Squid Game Season 3 Review

Let’s start by showing y’all the trailers, shall we?

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Wait… why is it called Squid Game again?

Okay, so if you’re like me and sat through three seasons wondering where the actual squid was, you’re not crazy. You probably thought the name was just edgy nonsense, like calling a dystopian horror series Goldfish Brawl or Octopus Trials. But it turns out, Squid Game is actually based on a real Korean kids’ game from the ’70s and ’80s. The original version involves drawing a squid-like shape on the ground and playing an aggressive version of tag with offense and defense.

Do they explain this clearly in the show?
Nope.
Not until the final episode of Season 1, by which point you’ve watched people die over marbles, hopscotch, and crypto fraud, and you’re just emotionally cooked.

So if you were confused by the title and were expecting a giant cephalopod to show up and host the games—same. But the name sticks because it’s nostalgic and culturally relevant in Korea, even if the show itself mostly revolves around triangles, circles, and squares like we’re trapped in some deathmatch version of a PlayStation logo.

⚠️ Content Warning & Viewer Advisory:

Squid Game is not just violent — it’s psychologically brutal, morally exhausting, and hauntingly real. If you’re expecting a simple game of survival with flashy colors and suspense, prepare yourself: this show goes far beyond shock value. It dives deep into economic despair, exploitation, and systemic cruelty that mirrors our own reality in disturbingly accurate ways.

Episodes contain graphic depictions of murder, suicide, organ trafficking, and manipulation of the most vulnerable — including the elderly, the indebted, and the mentally unwell. The emotional toll is just as intense as the physical violence. You will watch good people break. You will see innocence weaponized. And worst of all? You’ll realize none of it is as far-fetched as it seems.

If you are sensitive to themes of desperation, hopelessness, betrayal, or financial exploitation, this show could be emotionally triggering. Approach with caution, and don’t be afraid to step away if it becomes too much.

This is not just a game.
It’s a mirror.
And some reflections aren’t easy to look at.

Plot Rundown (Non-Spoilers)

Season 3 picks up immediately after the ending of Season 2, making both seasons feel less like standalone entries and more like one continuous narrative—basically a two-part finale. If Season 2 was the spark, Season 3 is the explosion. The trauma, betrayals, and paranoia from the previous games haven’t just lingered—they’ve metastasized into a full-blown mental breakdown for several players, especially Gi Yun, who is now practically catatonic.

This round of games is deadlier, more deranged, and somehow even more gut-wrenching. The new format splits contestants into Red and Blue teams, ramping up the intensity by adding player-on-player hunts. The psychological warfare is just as cruel as the physical. You get games like a twisted game of Hide and Seek where survival literally depends on whether you’re given a knife or a key. There’s also rope-jumping between collapsing pillars. And of course, the final twisted game of murder atop symbolic shapes.

Characters (Non-Spoilers)

Gi Yun (our emotionally wrecked protagonist) is a ghost of who he once was. After everything that went down in Season 2, he’s traumatized, silent, and blank-eyed—a man running on fumes and revenge.

Cho Hyun Ju, the transgender woman who radiates grit and compassion, gets an expanded arc here, and she’s a total MVP. So is Number 11, the female guard who bends the rules and risks everything to save people, especially a man who needed a blood transfusion for his sick child.

Meanwhile, Kang—a manipulative, cowardly liar—gets fully unmasked. Turns out he lied about being a Marine and has zero combat experience. Let’s just say karma catches up with him.

You also get psycho Thanos’s right-hand man (who happily embraces his inner serial killer now that his boss is gone), the idiotic son of the elderly woman, and a cowardly businessman who backstabs people literally and figuratively. The alliances are thin, trust is nonexistent, and just like the audience, no one knows who might snap next.

Also, let’s talk about the baby.
Yes. That baby. The CGI baby that looks like it wandered out of a Playstation 2 cutscene and accidentally stumbled into a modern TV drama. I don’t know who rendered this thing, but it moves it’s head like it’s buffering and moves like it’s being puppeted by haunted Wi-Fi.

You ever see those weird AI-generated children in knockoff mobile game ads? Yeah. That, but somehow more terrifying and less responsive.

There are moments where the baby is meant to cry or move and it’s like watching a broken animatronic try to emote. It’s hard to feel anything emotional in scenes meant to hit hard when all I can focus on is the baby’s lifeless plastic skin and uncanny stare. I’m not saying the baby is secretly a robot plant from the Front Man…
…but I’m also not not saying that.

Either give the baby an actual doll or hire an infant. Don’t make me emotionally invest in a character whose digital face looks like it was rendered on a toaster.

BTW I have 5 cons with this season I wanted to bring up, because for these 3 reviews I kinda opted out of doing Pros and Cons. But this one deserves a con.

💸 Season 3 VIPs – We Learned Nothing

Fast forward to Season 3, and guess what? The VIPs are still here. Still awful. Still dressed like rejected Pokémon gym leaders with gold-plated fetishes. And still acting like we didn’t roast them to death online two seasons ago.

It’s like the showrunners took all the feedback from Season 1 and said,
“Ah, I see. You hated the VIPs? Perfect. Let’s double down and make them even more cartoonishly absurd.”

You’d think after all the backlash—people calling them cringey, one-dimensional, pointless—they’d be written out, or at least reworked into something menacing. But nope.
Still campy. Still useless. Still walking around like they’re cosplaying capitalism at a middle school talent show.

And what makes it worse is: they didn’t have to be this bad.
They could’ve been genuinely disturbing. Cold. Calculated. Real. But instead, they’re just noise. Wealthy clutter. Gold-wrapped punchlines with no weight.

Missed opportunity is an understatement.
These clowns should’ve been gone by now—but instead, they’re the recurring joke that stopped being funny two seasons ago.

Season 3 doesn’t really have its own soul. Where Season 2 felt like a tonal shift from Season 1—new characters, a darker vibe, a deeper exploration of trauma and manipulation—Season 3 just rides that same wave. It doesn’t carve out its own identity; it just feels like Season 2.1. I get that it’s a direct continuation, but narratively, it lacks the standalone punch the first two seasons had.

By this point, you can feel the exhaustion bleeding through the screen — and it’s not just us. Even the creator of the show, Hwang Dong-hyuk, outright admitted by Season 2 that he was “getting sick and tired” of the series. Why? Because he never planned to make more than one season. It was meant to be a closed loop, a brutal morality tale with a haunting conclusion. And it was.

But then Netflix saw the global success and said: “More.”
And Hwang, despite his burnout, was cornered into delivering two extra seasons of something that was never supposed to continue. So what we got in Season 3 wasn’t evolution — it was erosion.

The story feels hollow, like a repeat performance where the cast is still moving, but the music’s already stopped. The ending message? That there’s no stopping desperation. That corruption will always rise. That the system breaks people.
Cool.

Season 1 already told us that. Brilliantly. Devastatingly.

So what did we gain from dragging this out two more seasons? Nothing but a long, slow echo of a message that lost its impact the more it was screamed. Season 3 didn’t expand the story’s soul — it stretched it paper-thin.

🚨 Jun-Ho’s Arc – A Masterclass in Going Nowhere

Let’s talk about the biggest narrative blue balls in Squid Game: Hwang Jun-Ho’s subplot.

This man spent two and a half seasons wandering around like he was doing a scavenger hunt without the clues. Bro really said, “I’m gonna find the truth!” and then proceeded to bumble his way through every lead like a confused intern in a crime drama fanfiction.

For the majority of Seasons 2 and 3, Jun-Ho is just… on a boat. Not undercover. Not infiltrating. Just casually ferrying his way around like he’s in Finding Nemo: Corruption Edition. We kept cutting back to him like, “Oh yeah, he still exists.”
All for what?

So he can finally stumble upon the island at the very end of the Season 3 finale, walk up to his brother (the Front Man), and deliver the most emotionally limp confrontation in recent memory:

> “Why!? Tell me why!?”

That’s it. That’s the arc. Two seasons of build-up so Jun-Ho can dramatically scream at his brother like he just found out they shared a sock drawer in 4th grade.

No deeper investigation.
No consequences.
No moral crisis.
Just vibes and disappointment.

It’s like the showrunners thought his plot was important… until they forgot they were writing it. And then remembered at the last second and were like, “Oh crap, give him a scene where he yells. That’s emotion, right?”

Honestly? They could’ve cut Jun-Ho’s arc entirely and we’d have lost nothing.
No answers. No closure. Just a lot of wasted screentime and an unpaid Uber bill to the island. But wasn’t entirely his fault since the captain was steering him off the path on purpose.

A major issue I have is they kill off most the main likable characters in episode 2 so where stuck with ass whole douchbags for 4 more episodes that we don’t care about, wow how thrilling. That’s what I’d say if I cared about anyone in the last 4 episodes, but I didn’t.

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Final Thoughts

Season 3 is relentless. It cranks up the dread to eleven and never really lets you breathe. The moral decay is more visible than ever, and the VIPs somehow manage to be even more insufferable than before.

My only gripe? Front Man’s brother deserved a better arc. After spending three seasons searching for truth, justice, and his sibling—he still never gets real closure. It’s a missed opportunity in a show full of emotional payoffs.

Still, this season delivers hard. From Cho’s heartbreaking story to Number 11’s redemption arc to the shocking final twist, well get there soon.

But let this be known this is the type of show where I’ll ever watch once and never again, it’s that bleak.

I wouldn’t call my relationship with Squid Game “mixed” — that’s way too soft. It’s emotional blackmail. This show drags me in with gripping tension, a few phenomenal characters, and insane plot twists… only to repeatedly gut-punch me by killing off the best ones and leaving the worst people standing. Every season, I tell myself, “Don’t get attached,” and every season, I do. And then they die. It’s not entertainment anymore — it’s a trap I keep walking into voluntarily. I love it. I hate it. And yet I can’t look away.

This isn’t love. This is Stockholm Syndrome storytelling. Squid Game has me emotionally handcuffed, and just when I think I’m free? It hits me with another character death or existential gut punch. I’m not mixed on this show—I’m trapped in a twisted emotional hostage situation with my own feelings.

☣️ Rating: 5/10

Unfortunately this is the least good season, in fact it’s kinda not a season, just feels like an extension of season 2. Like some unaired episodes, also nor to mention this season kinda not the best like at all things got rushed and unanswered.
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Spoiler Warning: Do NOT read past this point unless you’re ready to relive the trauma.

🚨 Spoilers Below 🚨

Cho Hyun Ju goes full Terminator and protects the pregnant woman and elder lady. When her water breaks mid-escape, Cho finds the final door, opens it with all three keys—and gets stabbed in the back by the pregnant woman’s husband.

BTW small tangent I need to bring up, By the time we reach Season 3, especially this episode, Gi-hun doesn’t even work as a protagonist anymore. And I don’t say that lightly — I liked him in Season 1. But now? He’s a shell. A mute, broken man who barely speaks, barely acts, and barely exists in the story. I get it — trauma, loss, guilt — but if your lead character is so emotionally numbed out that they can’t even anchor the narrative anymore, maybe they shouldn’t be the lead.

Compare that to Cho Hyun Ju — who, for a brief and beautiful six episodes, was the emotional spine of the show. Introduced in Episode 3 of Season 2, she instantly brought something Gi-hun no longer could: fire. Purpose. Complexity. She wasn’t just reacting to the system — she had a reason to fight it. She had a connection to it. She mattered.

And then they killed her.
In Episode 2 of Season 3.

Six episodes. That’s all we got. Six episodes of finally caring about someone new. And poof — gone. Meanwhile, we’re still stuck watching a passive Gi-hun silently suffer for the billionth time while his brother still hasn’t found the island and the VIPs are somehow even worse.

This show had one job: follow the interesting characters. And it actively chose not to.

Kang is revealed to be a fraud, not a marine, just a guy with a fake tattoo who panicked and left everyone to die. Gi Yun chokes him to death in a cathartic, painful moment.

The idiot son of the elderly woman nearly stabs a baby. His mother stabs him to stop him.

Number 11 saves the cancer child’s dad by donating her universal Type O blood. She later crawls half-dead to kill the manager trying to execute her.

BTW wanna know which moment broke me? The moment that truly broke me — and I didn’t expect it to — was the death of Han Bok Soon, the elderly woman who had already lost so much. After sacrificing her own son to protect an innocent baby, her final act was one of love and honor. And how does the game repay her? The next morning, the guards walk in with a coffin box. She’s gone. Mi, the pregnant woman now holding the baby, stands frozen in shock before breaking down into tears. The baby in her arms starts crying. Somber music plays. And Gi Yun just sits there on his bed, staring in hollow disbelief. No words. No ceremony. Just grief. And in a show drenched in blood and betrayal, that quiet moment of raw humanity — that unspoken farewell — crushed me more than any kill.

Even though this scene is sad, it feels like a beat-by-beat repeat of that wife and husband having to play against each other in the Marvel game then the husband hanging himself the next day after his wife died.

Han Bok Soon’s death wasn’t just sad — it was the turning point for Gi Yun. Up until that moment, he was emotionally dead inside. A silent, hollow version of the man we met in Season 1. After everything he’d been through, he’d given up — on himself, on people, on hope. He stopped speaking, stopped fighting, stopped believing that anything mattered.

But Bok Soon changed that. She didn’t just comfort him — she challenged him. In her final conversation, she made it clear: the baby needs someone. And that someone had to be him. No excuses. No self-pity. It was a passing of the torch — from a woman who had already lost everything to a man who had nothing left to lose.

When Gi Yun woke up the next morning and saw her hanging lifeless from the bed, something snapped. Not in a rage way — in a clarity way. It was the first time in the entire season he had a reason to get up. A reason to act. Bok Soon’s death gave him purpose. She reminded him of his humanity when he’d buried it. From that point on, he stopped being a bystander to his own suffering and started fighting for something again — for the baby, for what little good was left.

It wasn’t redemption. It was resuscitation.

And this death comes after she gave a pep talk to Gi Yun about saving the baby and her mother.

The second-to-last game? Giant robot jump rope with collapsing platforms. Yeah.

The pregnant woman dies. The baby becomes a contestant. The final few survivors nearly kill the baby to prevent it from winning.

Also that night rhe remaining team is given a delicious feast and afterwards while everyone’s asleep, Gi Yun ie asked to go see frontman because he wants to talk to Gi Yun.

Frontman offers him aa knife to go stab the remaining contestants to save himself and the baby then they can leave alive they have his word, Gi says why u telling me this now? Then Frontman takes off his mask and hood and reveals to be player 1.

Gi gets upset and wants to stab Hwang In-ho but he says even if u kill me it won’t change a thing the games will still go on, u can go stab those men and u and the baby can leave u have my word.

Was this intersection/reveal of frontman to Gi kinds rushed and underwhelming? Sure, was it necessary sur.

BTW I just realized this dad is the crypto guy, what a piece of shite.

Gi Yun sacrifices himself, shoving the pregnant woman’s husband off the pillar.

Because the last 2 opponents were Gi Yun and the baby, since Gi Yun and the dad started fighting each other then gets killed by Gi Yun.

Btw the crypto dad deserved this death because he was about to take his baby and decide to kill him just so he could take the money, wow father of the year.

The Gi Yun steps on the button to play the final game and he is standing at the edge holding the CGI baby, he puts the baby down and declares “We are not horses” Then he falls off the pillar to his death.

If ur wondering why he said that? It’s a callback to what frontman said to him at the end of season 1 when dropping him off, “u like horse racing? Well to us ur horses”.

Front Man watches it all unfold, evacuates the island, and leaves his brother with no answers. AGAIN.

Number 11 finds the carnival artist dad of the cancer child and gives his kid a lollipop. She then gets word her daughter might be alive.

Front Man visits Gi Yun’s daughter in LA, gives her his suit and a card filled with the prize money. She tells him she’s done waiting for her dad. He tells her: Your father is dead.

The final moment? Front Man sees Cate Blanchett playing ddjaki with a homeless man. She turns. Smirks. End of show.

And now let’s talk about Front Man. Or as I like to call him—Mr. Poker Face turned Mr. Maybe-I-Feel-Stuff. Throughout the series, this guy’s been the definition of composed, robotic even. He followed orders. He gave orders. He was a ghost behind a mask with all the humanity of a toaster. But then comes Gi-hun, this stubborn, grieving, borderline-broken man who refuses to give up even when he’s completely emotionally fried. And it gets to him. You start to see it.

By the final episodes, the cracks are undeniable. Front Man is no longer this cold, unreadable overseer—he’s hesitating. He’s showing up in person. He’s giving people mercy. He literally saves Gi-hun from ending his own life, and then delivers a personal gift to his daughter like he’s the grief fairy. That’s not the behavior of someone unaffected. That’s someone who watched a man drown in suffering and couldn’t stay detached anymore. He even stares at Gi-hun’s unconscious body before the place blows, and you can see it. The regret. The moral splinter wedged deeper.

And that moment where he lowers himself through the hidden hatch while his brother screams at him again? That’s a man running from what he’s become—and from someone who knows the truth about him. It’s subtle, but to me, Gi-hun didn’t just survive. He infected Front Man with something far more dangerous than rebellion—conscience.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need therapy.

I do have an issue with the fact that this show ends on a teaser for more to come, like Congrats u made it through the finale but not because now time for the American Squid Games, yeah nah I’m good.

Also here’s a video Netflix just released of them saying squid games is over.