©Courtesy of Netflix 

This twisted underground game really ought to retire Seong Gi-hun’s number: #456. Just like Patrick McGoohan’s unnamed character should be the only #6 in the world of the trippy British science fiction series The Prisoner, #456 should be exclusively reserved for Seong, the sole champion in game history to ever return to play a second time. He intended to use his winnings to shut down the game from the outside, but instead, he agreed to re-enter the game, hoping to stop it from the inside. His plan failed rather spectacularly. Season two ended with the crushing of Seong’s uprising—and apparently his spirit. Inevitably, the game continues in the third and final season of creator-director Hwang Dong-hyuk’s Squid Game, now streaming on Netflix.

Frankly, the third season plays more like a continuation of the second than as a separate and distinct seasonal narrative, since it carries forward the same game and storylines. Not only has Seong lost his rebellion, he also lost his closest friends in the game. He assumed one of his allies was player 001, but that was in fact the masquerading Hwang In-ho, a.k.a. the “Captain” or “Front Man,” supervising the game. As a previous winner, the typically masked Hwang hopes to prove Seong is just as mean, nasty, and brutish as he was.

 

Unbeknownst to Hwang, one of his armed guards goes rogue, hoping to save a player. Kang No-eul is a North Korean defector, whose separation from her own daughter stirs her empathy for the grossly out-matched Park Gyeong-Seok. Ill-advisedly, he entered the game to save his own cancer-stricken daughter. Meanwhile, Hwang Jun-ho, a former police officer and the Front Man’s estranged brother, continues looking for the secret island hosting his brother’s bloodsport. Inconveniently, he unwisely still trusts crusty Captain Park, a mole working for the Front Man, to deliberately lead Jun-ho astray.

©Courtesy of Netflix 

Maybe the “house” always wins, but the red jumper-clad soldiers face a higher mortality in the second and third seasons than the Red Shirts on Star Trek. Of course, viewers must expect the contestants’ deaths, since that is the nature of the game. Nevertheless, season three features particularly soul-crushing character deaths, even by the series’ brutal standards. As a result, fans might find these six episodes harder to binge, because they will need some respite from it all.

Yet, they might also feel a need to keep chugging, because fellow fans will want to discuss the grandly dramatic finale around the water-cooler. Director Hwang Dong-hyuk also skillfully builds the suspense each time he cuts between the main plot strands, dividing the audience’s attention between Seong in the game, Kang behind the scenes, and Hwang Jun-ho navigating the choppy seas.

Regardless, if you thought Lee Jung-jae brooded hard as Seong in previous seasons, wait till you watch him in the third. He takes #456 to some much darker places—and then goes even darker. Similarly, Kang Ae-shim and Park Sung-hoon have some acutely poignant moments as Jang Geum-ja and Cho Hyun-ju, the elderly woman and transgender former Special Forces commando, protecting the pregnant Kim Jun-hee.

©Courtesy of Netflix 

This season continues to banish Wi Ha-jun’s good Hwang sibling to the periphery of the action, but Oh Dal-su is just as entertainingly villainous as salty Captain Park. While Lee Byung-hun remains as steely as ever, the sinister Hwang brother largely steps back into the shadows this season. That allows Park Gyu-young to emerge as a highly credible action lead portraying the troubled defector, Kang. (This season also more directly explores her fateful North Korean origins.)

The conclusion could prove divisive among longtime watchers, but it makes sense given the themes that emerge during the third season. Somehow, the art and design teams managed to top themselves again, creating even bigger and wilder sets and even more macabre and imposing games for #456 to play. Hwang and company deliver what returning viewers expect, but they do so in a grislier and more downbeat fashion. That is really saying something, considering the tone of the first two seasons. Recommended to the franchise faithful for its elegiac send-off (but absolutely not as an entry point for new viewers), Squid Game season three now streams on Netflix.

©Courtesy of Netflix 

Grade: B

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Here’s the trailer of the series.