Squid Game Season 3 Review: A Bleak, Brutal Farewell That Loses More Than It Wins

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Squid Game 3 Review: Netflix's Squid Game 3 closes the chapter with more tragedy and gore, but less soul and surprise.
Squid Game Season 3 Review: After the breakout global success of its first season, Squid Game returns for a third and final outing on Netflix, closing the door on one of the most talked-about dystopian thrillers of the decade. With a bigger canvas, more twisted games and a heavier emotional load, Season 3 attempts to wrap up multiple threads including the long arc of protagonist Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), the mystery of the masked Front Man and the inner workings of the organisation behind the games. The result is a grim, at times exhausting, but undeniably impactful finale that asks viewers whether some games should never have been played at all.
Picking up immediately after the failed rebellion in Season 2, Season 3 thrusts Gi-hun back into the nightmarish arena, this time emotionally broken and physically spent. He's no longer the scrappy survivor but a haunted man on a near-suicidal mission to destroy the system from within. His earlier efforts to inspire the players to rise up have failed, and now the games resume as ruthlessly as ever, beginning with a shudder-inducing version of hide-and-seek and escalating to a vertigo-triggering 'Sky Squid Game."
Meanwhile, a subplot follows a rogue staffer, a former player-turned-guard, who infiltrates the organisation with a personal vendetta. Outside the island, the long-missing police officer Jun-ho is still hunting for proof of the game's existence, confronting not only the physical barriers of the island but the emotional ones with his estranged brother, the Front Man (Lee Byung-hun).
What's compelling is how the show weaves these three storylines into one chaotic storm. All converge toward the final game, culminating in a disturbing, unforgettable ending that both honours and dismantles the mythology of Squid Game.
Lee Jung-jae's Gi-hun has become a shadow of the man we met in Season 1 and that's the point. His arc, steeped in grief and disillusionment, is portrayed with haunting restraint. The performance is stripped of charisma, leaving behind a broken man barely holding onto purpose.
Among the standout new additions, Kang Ae-shim shines as Jang Geum-ja, whose quiet dignity and heartbreak culminate in one of the series' most affecting moments. Jo Yu-ri (Jun-hee), playing a pregnant contestant, and Park Sung-hoon (Hyun-ju), a transgender former soldier, both bring emotional heft to a season otherwise consumed by bleakness.
Roh Jae-won's sadistic Nam-gyu and Im Si-wan's morally slippery Myung-gi are compelling antagonists, even if their motivations feel overly telegraphed.
Hwang Dong-hyuk once again proves adept at orchestrating psychological warfare masked as childhood play. The production design continues to dazzle, surreal pastels clashing with life-or-death tension. Yet, as stunning as it looks, Season 3 suffers from pacing issues. The episodes are bloated with filler dialogue, excessive foreshadowing and predictable twists that sap the urgency built so carefully in earlier seasons.
The tone, too, shifts into unrelenting nihilism. There's little reprieve, little hope just wave after wave of gut-wrenching choices and grisly outcomes. Even the signature games including 'Sky Squid Game," a vertigo-inducing contest played on towering columns, begin to feel like macabre spectacle for spectacle's sake.
Where Season 1 balanced moral ambiguity with razor-sharp tension and occasional empathy, and Season 2 faltered with a sluggish plot and undercooked expansion, Season 3 attempts to tie everything together. Unfortunately, it loses sight of what once made the series tick which is emotionally rich characters faced with impossible decisions.
Season 3's character development feels more strategic than sincere. We're told who to root for and who to fear, robbing the narrative of surprise. The show's early capacity to shock with both violence and vulnerability now leans heavily into the former.
Ah yes, the VIPs are back in their gold-plated masks with atrocious dialogue, as cartoonish as ever. Whether this is intentional parody or a missed tonal cue is still up for debate. Either way, their presence remains Squid Game's most jarring flaw. In a series grounded in human desperation, these exaggerated caricatures feel like a parody within a tragedy.
Visually, Squid Game is still exceptional. From its sterile dormitories to the nightmarish playgrounds, every frame is deliberate. The colour palette remains psychologically dissonant.
The writing, however, stumbles. While the themes capitalism, democracy's failures, exploitation remain potent, they're now delivered with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Lines like 'We're going to need you to die" are played straight, lacking the nuance and grim irony of earlier seasons.
The pacing is a particular weak point. With a runtime bloated across fewer episodes, there's an odd rhythm of long stretches of exposition followed by condensed violence. It's emotionally exhausting, but not always narratively satisfying.
There are moments of brilliance in Squid Game 3, twists that shock, deaths that sting, monologues that momentarily revive its social critique. A particularly horrifying sequence involving a baby reveals Hwang's enduring skill in provoking moral discomfort. And the final twist? It's cruel, calculated and classic Squid Game.
Yet the magic is dimmed. The series, once groundbreaking, now teeters dangerously close to becoming the very thing it once critiqued, a spectacle of suffering. When even Gi-hun's once unshakable humanity is lost in the chaos, it becomes harder to find an emotional entry point.
This isn't to say Squid Game 3 is a bad season, it's not. It's competently made, strikingly acted and thematically coherent. But it is a tired one. A finale that reinforces the message of the show but doesn't evolve it.
Squid Game ends not with a bang, but with a deep, unsettling sigh. For all its visual bravado and moral complexity, Season 3 is less a triumphant finale and more a slow, painful surrender. Still, it deserves credit for staying true to its bleak worldview and in a world of endless reboots, there's something powerful in closing the book, even if the ending doesn't quite land.
First Published:
June 27, 2025, 22:08 IST