Just finished season 3 of Squid Game. My thoughts.

Date: July 17th 2025

Obviously a spoiler warning to those, who haven't seen the series.

So, season 3 came out a few weeks ago, and hearing everyone's craze about Squid Game finally got me to do something that I've put away for a while: me and my friends binge-watched the entire show in three days (each day each season).
I love the types of shows that are sort of like "elimination games", I enjoyed Total Drama Island and the first Danganronpa anime, and obviously, Squid Game also hooked me. I loved season 1, I loved how in the first episode the story about Gi-hun playing Squid Game with Sang-woo was sort of foreshadowing the finale, where the same two had to fight to the death. But the ending where Gi-Hun just turned around to go back to the game, right after telling his daughter that he's in the US is something that disappointed me. But okay, gotta extend the show somehow, especially after it became the most popular one on Netflix.
Season 2 was okay, at first I disliked the characters that were in the game, however by the end they grew on me. I still liked Gi-hun, and I also liked Hyun-ju, Jun-hee and Geum-ja. But in shows like this, you should not have a favourite character, because they will die lmao. I was also surprised that Jun-ho actually survived, I imagined that after getting shot by his brother, he'd drown. Okay, so he's still looking for the island, maybe next season we'll get to know about them more.

Season 3 however. Oooh boy. I won't deny that on my first watch it did break me and it took me a few days to get over the ending, but now that I think about it...

Why was the baby considered to be part of the game? When you enter into the game, you need to sign an agreement, right? The baby however couldn't consent. 

Most of the interesting (and my favourite) characters got killed way too early, and I think others can agree. And most of the deaths are just parallels of the ones from season 1, they were predictable.

About Gi-hun's writing, I feel like the reason he was the way he was is because his plans of saving everyone went wrong and he couldn't stop the inevitable, and the fact that yet another friend of his had died in the riot thanks to Dae-ho not helping in time completely broke his spirit. He had nothing left, didn't care about anything anymore and just wanted to kill him and then himself. However after Geum-ja asked him to help Jun-hee and her baby, it's like he found purpose again, especially since he didn't get to see his own daughter when she was born. Which is also why I think he didn't confront the Front Man, dude was done done and chose to show what he wanted to say through his suicide.

That out of the way, holy shit bro Jun-ho was so useless. I expected to see a confrontation between him and his brother, but no, three seasons just for him to ask the exact same question like in season 1, and get no closure. It was such missed potential and I'm pretty disappointed that we didn't get to go in-depth to both his and In-ho's character. It's as if the island self-destructed on this specific moment just so they could avoid developing the characters.

And I don't know why but I think No-eul, despite being the badass she is, didn't really feel significant to the story, but I'd like to hear what you think about it, maybe it could change my perspective.

I don't hate season 3, it had some good moments, but it was underwhelming and only left me with more questions.

And I probably will not be watching Squid Game USA lmao