Squid Game coming to an end after just three seasons feels like a remarkable feat of restraint. When the South Korean megahit went stratospheric back in September 2021 – rocketing to number one on Netflix in 92 countries and becoming the streamer’s most watched title of all time – that pink and green colour palette infiltrated every corner of popular culture. It even spawned a controversial reality TV recreation in Squid Game: The Challenge and inspired Amazon Prime Video’s record-breaking Beast Games.
- READ MORE: ‘Squid Game’ season two review: Netflix’s survival thriller will wrap its tentacles around you again
Creator Hwang Dong-hyuk has decided to hit the brakes after a third and final season to maintain the legacy of the dystopian survival thriller – though we can’t rule out future spin-offs. This last batch of episodes brings “closure to the story I wanted to tell about society through the character of Seong Gi-hun,” he explained in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
We were first introduced to heroic protagonist Player 456 (Lee Jung-jae) in season one when he, along with 455 other debt-riddled contestants, was recruited into a twisted tournament of children’s games for a chance to win a prize of ₩45.6billion (about £24.8million). The horrifying catch? Failure results in immediate death and only one player could emerge victorious. After winning the fortune, Gi-hun swore to bring down the whole operation. Season two saw him return to the playground battle royale, which ended in a blazing shootout.
Season three picks back up in the aftermath of the quashed insurrection to find the majority of remaining players still voting themselves deeper into the competition. The new games include a gruesome, hand-to-hand combat take on hide and seek and a gigantic jump rope suspended hundreds of feet in the air. The combination of childlike competitions with brutal life-or-death stakes remains a reliably nauseating trick.
The horror is dialled up even further this season while performances reach unhinged new depths. Contestants must choose whether to depart with their humanity or die trying to escape from the ugliest parts of themselves. It’s a deeply affecting struggle that doesn’t get any easier to watch.
Season three of Squid Game also introduces a newborn baby into the mix, which sparks another wave of questions about right and wrong. Encouraging this carnage are the gleeful VIPs, depicted by masked English-speaking actors who somehow succeed in being even more terrible than their predecessors, with their limited screen time playing like an AI-slop nightmare.
However, the core of this story has always been the contestants and the choices they make. These will often leave you shouting “why?” at your television screen but the show retaliates with a question of its own: does anyone ever stand up to the man and win? It’s a retort that’s bound to leave some fans feeling cheated, though you can’t help but imagine Hwang replying “exactly”. As he explained in a recent interview, “Some stories, by nature, can’t have [a happy ending].”
With the parting reveal that Squid Game is much bigger than just South Korea through an A-list cameo that’ll steal your breath, the relentless cycle of capitalist exploitation and suffering is pulled back into focus. It may all feel like doom and gloom but the final episode is deliberately titled ‘Humans Are…’ It’s left up to the viewer to decide how they fill in that blank.
‘Squid Game’ season three is available to watch on Netflix now