Squid Game 3

I finally finished Squid Game 3 and was left feeling a bit empty. I found aspects of this season somewhat emotionally manipulative and far-fetched and although I loved the reveal of the VIPs in Season 1, here they were just so cartoonishly evil and bereft of human morals that it completely broke my immersion. They felt more like pantomime villains than the personification of the evils of the super-rich. And I know the super-rich are cartoonishly evil and inhuman, but I found them too one-dimensional to have any narrative or thematic heft.

This season worked best for me thematically if I took it as a whole, rather than looking for the meaning behind each game and scenario. There was something in there about how younger generations get sucked into the evils of late stage capitalism against their consent and something else about people turning on each other rather than fighting the system, but I didn’t find it satisfying. I also wish we’d learned a tiny bit more about the Front Man’s motivations. But maybe this is just what happens when a show becomes so popular and the bar is set so high.

I was talking to a friend recently who was like, “isn’t it just about killing people?” and I was like “NO, it has all this allegory and it’s about capitalism and democracy and populism and inequality and and and.” But I feel less able to say that with Season 3.

Still, few pieces of media have depicted so perfectly my own feelings of outrage and horror at the current state of the world. So I still love it.