Capitalism has won. Review of season 3 of the series Squid Game

In 2021, the series Squid Game became a true global cultural phenomenon, whose open-ended finale left viewers in tense anticipation. Four years later, the third and final season finally puts an end to this story. And this end came out bold, gloomy and surprisingly bitter, leaving behind a complex aftertaste of disappointment mixed with respect for the authors' uncompromising character.

The final season of Squid Game once again immerses viewers in the brutal world of deadly competitions, where the main character, the winner of the previous games, Song Ki-hoon, returns to challenge a powerful organization. While he tries to destroy the system from within, other storylines reveal the secrets of the creators of the games and the fate of those who tried to oppose them. The uprising from the season 2 finale ended in nothing, so the show must go on.

Technically, the series is still on top form: new games like creepy variations on hide-and-seek and jump rope are capable of inducing existential dread, and the direction remains sharp. But behind this shiny wrapper lies the sequel's main problem: it's lost its soul.

If the first season made us feel every blow, every loss, and every moral compromise with the characters, now we watch the events from a safe distance. Empathy has disappeared. We watch the series not because we are worried about the fate of the characters, but to get answers, to see the finale, and to understand how everything will end. The show has turned into an intellectual exercise, abandoning the emotional component.

Many critics and viewers agreed that much of the dark but gripping fun of the first season had evaporated. The stories, especially Jun-ho's storyline, sometimes feel chaotic and overwrought, and their resolutions feel labored and under-earned. The second and third seasons of Squid Game feel like artificial extensions to a self-contained original, created not out of creative necessity but because of commercial pressure.

And that brings us to the finale, which is as uncompromising as it is depressing. All hopes that Gi-hoon will be able to destroy the system or at least find personal peace are shattered by the harsh reality. The series emphasizes a cruel truth: in a world where money and power rule, the system always wins. Even acts of self-sacrifice turn out to be futile or tainted by selfish motives.

The showrunner of Squid Game admitted that in the original script, Gi-hoon could have gotten his happy ending and returned to his daughter, giving viewers at least some glimmer of hope. However, the writers chose the path of nihilism, leaving us with a feeling of complete hopelessness. It's a bold but also very difficult decision to accept, and one that offers no catharsis.

The greatest irony is that the series’ epilogue not only concludes Gi-hoon’s story, but also crudely, almost shamelessly, opens the door for further expansion of the franchise. The final shots feel less like a logical conclusion and more like a trailer for an upcoming American spinoff, which David Fincher himself will be working on. This decision turns the finale into a commercial product, more interested in selling the next iteration than in giving this story the weight and significance it deserves.

And here we come to the most interesting part – the metatextual commentary. The show’s creator, Hwang Dong-hyuk, has repeatedly admitted that he returned to work on the sequel largely due to financial success and pressure from Netflix. And now the streaming giant plans to further develop the franchise at its own discretion.

Thus, Squid Game – a series that is a sharp critique of capitalism, where the rich exploit desperate people for entertainment and profit – has itself become a vivid example of this system in the real world. It has turned into a global money-making machine that will work as long as it brings in income. And therein lies perhaps its scariest and truest ending, which goes far beyond the screen.

In summary, the third season of Squid Game is a technically flawless but emotionally empty conclusion to a great story. It gives answers but takes away hope. It impresses with its spectacle but does not touch the heart. The writers should have stopped at the first season, because its open ending generated much more interesting thoughts than all the sequel storylines combined.

But perhaps that is precisely its dark genius. A series that was about how the system consumes people ended up being consumed by the system itself. And that is perhaps the most honest commentary on our world that could have been made.