
The ending
Again, this is a non-spoiler review, so I'm not going to describe the ending in detail, but I will say that it's both bleaker and sweeter than I was expecting. The show wraps up a lot of the characters' main arcs in neat ways that I found emotionally satisfying. After a season of butchery, it's nice at the end to sit back a little and see what happened to everyone without worrying whether they would live to see another day.
That said, the show leaves some big things unresolved, or at the least, it doesn't give us the resolution we may have wanted. I think this may have been done on purpose by creator Hwang Dong-hyuk, who has talked thoughtfully about what he's trying to say with the show. To say anything else would constitute spoilers, but I'm curious to see what people think as they round the final corner on this show. Whatever else it is, Squid Game is a good show for inspiring discussion about life, the universe and everything.
And yes, there are some hints towards the end about a potential follow-up, but I don't want to say too much. The bottom line is that I was gripping the edge of my coach for a lot of the run-time of this season. In many ways, Squid Game season 3 is more of the same of what we got in seasons 1 and 2, but the bloom has gone off the rose, and the show is as gripping as ever.
SPOILER-filled Squid Game reviews:
- Season 3, Episode 1: "Keys and Knives"
- Season 3, Episode 2: "The Starry Night"
- Season 3, Episode 3: "It's Not Your Fault"
- Season 3, Episode 4: "222"
- Season 3, Episode 5: " ▢△◯"
- Season 3, Episode 6, "Humans Are..."
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