Are we ready to wave goodbye to Squid Game for the final time? Four years, several lost teeth (courtesy of director Hwang Dong-hyuk), countless deaths and 2 billion views after it all began, the show is finally coming to a close.
Fortunately, it has one or two tricks up its sleeve first: the whole thing is a bloody, raucous delight. We start season three pretty much where season two ended: in the blood-soaked aftermath of a failed rebellion. The culprits have been shot, the cowardly Kang Dae-ho is still alive and the games are continuing as planned.
What about Lee Jung-jae’s protagonist, Gi-hun? Well, he starts the series being delivered back to his colleagues in a coffin. Though he’s only knocked out, not actually dead, it quickly transpires that he’s suffered some sort of intense mental collapse and quickly ends up a) comatose and b) handcuffed to a bed. Poor guy can’t catch a break.
At times, season two felt like it was dragging its heels, struggling to find purpose after a first series that felt entirely self-contained. But season three benefits from this laborious set-up; with all the scene-setting out of the way, this thing explodes out of the gates with a vengeance. The action starts picking up midway through episode one and doesn’t really let up from there.
Even better, we have multiple people to root for: not just Gi-hun and the rather milquetoast detective Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon), who is still searching for his brother (Lee Byung-hun, aka the sinister Front Man).
There’s also people we got to know in season two who are still in the games. The squabbling mother and son duo, the pregnant Kim Jun-hee (K-pop singer Jo Yu-ri) and the trans former soldier Cho Hyun-ju (Park Sung-hoon), not to mention Bit-coin hustler Lee Myung-gi (Im Si-wan) and the timid Park Min-su (Lee David).
It’s nice to have that continuity, even if Hwang is a kill your darlings kind of writer. As the season progresses, many of these characters get brutally offed – or off others – in all sorts of stomach-churning Red Wedding-esque ways, lending the episodes a breathless, addictive quality.
As if watching the contestants’ gradual slide into savagery wasn’t enough, there are also other plot threads to contend with. At the start of the series, one contestant is saved by rogue Squid guard Kang No-eul (Park Gyu-young). She remains mysterious as ever, but as the pair they make their way through the bowels of the operation, we see more about the brutal lives of those who police the players (miserable, but as we find out, very well paid).
At the same time, we do see rather too much of Jun-ho on board his boat as he chugs around the Yellow Sea. Sure, it advances the plot, but wow, does it kill the momentum – as do later scenes focussing on the English-speaking and cartoonishly awful VIPs, which stretch credulity more than slightly. By far the series’ best bits are when it turns its gaze towards what’s happening during the games.
And we do get a lot of games. Episode two, which takes a game of hide and seek and turns it bloody, is one of the most stomach-churnings of TV I’ve seen recently – while another game of jump rope calls to mind the infamous glass walkway challenge of season one.
As things progress, familiar touchstones from season one crop up. The semifinal dinner. The relentless awfulness of the contestants. The greed that prevents them from being able to quit.
Hwang’s vision of humanity is a bleak one, redeemed only by Gi-hun’s dogged determination to do what’s right. Three seasons in, there’s not much hope here – but there is damn good television.
Squid Game Season 3 is streaming now on Netflix
