Atrocious.

I thought season 3 was amazing though looking around views are divided. I won’t post spoilers. But I give season 1- 10/10 season 2 - 7/10 season 3 - 9/10

I’m 5/6 episodes through and season 3 is really really bad so far.

This went from one of the best shows to nonsensical garbage milked for money.

On 30/06/2025 at 08:10, pavi said:

I’m 5/6 episodes through and season 3 is really really bad so far.

This went from one of the best shows to nonsensical garbage milked for money.

Yes!!! Season 2 and 3 make no sense. Nonsensical garbage indeed! The ending is even worse and ALSO makes 0 sense. It's like they forgot the last episode of the first season and the rules it established.

I thought the 3rd series was pretty good but the VIPs were way too annoying.

This was quite a disappointment for me. Didn't end in a satisfying way at all I don't think, nor how I thought it would going into it.

The first two episodes were great. The tension was still there fresh from the final episodes of season 2 and the hide and seek game was brilliant. So much happening too, but the grave mistakes were killing pretty much all of the likeable characters so early on leaving zero stakes because we know we're not just going to see some random players we've barely been given a chance to warm to or get to know win the games. After that... it all just nosedived into nonsense and insanity, desperately trying to find a way to wrap things up having backed themselves into a corner.

The VIPs didn't really bother me, but they literally served no purpose in the end. If you're going to have a group of elites there watching the games for entertainment and having the chance to get involved in them too at least make it mean something to the overall story? Likewise with the brother and his quest to find the island... so little attention was paid to that whole sub-plot that I cared so little about it (despite him being handsome af ) so why did they even bother keeping that going? For him just to stand and scream from the other side of a room asking why with no closure? Sure.

I think I'd have been a lot more satisfied if they'd really explored the organ harvesting plot more, had the show end with the games not being defeated (this American version set-up at the end is just going to end up shattering the franchise's reputation if it comes to fruition, I reckon), exploring other reasons the games actually exist (potential government involvement, population control, etc). But alas we got what we got lol x

I thought the themes explored were really interesting - and while it's been known for ages the Squid Game universe is expanding- I took this ending as a nod to even though the Korean games were destroyed, capitalism still exists across the world and others are being exploited.

I enjoyed Season 3 a lot, I thought it left a satisying ending overall - but agree with some other comments. The games are clearly the highlight and it felt the games were the side piece here. My one gripe as well, was in Season 3, if you get past Hide & Seek most of the plot points became utterly predictable. Season 2 had some great twists and I felt we lost a lot of characters the audience cared about or rooted for way too early in Season 3. In the final game there was nobody to root for or even an interesting moral dilmemma. The Hide & Seek game ended up being a bloodbath, but felt by the final game outside of a few characters, the rest of 100s gang were just cannon fodder.

Overall I enjoyed it, excited for the extended Squid Game universe. Think the people involved in that are high quality so I can imagine them making a good go of it.

Hmm… this season was a mixed bag! Spoilers ahead.

Having always watched this with Korean audio & English subtitles, it really took me out of the experience that the English-speaking VIPs sounded (and behaved) like they were AI generated. It was like they’d still been dubbed into English… I mean, I’m convinced they were dubbed actually, because they just sounded unnatural & at times didn’t even move their lips in time with what they were saying. Atrocious acting. Really cheap. Plus they added nothing to the plot really. Every scene/piece of dialogue involving them could be removed and it wouldn’t have affected the understanding of the plot whatsoever. I guess if you watch the whole thing in the English dub (in which pretty much every character sounds ridiculous) then the VIPs wouldn’t stand out so much. I just wasn’t expecting this in the actual Korean original version. Hate!

Episode 2 with the hide & seek game was definitely one of the best episodes across the whole 3 seasons. However we lost too many strong characters in quick succession during & following that. All my favourite characters. For me that seriously affected the final game, in which there was way too much fodder, characters we’d not really seen before - it made the stakes feel low. You knew ultimately that 456 was going to outlast them all without someone managing to kill him beforehand. So every piece of action on those high platforms just felt like… treading water until 456 was on the final platform, which we all surely knew from the start he’d make it to.

I cared about 222 - the woman, but not 222 the CGI baby. There was a lot of emphasis placed on caring about the “456 + baby” dynamic and I kind of just didn’t. But honestly, 456 would probably be low down my Top 10 characters I cared for in season 3. I wish he’d been killed off far sooner.

Everything to do with the island search in the boat was ultimately a waste of time. At best it enabled the escapee to get back to his ill daughter. There was no sense of satisfaction that the brother of the Front Man achieved anything. Maybe that’s the larger point, but that’s so boring. I actually laughed at “why?!” being the conclusion to all of that screen time.

I’m wary about the American spin-off...

Anyway, I appreciate that’s quite the negative sounding assessment but I still enjoyed a lot of it. Overall across three seasons it was incredibly thrilling and certainly one of the most memorable TV shows of recent years. I sadly just feel like the conclusion was a let down!

Yes I didn't really give much thought to the final 8 but it's true most of them were completely random who weren't shown doing anything remarkable beforehand. Only the old guy (100 I think) and the baby's father (333) had any meaningful action in previous games. But then I quite liked that in a way as it could have just been the predictable ones with most of the prior screen time all making the final 8...

The snoring scene was utterly disgusting. It also didn't make sense. These arem't innocent people...

Finished the last episode last week and it was as terrible as the rest of the season.

CGI 4-year old baby, multiple plot holes, dubbed over VIPs that brought nothing to the table (I feel like they were some actual IRL sponsors/producers that wanted a small role due to their contributions), the ending, the fact that the actors didn’t even get to meet Cate despite being hyped over her appearance.

I’m interested to see what monstrosity the US will come up with, I imagine they will completely ruin the whole idea and make it about something else entirely. As per usual.

16 minutes ago, pavi said:

Finished the last episode last week and it was as terrible as the rest of the season.

CGI 4-year old baby, multiple plot holes, dubbed over VIPs that brought nothing to the table (I feel like they were some actual IRL sponsors/producers that wanted a small role due to their contributions), the ending, the fact that the actors didn’t even get to meet Cate despite being hyped over her appearance.

I’m interested to see what monstrosity the US will come up with, I imagine they will completely ruin the whole idea and make it about something else entirely. As per usual.

And if they remembered the rules set in Squid Games 1 finale, the ending would never have happened. They forgot their own rules. Many plot holes and just trash

I think people just didn’t like the baby winning but the whole thing was demonstrating how people sell their soul for money and him sacrificing himself to save the baby was kind of breaking that cycle. People are too used to everything adding up and every storyline reaching a conclusion why should it? That’s not how real life is

1 hour ago, Liam Sota said:

I think people just didn’t like the baby winning but the whole thing was demonstrating how people sell their soul for money and him sacrificing himself to save the baby was kind of breaking that cycle. People are too used to everything adding up and every storyline reaching a conclusion why should it? That’s not how real life is

I point back to season 1. They could end the game at any point in the finale, ending it and going home empty handed lol x

1 hour ago, Big Fat Sue said:

I point back to season 1. They could end the game at any point in the finale, ending it and going home empty handed lol x

I don’t think you can on the final game and even if you could maybe that was a better decision. Before that it’s human nature to not want to walk away and say I risked my life for nothing or those people died for nothing so you keep going. Season 1 started with him gambling and this is literally a gamblers mentality, chasing losses.

11 minutes ago, Liam Sota said:

I don’t think you can on the final game and even if you could maybe that was a better decision. Before that it’s human nature to not want to walk away and say I risked my life for nothing or those people died for nothing so you keep going. Season 1 started with him gambling and this is literally a gamblers mentality, chasing losses.

You can on the final game. They established it season 1.

The baby did seem like too much of a convenience, what would have been the Front Man's intentions had the baby not been born mid-competition (or 222 was killed off earlier)? Still didn't make a great deal of sense purposely trying to keep 456 in the game as long as possible...

I've finally made my way through seasons 2 and 3...

Pluses...

• I really liked a lot of the characters and definitely felt there were a lot of them you could root for, even some of the 'baddies' like Thanos and player 100 were different enough to enjoy keeping around.

• Consequently some of the deaths really did sadden me, players 95 and 120 in particular.

• I love that so many people out there seem to have loved 120

• I liked that things didn't totally pan out how I expected them to. I didn't expect Thanos to go when he did or for them to try and break the system as early as they did

• The games were largely good, mingle and hide and seek in particular

Minuses...

• Some of the plot felt a bit too similar to the first season... ie the mother/son fate ending in a very similar way to the husband/wife story, even more so when both hang themselves following it. I felt that hide and seek was basically the same as marbles, in so much as it acted as a means for a lot of the key characters to exit and provided a lot of the emotional scenes.

• I didn't care in the slightest what happened to the baby, and in general I thought it was a bad plot point - and the ending was almost inevitable as soon as it appeared.

• Agree with everyone else that the VIP stuff was terrible.

• I didn't care in the slightest who won once 222 had gone (as all my other faves had gone by that point) - and this was a big problem as I was already losing interest by this point, I think I was supposed to root for 456 and the baby but I wasn't rooting for them at all really. They should probably have switched hide and seek and jump rope around in the order of games so that some of the key characters stuck around for more of season 3, albeit I guess some of the people who died in jump rope were needed to be killers in hide and seek so maybe it wouldn't have worked very well... or maybe it would have worked better as some of the characters we liked would have been forced to be on the killers side and they wouldn't have been able to just rely on the ones who've already been made out to be the villians

• I thought the ending was weak. It was a little bit surprising that 456 went out but his death didn't really have any meaning, he'd not achieved anything really and it all just felt very unsatisfying. Yes he had a little speech about horses vs humans, but it's not like any of the VIPs etc would really care so it was just meaningless.

I'm not really that interested in the American one at all. Although let's hope there isn't a game in the US version where they have to point out another country on a map as all the players would likely lose(!)

Finished this now, I realise I didn't give my thoughts on S2, although they are fairly similar to my overall thoughts on the season...I didn't really think Squid Game needed a second season or whatever this split in half season was and this backed up that it didn't really,

It was still mainly enjoyable, Episode 2 with the Hide and Seek game was right up there with the Marbles episode from S1 and the actual likeable characters like the boy and his grandmother, Hyun-Ju and Jun-hee were handled pretty well. But killing them all off before the final game just creates no suspense as literally every single character left is unlikeable and it's clear that we're just building up to their inevitable deaths, certainly true of Player 100 and of all the characters to keep to the end, Min-su and MG Coin?! They were both completely irredeemable after their actions earlier in the season so there was no chance of a redemption arc, and as dark as the show gets, they were never going to kill a baby. I thought Gi-Hun's end made sense as his story feels complete, but he just spent the whole season 3 silently death-staring at others, he seemed a bit sloppy overall considering how he started the season. VIPs still awful too, did not need so many cuts to them.

And while the games were good, I concur with others that the other subplots just went nowhere, Jun-ho spent the whole season just on a boat aimlessly which wasn't great form for someone that's supposed to be such a good detective, and by the end, it just led to absolutely nothing! Il-nam got out fine (another great character that was really underused in the second part), just lives lost for nothing. The Korean defector's storyline had so much potential, but again she just coasted for half of the season and we didn't really find out anything mindblowing about the guards that we didn't already know.

Ultimately, it just felt a bit empty and aimless, there wasn't any big revelations, new explorations of characters or world-building, it's reason for being just seems to be that Season 1 was popular, and tbf I don't think there is much to explore, it's a critique of capitalism that has turned into a capitalist product, bloody MrBeast ensured that much. A US remake doesn't surprise me in the slightest (they wouldn't get Cate Blanchett for nothing), but I can't say I have much interest as I think whatever anti-capitalist point it was trying to make has completely fizzled and Hollywood taking charge doesn't really give much confident it'll be back.