Squid Game Season Three: Beautiful, Dark, Messy

Major Spoilers Ahead

Squid Game season 3 was one of the most highly anticipated tv shows of 2025, with 60.1 million views in the first three days. After four years of anticipation, viewers were more than ready to find out if and how Seong Gi-hun, portrayed by Lee Jung-jae, would bring down the sadistic games. However, many viewers were disappointed with how it all played out. It comes at as no surprise that a show centred around rich people betting on desperate players using children’s games to murder each other would have a bleak ending. However, viewers expressed issues with the final season, mainly with Gi-hun’s character development, feeling that it was not authentic to his character, and how most of the beloved players are removed from the show so early into the season, leaving behind flat side characters. Although you can tell that a lot of love went into creating this show, unfortunately the finale left a lot to be desired.

Gi-hun’s personality change starts at the end of season two, and goes off the deep end in season three. Gi-hun creates a plan to takeover the games during a planned blackout. During this blackout, many players who want to leave the games are murdered, which could have been prevented by Gi-hun had he spoken up about his previous experience in the games. This is in complete contrast to his personality previously, where he does everything in his power to save the players lives, such as leading them in the first game “Red Light, Green Light”, and showing them tactics to pass.

After his plan to take down the games fails, resulting in many deaths, including his friend Jung-bae, Gi-hun falls into depression. This is of course completely understandable. But rather than turn his hatred towards his captors, he turns it towards Dae-ho, who he believed was the reason the plan failed. His character falls apart in the first game of season three, “Hide and Seek”. Gi-hun murders Dae-ho in cold blood. Even though he had to kill someone to survive this game, there were many morally corrupt characters that he could have taken down instead. He was not a violent man before, avoiding it unless absolutely necessary. His actions are never brought up again. Why make Gi-hun a cold-blooded killer, only to never broach the topic again? If the director wanted Gi-hun to kill Dae-ho, he could have kept most of the plot the same but made Gi-hun snap out of it at the last minute, with his actions resulting in Dae-ho’s accidental death. He was a very clumsy man, so it is not out of the ordinary. His one-track mind in this game, followed by his refusal to kill the corrupt characters before the last game, most of which are side characters with little importance, leads to the death of all but two.

Most of the beloved characters are gone within the first game, or because of it. The attention falls to the side characters, which were mostly irrelevant to the main story up until this point. Adding No-eul, a pink soldier, was an interesting idea in season two, but nothing of value is added in season three with her character. The assumption is she was chosen because she was a North Korean soldier, but why did she agree to it? Somehow she goes from a cold-hearted killer, to saving the life of player 246, just because she had met his daughter before. Yet she was fine with killing players who very likely had families also relying on them. 246 was barely shown throughout season two and three, yet he is the only one of the original players to survive. As lovely as it was that he reunited with his daughter, the fact that they did not give the same decency to Gi-hun ruins the moment. 246 could have made a bigger impact in the show and we would have rooted for him and No-eul. His plot feels like a filler, and an excuse to make Detective Jun-ho a hero.

Jun-ho and his crews search for the island was the biggest disappointment of the show. Not only did it add so little to the plot, where viewers have said that they could skip those scenes and it would not make a difference, but the final meeting between Jun-ho and his brother, the Front Man, was so anticlimactic. “Why?” That is it. He could have shot the Front Man or they could have at least spoken for a moment. He was an interesting character in the first season, but got downgraded in seasons two and three. The only good thing about his search was Choi Woo-seok, who gave much needed comic relief.

Despite all the hype, season three does not live up to its predecessors, failing to make the impact that we had hoped for. It is very much still worth watching. It is beautifully shot, and with incredible acting from every cast member. It is just such a shame that after all the hard work put into it, the final season will not be remembered for its cinematography, but for how the story fell apart.