"Squid Game 3": review

Lee Byung-hun as In-ho, the Front Man

My review of Season 1.
My review of Season 2.

[WARNING: major spoilers.]

"Squid Game 3" concludes the arc that began in the first season of "Squid Game," a Korean-produced Netflix series that launched in 2021 and concluded this year. The overall story, written, produced, and directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk, is about how poor and desperate people are lured onto a mysterious island to play children's games that have turned deadly, and this for multiple, contradictory reasons: cynically, the games show that people are nothing more than horses in a horse race, and when they're pushed hard enough, they'll do anything to win or escape. More charitably, the games criticize the larger capitalist context of South Korea, a soul-deadening experience for people who are destitute or merely locked into lifeless, dreary jobs from which there is no escape because the economic wheel grinds on and on: you either press on, or you stop and get crushed by the wheel. So for these people, the games are an opportunity to experience the thrill of being alive. The cast for Season 3 (officially called "Squid Game 3" as if this were the final film of a cinematic trilogy) is the same as for Season 2, but much reduced after a few days of gaming and a rebellion that gets put down in the last episode of the previous season.

Season 3 begins with the surviving players being rounded up and forced to continue to play. A rule comes into effect: no more player-on-player violence between games (a rule that is bizarrely contradicted later on in the story when the Front Man Hwang In-ho [Lee Byung-hun] suggests to Gi-hun [Lee Jung-jae] that he slit the throats of the remaining players to win the game). Kim Jun-hee (Jo Yu-ri), the ex-girlfriend of MG Coin (a.k.a. Lee Myeong-gi, played by Im Si-wan), gives birth to her baby, and the puppet masters cruelly deem the baby to be a participant in the game. The Front Man's brother, Hwang Jun-ho the cop (Wi Ha-joon), continues his long-shot search for the island where the games are occurring; meanwhile, Jun-ho has to be convinced to contend with the treacherous Captain Park (Oh Dal-su), to whom Jun-ho feels loyalty for having saved his life just after the events of Season 1 (in which the Front Man shoots his brother Jun-ho, who falls off a cliff into the ocean and, according to Captain Park, is rescued by him). On the island itself, North Korean defector and sniper Kang No-eul (Park Gyu-young; no-eul means "sunset") does what she can to save a player she knew from back when she worked as an animé mascot at the amusement park Seoul Land—a father, Park Gyeong-seok (Lee Jin-wook) whose daughter is undergoing cancer treatment. No-eul's task is both to save the father and to destroy the records, electronic and paper, of all of the players in current and past games.

Season 3 continues to ponder the big questions of whether it's possible to escape a certain system, what human nature fundamentally is, whether capitalism is a good thing, and whether change—at the collective, societal level—is even possible. Some of the larger issues are left unresolved by the end; certain issues resolve themselves in entirely predictable ways. Plenty of characters plunge to their deaths this season; this reminded me strongly of the Star Wars movies, in which so many characters die by falling. Money, as in the previous two seasons (Season 3 is only six episodes long), is shown to be a powerful motivator; the players routinely vote to stay in the games, driven ever forward by the insane hope that they will win. One room where the players get together has on its walls the Latin adage Hodie mihi, cras tibi—literally "Mine today, yours tomorrow"—a memento mori-style reference to death, which comes for us all no matter who or where we are. I die today; you die tomorrow. If nothing else, the games affirm the ubiquity of death, but the survivors of each game resist nihilism by fanatically concentrating on the potential wealth that awaits them.

Do we, in fact, get an answer to the question of what human nature fundamentally is? No, and maybe that's for the best. The human soul is a malleable, plastic thing, and the show provides examples of cold venality, crass selfishness, and unsentimental bloody-mindedness on one side; and shining nobility, sacrificial altruism, and humble integrity on the other. Our protagonist, Gi-hun, has an opportunity to win the games a second time: all he has to do is hit the timer button before he fights his final opponent. But intentionally or unintentionally, Gi-hun starts the timer only after he defeats the last opponent—surprisingly, it's the selfish MG Coin, father of Jun-hee's baby—who attacks him before either thinks to press the start-timer button. According to the rules of this final game, once the timer begins, at least one player must be eliminated. With MG Coin out of the picture, the only survivors are Gi-hun and Jun-hee's baby. As anyone could have predicted, Gi-hun chooses to sacrifice himself instead of dropping the baby over the precipice (the final game is called "Sky Squid Game," and it's played on tall pillars,* with any fall guaranteeing death), but before he commits to the fall, he utters, "We aren't horses. We're people. People are..." as his final words. That's as close as we get to an answer to the question of human nature.

Does the show answer the question of whether the system incarnated in the games, and the larger capitalist system of Korean society, can be overturned to lead to greater human flourishing? Here, the answer is a clear, bleak no. While events come to a head on the island, which the Front Man commands to self-destruct, we see that all of the elements of capitalism and the games themselves remain in place: after the Front Man visits Gi-hun's daughter in Los Angeles, he drives past an alley in which a Western woman in a business suit (Cate Blanchett!) is playing ddakji with a white homeless guy. The games are, in other words, alive and well in other parts of the world. Wherever there is human desperation, there will always be the games. And wherever there is capitalism, the show implies, there will always be desperation. Even advocates of capitalism affirm that there will always be the top and bottom rungs of a societal ladder. And even if we step outside of capitalism to other economic systems, we see the same inequality at play, so the games will always have a home somewhere. As Jesus noted, "The poor you will always have with you."

The implication of the above two insights about human nature and escaping the system is that change is, ultimately, impossible. And this is dangerously close to the Indian insight, as manifested in Hinduism and Buddhism, that life is samsara, the painful wheel of existence. Escaping this wheel is the goal of Indian religions (even if some strains of Buddhism reject the idea of goals and attainment), but escape is difficult if not impossible. The entire Squid Game series—and this is consistent with most Korean storytelling over the years—is predicated on the idea that we are enmeshed in the system (capitalism, the games, etc.), which always was, is, and will be. Many Korean stories highlight the smallness of humanity in the face of immense societal, natural, and spiritual powers. Life is samsara, a term that, in Mahayana Buddhism, came to be synonymous with "this phenomenal world," as when Zen Buddhists say that nirvana is samsara (the highest bliss or greatest reality is nothing more or less than this moment, this phenomenal world, just-this). Gi-hun, who had wanted to stop the games permanently, who had tried to show mercy and compassion wherever he could (he did evolve as a character, thus proving me wrong—a discussion in itself), was ultimately unsuccessful in his self-appointed mission. He was less than a horse: he was an ant, and the system ended up crushing him. And his self-sacrifice was a useless gesture, too: as we see at the end of the series, the system persists.

My understanding is that audiences have reacted generally negatively, or at least less positively, to Season 3's ending. Western—especially American—audiences, in particular, being nursed on the Christian resurrection narrative, prefer stories of suffering that end in some sort of victory, not in defeat, nihilism, and uselessness. What was the point of the whole thing if we couldn't have a happy ending?** Critics, on the other hand, seem to have appreciated the series much more: the series taken as a 3-season whole has an 85% score on Rotten Tomatoes. How will the non-Korean spinoffs do? I don't know and, frankly, I don't care because I won't be watching them. In fact, I hope all of the spinoff efforts die quick deaths because I think the global culture, at this point, is all Squid Game'd out.

Let's talk about my and others' complaints about Season 3. About that annoying, creepy, Twilight CGI baby: the baby effects were abysmally bad for such a high-budget show. I was reminded of the horrible baby effects in Clint Eastwood's "American Sniper" (which were bad for a totally different reason). The filmmakers should have found another way to do the baby visuals, which produced an immediate and unpleasant uncanny-valley effect every time they appeared. And how did the baby gestate so fast? I need to go back and rewatch Season 2, but I'm pretty sure that, in that season, she began the story pregnant but not showing it. How she went from a flat belly to giving birth in what must have been the span of just a few days (in the in-universe chronology) is a mystery to me. Another instance of awful CGI is the Rottweiler that attacks Choi Woo-seok, who has come ashore to look for the treacherous Captain Park's home, where he breaks in and discovers cash, a Squid Game guard uniform, and other damning evidence before the neighbors call the police on him. Before the police arrive, Captain Park's Rottweiler attacks Choi. Another complaint: too many of the bad characters at the end were bad more because they lacked courage and moral fiber than because they were actively evil, and through no fault of their own, many of these actors were cursed with annoying, slappable faces. I'm thinking in particular about the unscrupulous Lee Myeong-gi/MG Coin (Yim Siwan) and the mousy Min-su (Lee David), both of whom I wanted to reach into the monitor and slap. On top of the bad CGI baby, the poorly done CGI dog, and the slappable actors, the series brought back the damn VIPs—over-privileged non-Koreans who have a front-row seat as they watch the games conclude from the comfort of a posh and plush viewing area. The VIPs' dialogue is awful, and the acting isn't much better, although one critic I watched noted that the actors all had to redub their lines at a later date, which may partially account for the stilted delivery. 

I suppose I shouldn't be too harsh about the Korean filmmakers' treatment of Westerners (and one Chinese woman): the recent Disney Star Wars series "The Acolyte" also starred Lee Jeong-jae, who could barely speak English and had to memorize many of his lines phonetically, and who was horribly misused on that show (I think Lee Byung-hun would have made a better Jedi). This misuse of foreign actors doesn't appear to be a uniquely Korean problem. Westerners still don't know what to do with Asians.

Back to complaints. Like the CGI baby, though, the VIPs are with us to the end once they appear, and both the baby and the rich foreigners did much to detract from my enjoyment of the series. How, in 2025, have people not figured out how to do babies right yet? I bet there's a practical-effects solution that's far superior to the CGI one. The final game of the series, Sky Squid Game, was supposedly urgent in nature, but since the players were allowed to start the game timer whenever they wanted, a lot of time was squandered as the characters endlessly debated each other about how to proceed before pressing the button. One reviewer I respect also noted that the Front Man, Hwang In-ho, is less well written this time around. While he seems remorseful about Gi-hun's death, by the end of the series, he's traipsing around LA in a limousine, still apparently rich and powerful, and probably ready to rebuild his games in Korea or somewhere else. And what were In-ho's motivations with regard to Gi-hun? To teach him that humanity is filth and not to be trusted? What should one conclude from that? How does one proceed after concluding that? Should we all become hikikomori, locked away in our bedrooms, never coming out to interact with anyone? That's a little too introverted even for my taste, and besides, natural extroverts have a tendency to find others and not leave them alone. As Darth Vader noted in "Return of the Jedi," You cannot hide forever. And as critic Dan Murrell noted, the introduction of a helpless baby into the proceedings made the story much more predictable because very few writers will depict something as heinous as the murder of an infant. This is plot armor. By the time we reach the final game, with nine people (including the baby) remaining, the outcome of the game is easily foreseeable.

The series had its positives, though. As before, it was very well acted, and whenever there was the typically Korean, melodramatic screaming and crying, it at least had a purpose in the story and wasn't overly gratuitous. A special shout-out goes to Kang Ae-shim as Jang Geum-ja, the old mother of yet another feckless coward, Park Yong-shik (Yang Dong-geun). Geum-ja, to protect Jun-hee, stabs her own son in the back, then later hangs herself out of guilt for having killed him (technically, her son was still dying when the guards came and gunned Yong-shik down during a macabre game of hide-and-seek). Also of note was Song Young-chang as Im Jeong-dae, a debt-ridden CEO and unprincipled coward who is willing to sacrifice others and fake his own death to get ahead in the games. Song did a great job of making me hate him. Plenty of other actors and actresses played their roles with distinction even if they all ended up as cannon fodder to the plot.

In the end, the series did as I'd predicted in my Season 2 review (linked above): it followed the general trajectory of the Matrix films, failing to deliver in the third installment but still producing a watchable story. Like the Matrix movies, "Squid Game 3" concludes that the system is unbeatable. At least, in the Matrix films, there's something of a happy ending when humanity and the AI machines come to an agreement to try to live harmoniously together. No hint of that happy ending is present in "Squid Game 3," though. The games will simply continue, even with the Korean island base having been destroyed. The system lives on, and there is no escaping it. The series also defies the French-style heroic ending, in which the hero sacrifices him- or herself for a noble cause per the Catholic emphasis on the Passion over the resurrection, as seen by the presence of the corpus—Jesus' body—on the Catholic crucifix as opposed to the empty cross of the Protestants symbolizing victory over death. In the world of Squid Game, there is only the system, and no heroic sacrifice. Whether you're fine with that sort of ending is up to you. I'm fine with it from a storytelling perspective, but other aspects of the series definitely reduced my ability to enjoy the overall work.

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*In a bit of humorous irony, the giant, empty chasm in which the tall pillars have been placed for the final game of Sky Squid has construction netting on the walls and a huge sign saying 안전제일/anjeon jeil, or "Safety first." I laughed in spite of myself.

**Continental Europeans—I really don't think I can include the UK in this insight—had the sobering, humbling experience of World War II, which left much of the continent a blasted ruin, and this included the ruins of churches. A deep skepticism about the power of God and religion set in, leading to the bitter, worldly cynicism you see in continental Europe today—in its art, its cinema, in the European sense of humor, even in the defeated acceptance of French postmodernism/leftism and bleak German aesthetic sensibilities. The turn to post-WW2 French existentialism—the idea that we live in an absurd cosmos where our choices create our meaning but aren't grounded by any Ground of Being—is another example of the turn away from God and church and traditional social structures. All there is, in the postmodern view, are things like power dynamics, systems, injustice, and oppression. The American victory in World War II led to a much different, more positive worldview, but I think Americans of all stripes these days feel a certain cynicism, even while some among them also feel a cautious sense of hope and future redemption. The empty cross lives on as a symbol.

ADDENDUM: this YouTube review comes to exactly the opposite conclusion. Frankly, I think the interpretation is utterly wrong, but it's still interesting.