Everything Wrong With Squid Game Season 3

Director Hwang probably lost as many teeth writing Squid Game Season 3 as I did grinding mine watching it. You’ve got favourite characters dying every five minutes, English actors with the emotional range of a YouTube apology video, and CGI babies so cursed they look like they were rendered in a microwave. Season 3 definitely left an impression, just not one you’d want to remember. So let’s talk about it.

Back in 2021, Squid Game was electric. The show worked because it was bold. It waited a full 45 minutes before killing its first player, and once that happened, it was pure chaos. The vibe was part Battle Royale, part Willy Wonka if Wonka had a gun and zero HR training. It was deeply South Korean in its themes — household debt, class immobility, rigged systems, gambling — but still resonated worldwide. Everyone knows what it’s like to feel like the world is a game designed for you to lose. Squid Game didn’t just suggest that, it screamed it at you while someone got sniped mid-hopscotch.

I’ll admit I succumbed to the Netflix Top 10 hype and watched Squid Game when it first blew up. But unlike the moral minefields of filming something like Tiger King or the mess that was the Menendez docu-drama, Squid Game had balls. It left a real impression. It was a fantastic show with high stakes, emotional vulnerability, a sharp (if not exactly groundbreaking) critique of wealth disparity, and a solid cast of flawed but compelling characters. When it ended, we all wanted more, and when we got it, we wanted it to stop.

Hwang Dong-hyuk has said the first season nearly broke him. He wrote, directed, and produced the whole thing himself, losing eight teeth from stress. So when Netflix backed up the money truck for two more seasons, it’s no shock that the result feels more like obligation than inspiration. Season two wasn't even awful, there are still sharp critiques and the occasional gut-punch moment. But by season 3 (A continuation because it was broken up in 2 parts), they feel more like echoes than expansions.

It keeps circling the same point, over and over, like a guy at a party who keeps explaining socialism louder every time someone walks away. To be fair, director Hwang Dong-hyuk originally intended Squid Game to be a one-season story. But after its astronomical success, Netflix wasn’t about to let its golden goose waddle off into the sunset. Squid Game could’ve been a one-and-done masterpiece. Instead, it dragged itself through three increasingly tired seasons, the kind of show that doesn’t so much end as deflate slowly under the weight of its own metaphors.

Season 2 ended with Hwang Jun-ho’s boat party search team in chaos. The ship captain who initially helped Jun killed one of the crew members in the middle of the night out of suspicion, and we’re led to believe he’s working with the Squid Game guards. Season 3 was supposed to use these high stakes as a launchpad for Jun to track down the island and get revenge, but he was less successful than Dora the Explorer. When he and what’s left of his team finally do find the island (most of them getting massacred the night before by the ship’s captain), Jun’s only real purpose is to show up, scream at his brother (the Front Man), and then go home with a million dollars and a CGI baby. If that sounds like a fever dream, you’re not alone. I’ve found islands faster than this search team, with fewer casualties.

Also, can we talk about the VIPs this season and what sketchy fraud website they crawled out of to get cast? Their acting sent shivers down my spine — and not in a good way. More like, “Is my audio out of sync, or am I having a stroke?” Their voices didn’t match their mouths, their American accents sounded like a bad AI model trying to do a cowboy accent, and the whole thing had me checking my headphones, thinking they were broken.

I genuinely believe the casting team just Googled “people who speak English” and picked the first four LinkedIn profiles that showed up. No chemistry, no presence, just four Craigslist extras doing rich-person improv like they’re on a bad yacht-themed escape room team. I’m guessing the entire budget went to Cate Blanchett’s cameo.

To shake things up, Season 3 introduces a baby contestant. Yep, a baby. A very clearly CGI baby, no less. It’s supposed to represent innocence or hope or the future or... whatever. But after spending three episodes rooting for creative new ways people get gutted, it’s hard to feel emotionally moved by a digital infant. And ironically, the one character who comes out with fortune is artificially generated.

If that isn’t a metaphor for where humanity is heading, I don’t know what is. And that’s the heart of the problem. Somewhere along the way, Squid Game forgot how to make us care about life. Season 1 gave us characters like Ali, Sae-byeok, and Ji-yeong, people whose deaths actually hurt. Now, the deaths are just part of the wallpaper. Flashier? Sure. Bloodier? Definitely. But emptier. The show trained us to crave carnage, then turned around and asked, “Wait, why are you enjoying this?” Like… sorry, you built the gore carnival, don’t get mad that I bought a ticket.

However, even though I'm relentlessly ragging on this show and will continue to do so for the rest of the article, I will say the games themselves (especially hide and seek) were super engaging, some more than others. The rising tension, as well as the really cool fight scenes with player 120, were phenomenal, and every action led to something even more dire, really good writing. Unfortunately, it all goes downhill from there.

If I had to sum up my complaints into one overarching issue, it would be that there were simply too many characters, too many people the show expected us to care about, without putting in the groundwork. A few were great, but most felt like filler, or I couldn’t even tell who was who. By the end, I found myself tuning out. Even my favourite characters felt like obvious emotional bait. The last game especially made no sense. It was a showdown between people I either didn't care about or straight-up despised. Why would I care if Gi-hun came out on top?

It’s like if The Hunger Games finale was Katniss versus a bunch of psychotic Career tributes from District 1. Of course, I’m only going to root for the one main character with plot armour and hope everyone else dies. But what’s the fun in that? Even Gi-hun starts to feel like a hollow shell. He gets dragged back into the games, tries to save people, and fails. Again. Near the end of the finale, he starts to say what he thinks “humans are”… and just stops. That’s how the show ends. Not with a bang, but with a half-finished sentence.

Squid Game has always been about the intrinsic good and evil within people. It explores how desperation can turn anyone into a monster, how wealth is a vital and valid thing to fight over, and how even those in dire need can still act selflessly. Season 1—and parts of Season 2—introduced these themes through the brutal death games and the players trapped in them.

Season 3 was supposed to push those ideas further, revealing aspects of human nature and systemic decay that we, the audience, hadn’t yet seen. It could’ve been a haunting parable about society’s rot. Instead, it became a broken record stuck in its own echo chamber. Some ideas were explored, but most were either left to confuse you or flat-out contradicted themselves.

And yet... we watched. And we’ll probably keep watching. Because now there’s an American version coming, Squid Game: USA, apparently. Where contestants eat Lunchables and Cate Blanchett introduces “School Shooting: The Game.” Directed by David Fincher, because, of course, it is. And yeah, I’ll watch it. Because I love Fincher, but let’s not pretend this franchise isn’t stretching itself thin. Every new spinoff makes the original feel a little less sacred and a lot more like content.

Because if Squid Game taught us anything, it’s that the real prize was never the money... Or the friend along the way (because they will murder you). It was the chance to keep watching.