Squid Game's second season was a dud. Can the third save Netflix's killer Korean hit?
Squid Game (season three) ★★★★
For anyone who found the second season of Squid Game a huge disappointment, here's some good news: the third and ostensibly final season is a big improvement. But there's a caveat. I have seen the first five of six episodes, so not the finale, because Netflix is concerned about the risk of spoilers. And that means I can't tell you if it sticks the landing or not.
On the basis of those five episodes, I'm hopeful – but it wouldn't be the first show to flub it. And without knowing how it plays out, any judgment can only be provisional.
Season two veered all over the place in tone (especially in its first two Keystone Cops-esque episodes), lost momentum every time the action shifted to the boat, and felt repetitive in the game play within the arena.
At its cliffhanger ending, Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), player 456, was a deflated mess. His ambitious plan for a rebellion had left most of his co-conspirators dead. Worst of all, he discovered he had been stooged all along by Player 001, Oh Young-il (Lee Byung-hun), who was in truth the game's controller, Front Man. He was never an ally, always a saboteur in waiting.
Now, as we enter the home stretch, the key question is whether Gi-hun can rouse himself enough to (a) survive, (b) choose between vengeance and compassion, or (c) destroy the game once and for all.
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There are, of course, secondary storylines, the most important of which are twofold: the quest of policeman Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon) to locate his brother In-ho, whom he now understands to be the Front Man; and the efforts of North Korean defector and guard Kang No-eul (Park Gyuyoung) to save the man she worked with at the amusement park (Lee Jin-wook), who entered the game hoping to fund his young daughter's cancer treatment.
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