‘Squid Recreation’ Season 3 evaluate: Can Netflix’s largest sequence ever stick the touchdown?

“Participant 456, do you continue to think about individuals?”

That is the query Squid Recreation‘s Entrance Man (Lee Byung-hun) asks Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) within the present’s third and ultimate season. However it’s additionally the query the present asks viewers. Over the previous three seasons, we have witnessed numerous atrocities. We have watched rich elites pit in-debt gamers in opposition to each other for sport. We have watched faceless guards gun down waves of gamers. We have even watched gamers stab one another within the again (typically actually) for a shot at further money. In any case that, can we nonetheless have hope for humanity?

Squid Recreation poses that query again and again all through Season 3, with new lethal video games presenting new ethical quandaries, every extra horrifying than the final. These sequences are the definition of nail-biters, recapturing the horrors of Seasons 1 and a couple of. Usually, although, they introduce twists that take Squid Recreation‘s (already not notably refined) messaging about financial inequality previous any sort of incisive commentary. As a substitute, the present bludgeons viewers over the pinnacle with caricature. It is sufficient to make you assume that creator Hwang Dong-hyuk has little to no religion within the viewers, even because the present involves a fittingly brutal conclusion.

What’s Squid Recreation Season 3 about?

Squid Recreation Season 3 picks up within the wake of Gi-hun’s failed rise up in opposition to the video games on the finish of Season 2. He is misplaced a number of key supporters in his combat to finish the video games, together with his expensive buddy Jung-bae (Lee Website positioning-hwan) and new ally Younger-il, the alias the Entrance Man took when he entered the video games. (Worst of all: Gi-hun nonetheless does not learn about his betrayal.)

Overwhelmed by guilt over orchestrating the rebellion, Gi-hun begins Season 3 as a shell of his former self. There are not any extra impassioned makes an attempt to cease individuals from voting sure to persevering with the video games, solely anguished confusion as to why he, of all individuals, was left alive. Lee will get little to no dialogue in many of the season, leaving him to ship a searing bodily efficiency that toggles between resignation and anger to one thing extra nurturing and protecting. The previous manifests most in a confrontation with Dae-ho (Kang Ha-neul), whose panic assault within the Season 2 finale left the rise up with out ammunition. Gi-hun’s vengeful nature right here looks as if precisely what the Entrance Man desires: for Gi-hun to lose religion in humanity, simply as he has.

However that hope and religion reveals itself elsewhere, notably within the trio of Hyun-ju (Park Sung-hoon), Geum-ja (Kang Ae-sim), and the very pregnant Jun-hee (Jo Yuri). This band of girls stays steadfast of their loyalty to 1 one other, proving Gi-hun’s religion in humanity shouldn’t be misplaced. And when Jun-hee lastly does give delivery — in what must be one of many worst locations to enter labor! — defending her and her youngster provides Gi-hun a brand new drive.

Does Jun-hee’s child assist or hurt Squid Recreation?

Jo Yuri in “Squid Recreation.”
Credit score: No Ju-han / Netflix

The presence of an precise new child child within the video games acts as a bodily manifestation of Gi-hun’s hope for the longer term. It additionally additional establishes simply how evil the video games are, particularly when the group of watching VIPs determine, “You already know what? Let’s make the child a participant.”

The issue is, we already know the video games are evil. We have recognized it for the reason that very starting of your complete sequence! But Squid Recreation retains pounding it into our heads in more and more ludicrous methods, a lot of which flip this terrifying dystopian hellscape into an unintentional comedy.

Take the return of the gold-masked VIPs, who function commentators all through many of the season. With their poor performing, their poor dubbing, and their poor dialogue, this band of largely white, largely male billionaires tanks any of the strain Squid Recreation has constructed up. There is definitely one thing to be mentioned concerning the flattening of those rich characters: Whereas they imagine the gamers to be subhuman, it is actually them who’re the two-dimensional monsters. Nevertheless, the over-reliance on the VIPs as a gilded peanut gallery weakens the extreme drama enjoying out inside the video games themselves, lowering Squid Recreation to a laughable prepare wreck for minutes at a time.

It isn’t even just like the VIPs even have a lot so as to add to the present. After they begin frothing on the mouth for the gamers to kill the child, it does not convey new layers to the awfulness of the scenario. We all know killing a child is unhealthy!

The identical goes for the opposite gamers’ reactions to the child becoming a member of the fray. Those that have steadfastly voted for the video games to proceed are greater than able to take the lifetime of the kid with a purpose to get a bigger portion of the prize pot. It is the ultimate boss of selfishness, and it takes these gamers into the identical realm of caricature because the VIPs. (However with significantly better performing.)

To be truthful, that stage of caricature is the purpose. All through its run, Squid Recreation has analyzed how inequality underneath capitalism results in dehumanization. We see it within the methods the video games erase identification: Gamers are diminished to numbers, guards conceal behind masks. Making an attempt to kill a child goes past all that, although. It brings the bloodthirsty gamers in step with the VIPs, virtually proving the Entrance Man proper in his perception that they are not human. For Gi-hun and his allies, then, the problem turns into discovering hope, even when confronted with the worst of evils.

Once more, although, Squid Recreation has all the time been occupied with how its characters preserve that final shred of hope and construct connections in the course of a nightmare. All the child discourse does not really feel like a pure, considerate elevation of those conversations a lot as a messaging sledgehammer straight to the temple.

Nonetheless, whereas these discussions are overwrought, the mere presence of Jun-hee’s child within the video games is sufficient to unlock a primal fear, even when your logical self may be pondering, “They would not kill a child, proper?” Actually, for those who thought Squid Recreation could not get any extra nerve-racking, wait till you watch a child going via the video games.

The video games themselves proceed to be terrifying, with riffs on hide-and-seek and bounce rope eliciting boatloads of existential dread. (And for those who’re terrified of heights, the ultimate recreation certain is a doozy.) A lot of that dread surfaces within the ethical dilemmas and unattainable decisions Hwang lays out for his characters. How a lot will they sacrifice to remain alive? And by the top of all of it, will any survivors (or viewers) have religion on the earth that spawned this merciless circus? As goofy as Squid Recreation Season 3 can get (I largely blame the VIPs), these are the questions that linger as soon as the video games are achieved.

Squid Recreation Season 3 is now on Netflix.