This article contains light spoilers for “Squid Game” Season 3.
There’s no question that “Squid Game” changed Netflix, transforming it into a company that’s more international and more willing to take risks on head-scratching projects from unknown creators (see “Baby Reindeer”).
In 2021, the year that “Squid Game” casually premiered on Netflix and became an international sensation overnight, the streaming service released a total of five South Korean movies and two Korean shows. In the four years since, Netflix has leaned into that success, to the point that in 2025, as the company prepares to release the third and final season of “Squid Game,” it’s slated to more than double those 2021 numbers with five seasons of Korean television and 10 new movies.
“Squid Game” Season 3, which debuted on Netflix Friday, feels like the end of an era in more ways than one, bringing a close to the hit series when Netflix has no clear successor lined up. So it’s a good thing this dystopian drama goes out on a diabolical high note.
The final chapter manages to both match and surpass the show’s addicting and brutal debut. If Season 1 introduced us to the concept of a deadly game fueled by capitalism run amok — and Season 2 mostly spun its wheels while setting up for the big finale — then Season 3 feels like the inevitable endpoint that nobody saw coming. With this last batch of episodes, series creator and showrunner Hwang Dong-hyuk takes his story to terrifying new places that push the limits of humanity and morality. He creates something truly unique and downright disturbing.
Season 3 picks up right where Season 2 left off. The violent uprising led by Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) has failed, and the competition continues. However, it soon becomes clear that everything we’ve seen before was just the setup for the true horrors to come. The games rapidly become even more violent, encouraging the surviving players to murder each other both in between competitions and during them to thin out their ranks and increase the prize pool.
As the rules of the games give way to all-out mayhem, the humanity of everyone involved falls away. In its final act, “Squid Game” is seemingly determined to show the pure evil lurking within each human being that just needs the right excuse to come out.
The show’s visuals match this descent into depravity. The first game of Season 3 ditches the colorful and vibrant aesthetics of previous competitions for a dark and dirty arena. It’s within this competition that something also snaps inside the players as they realize that every dead competitor brings them one step closer to victory. This becomes the driving theme of the season, even as some of the games return to the polished and colorful style that once defined the show.
Not every character loses their humanity. We still need some players to root for, after all, especially as Gi-hun becomes increasingly despondent in the aftermath of his foiled revolution. But the cast of “good guys” quickly thins out while the more bloodthirsty players begin to take the upper hand — another example of Hwang’s bleak world outlook, though we’re always just one twist away from a (slightly) happier ending.
Behind the scenes of the competition, we also get the usual amount of intrigue. The faceless stormtroopers who corral the players and administer the games get entangled in a B-plot that’s alluring, but also a bit too confusing to be worth jamming into this already overstuffed final season. Meanwhile, the wealthy VIPs soon arrive to place bets on the games. This time, they’re given much more character development than in Season 1.
This new season gives us a varied selection of evil rich people to hate as they eat, drink and make cruel jokes at the expense of the poor participants fighting for their amusement.
If you were hoping for some big reveal about the origins or purpose of the competition, you may leave feeling disappointed. The Season 1 finale, which at the time was meant to end the entire story, is probably the closest fans will ever come to a truly satisfying revelation. Season 3 does answer a couple of lingering questions and provides plenty of closure for its few surviving characters, but it’s far more interested in squeezing its players until their morality oozes out than in, filling out the “Squid Game” Wikipedia page with new information.
But if you’re watching “Squid Game” because you enjoy — or at least appreciate — its disturbing portrayal of the way capitalism corrupts us all and robs us of our humanity, then Season 3 is the grand finale you’ve been waiting for. Whatever comes next for Netflix, we can at least be grateful that the streamer’s unlikely gambit on a messed-up little South Korean series somehow yielded one of the best TV shows of the 21st century.
The final season of “Squid Game” is streaming on Netflix.
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