Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Squid Game’ Season 3 On Netflix, Where The Epic And Violent Korean Hit Comes To A Shocking End

As we get into the homestretch of Squid Game, you start to realize why the show’s creator, Hwang Dong-hyuk, got burned out making it. While the plotlines are relatively straightforward, everything about the show is elaborate, from the massive number of extras playing every game to the huge sets to the fact that there are a lot of those straightforward plotlines to keep track of. The third season starts in the middle of Gi-hun’s second set of games, as he tries to bring it down from the inside.

SQUID GAME SEASON 3: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Picking up where Season 2 left off, the guards shoot Player 145, who was part of a revolution led by Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae).

The Gist: One of the guards, No-eul (Park Gyu-young), shoots Player 246, but keeps him alive. Ostensibly, it’s for other guards to mine his organs, but she has other ideas. Also still alive is Gi-hun, who is purposely being kept alive by the Front Man, Hwang In-ho (Lee Byung-hun).

When Gi-hun is brought back to the contestants’ barracks, he’s despondent. His revolution failed, and his friends are all dead. He screams to the guards to kill him right there, but they don’t comply.

A vote is taken on whether to continue the game or end it and split the ever-increasing pot among the 60 remaining players. Gi-hun abstains, but since his “red X” contingent was decimated during the revolt, continuing the game wins by a landslide.

The fourth game to be played, though, is a doozy: Hide-and seek. The group is split into red and blue teams. The blue team gets keys that will allow them to open doors in the arena and hide. The red team gets knives; the goal is that the red team has to kill a member of the blue team. Blue team members survive the game by hiding and escaping, but red team members must kill a blue team member or be eliminated (i.e. shot to death).

In the meantime, Detective Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon) is still on the boat of Captain Park (Oh Dal-su), trying to find the island where the games are taking place. After a drone operator that Hwang hired mysteriously disappears, Choi Woo-seok (Jeon Seok-ho) tells Hwang that he thinks something isn’t right with Park. Hwang dismisses it, but Choi’s instinct isn’t wrong.

Also in the meantime, No-eul gets the jump on the guards harvesting Player 246’s organs, and even goes so far as to donate blood to keep him alive.

Photo: No Ju-han/Netflix

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Squid Game is like Squid Game: The Challenge, only it’s scripted! (We’re kidding, of course; we know that the reality series is based on the scripted series).

Our Take:

Just by plot alone, it’s evident why Squid Game is coming to an end. In the first season Gi-hun won; in the second and third seasons, he plays the game to bring it down from the inside. But will The Front Man break him first? That’s the question Hwang tries to answer during the final season, as the games being played get more violent and personal to the contestants.

If there wasn’t a goal in mind, every season would be a new set of games, and that would get old quickly. Even now, seeing a new group of people play these violent games starts to feel somewhat the same as what we saw during the first season. Yes, there are different stories within this new group; we were especially drawn to the mother-son team Jang Geum-ja (Kang Ae-shim) and Park Yong-sik (Yang Dong-geun). But the story we ultimately want to see is Gi-hun try to bring down the Front Man, while Hwang gets closer to discovering the island.

Photo: Netflix

Sex and Skin: None.

Most Pilot-y Line: None we can find.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Hwang Dong-hyuk’s decision to end Squid Game after three seasons was a wise one, because he was able to conceive of a story that had a beginning, middle and end instead of getting bogged down in game after game. As the game aspect of the series gets wearying, the story’s ending should take over and continue to hold viewers’ interest.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.