Squid Game Season 3 Review: A farewell etched in blood, a future scribbled in sand; but is that enough?

Squid Game Season 3 Review: Story – Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) decided to go back into the game and end it once and for all in the last season. We saw him slowly building a rebellion, which led to a few players joining him and attacking the establishment by going rogue. The third season begins at the very point their rebellion has failed, and everyone who backed Gi-hun is killed except him. He is brought back to the hall, where he is all lifeless after witnessing his friend and the co-players being murdered. But will that stop the games? Players vote to continue, and the dance of death begins again. As we progress, Gi-hun continues with lost hope and finds it in a new player, which takes the stakes of this game much higher. Will he be able to save the new player? Will this circus of death end?

Squid Game Season 3 Review:

The world of IPs and franchise projects is, for the lack of a better word, a gamble that is more walking towards loss than profit (at least at this point in time). Something works, it is stretched out into a trampoline beyond its elasticity, and no one in the studio probably questions the holes that are slowly visible. What we get are half-baked shows and movies as follow-ups to something that we had loved in the first go. But does everything need to stretch just because it was successful at first? This is the same thought that probably entered a lot of our minds when Squid Game 2 landed, and most of that excitement chose the exit door as the season went on to be a snooze fest with nothing concrete happening in and around it. So when a third season tries to stand on that foundation, how far can it go?

Yet again created, written, and directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk, the third season of Squid Game understands that it has somewhere alienated the fans with its last season, so it has brought them back. So this time around, the attempt to return to the three-dimensional storytelling with edged-out characters is on display. There is enough visible effort in wanting to win back an audience that has trusted that. This time around, the narrative is not one-tone but spreads across a map that is lucrative on the surface. However, the base is not strong enough to hold it—but about that later. Season three finds itself in a very good position with tension and twists, and one hopes it would have been such a great season if the second was treated well.

Credit where it's due, the way the VIPs have been shown this time is pretty interesting and supremely gut-wrenching. The idea behind the show is creating a mini capsule of the world where the rich have a laugh and profit at the expense of marginalised and poverty-stricken people by showing them a block of cheese that is tied to their own bodies. There is no regard for their life or world at stake, only entertainment. Season three brings these VIPs and shows how dumb they are and how ruthless their mind is. They don't blink twice before making a surprise entry as a player, even when the player is not even big enough to understand consent, forget practising it.

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What is also interesting is how Gi-hun now finds a new purpose, which is to safely take the new player ahead and keep his word by protecting her at all costs. However, the screenplay, just like the second season, never allows the bonds to be formed. The player 222 that is at stake is already a vulnerable target that will make one emotional, but to build her bond with Gi-hun for him to risk his life for her should have gotten some screen time. 

The characters from season 2 have been developed so poorly that not many deaths are felt beyond the feeling of how brutal they were. Yes, a handful do finally get character arcs that are edged out a bit, but that doesn't change the fact that it's too late for that. We are literally in the last few episodes when this begins to happen.

Two parallel plots are also unfolding beyond the walls of this captivation, and they are interesting to witness. But even they are wrapped up so hurriedly that it all lands at nothing. The climax is indeed a shocker because it literally changes every single theory we have read on Reddit so far, but is that enough? The change in heart because a man said something while dying is not a welcomed plot device in a show that is about a heartless establishment. And the change in heart happens to the most ruthless of them all.

While there is a hint that this story continues, as a very popular American actor makes a cameo, we are never taken to why in the first place all of this happened, which kind of feels like a lost opportunity. Not even a hint about the reveal we were waiting for. A black car drives away into oblivion, marking the end of the Korean chapter of this game, hinting at the future that is being shaped at Netflix. Do we really want this to continue? Can it return back to absolute form? Time will tell.

Squid Game Season 3 Review: Final Verdict

The problem is not season 3, but the lack of world-building in season 2 that plagues even the merit in the third season. The twists are dark, blood is spilled, the future is teased, but that is not enough to build a show which has a crazy fandom across the globe. A farewell that is bittersweet.

Squid Game Season 3 is now streaming on Netflix. Stay tuned to OTTplay for more information on this and everything else from the world of streaming and films.-