Letter# 161: Squid Game 3

Good morning, Erin.

Jo Yu-ri (#222) is a pop star. It counts.

Which is fortunate, really, because I did not want to wait to jump into this one, despite failing spectacularly to finish the show that was supposed to be next on my To-Do list before Squid Game 3 came out. And Lord knows I wasn’t going to do anything short of binge Squid Game 3 as soon as I woke up, so it wasn’t like there was going to be space to sort of hop back and forth between the two shows.

Though, in point of fact, while I got up early that day, it was not to consume Squid Game 3 as soon as it dropped but, rather, to catch Yoojung’s weekly YouTube video as soon as it came out. So. I guess I wasn’t that committed to prioritizing Squid Game 3—but, whatever, I watched it next, and it’s part of the pop star bloc, and that’s all there is to say about that.

…except for all the things I am about to say about that, of course.

[Haydn's Trumpet Concerto in E-flat major plays]

And apparently say right now!

1. I almost consider it a moral imperative to start any discussion of Squid Game 3 by making clear my overall impression of Season 3 as a whole—which, admittedly, is more than a little ironic, seeing as S3 is really just the second half of S2 deliberately delayed six months so that it would keep the hype about the series going for longer than just the last few days of the year in 2024. So, really, it would be more appropriate to consider it in terms of the second season as a whole rather than as the separate entity it became. But, irony aside, it is a separate entity nonetheless, and so we will treat it as such. And, so treating it, I would say this: I thought Season 3 was not very good. 

1A. Now, I don’t just mean that it was not a complete enough narrative on its own to warrant being considered its own season—though it certainly was not. Season 2 was clearly not designed to be a cliffhanger-ended whole, but at least its cliffhanger felt like a climax of sorts that could, if you squint real hard through your rose-colored glasses, be seen as a legitimate and worthwhile stopping point for a relatively self-contained story within the greater narrative: Gi-hun confronting the reality of his obsession with taking down the Squid Game—and failing. But Season 3 has no such arc. No such narrative drive—though, to its great shame, it tries to manufacture one, doing more damage to the story than the broader blunder of cutting the show in two. 

1B. To save you some reading: absolutely f*** that stupid baby.

1C. Splitting the show into two seasons—hell, splitting at all, even just into halves (a la cable shows in the late-‘00s/early-‘10s) of the same season by name—absolutely kills the momentum of the story. And, much worse, it kills the momentum of our concern for the characters. Do I remember that I like #120 and #222 and the old lady (I guess)? Absolutely. Do I remember that I care about why #388 (the dude who was clearly faking his military service) freaked out and left Gi-hun and pals without ammo during their assault? Definitely. What about No-eul’s (Soldier 011’s) presumed plan to rescue #246 by shooting him before the other guards can get to him? You betcha I did. But did I feel these things any more? Did I still have the emotional momentum that makes it hurt when all the protagonists start dying pretty much immediately? No. Not at all. I felt nothing but an intellectual attachment to everyone—which means that, once the characters quickly start getting dispatched, all I felt was frustration, as though the waitstaff had whisked away my plate with its last handful of fries while I was in the bathroom, leaving me to yell into the void that “I was eating that!” when I return. There’s no time to reinvest, and that was horribly damaging to the story. 

1D. Worse than that, the players we liked/were interested in are, upon their quick exits from the S3, replaced with the worst, least interesting, and least developed side-side-side characters the show had barely given attention to: the corrupt old business man and his cronies (almost all of whom could have been invented just for the finale for all I know) and #333, who is bootstrapped into being the main villain of the series because of symbolism or something I don’t know f*** the end of this show. 

1E. No, I’m being very serious: I never liked #333, but he’s not a satisfying villain. In fact, he’s barely a tolerable antagonist—because he’s not Gi-hun’s antagonist. He’s the baby’s antagonist. Because Gi-hun is pushed aside as our main character and replaced with a CGI baby who gets grandfathered into #222’s storyline (literally, in the case of the VIPs deciding the baby gets to be a player in her stead) and absorb her conflict with #333, the baby’s father. 

1F. Now, Gi-hun is a man who, at the start of S1, wanted to succeed for the sake of his daughter (...and to get his mother much-needed surgery, but forget about that), and so his S3 story shifting from being focused on revenge to being focused on the salvation of the innocent baby links back to that primary affirmative drive that he had replaced with a destructive obsession with ending the games. Which feels kinda nice and a reasonable narrative way to have him regain some sense of his humanity (not unlike how he wouldn’t kill Sang-woo at the end of S1). 

1G. …EXCEPT, of course, we run into a similar issue as that which we had with the deaths of our good-guy characters so soon upon returning to S3: there’s no time to invest in this transformation, just as there’s no time to settle down with Gi-hun’s despair after getting his friend killed. There's too much to do, too much to focus on, and too little time to transition to his personal redemption(?) arc. He’s just back to being the goodest good guy because there’s a baby, now, and the baby is an automatic litmus test for who is good and who is bad. And Gi-hun is the hero, so he’s all about that baby. (Despite not having much to do with #222 over the course of the show, if memory serves.)

1H. And then there’s just the fact of the f***ing baby. Jiminy Cricket, what an awful decision. In fact, I would say the baby being in the show is a more damaging mistake than cutting the show into halves. Because, as detrimental as the S2/S3 separation is, much of it is solved by simply watching the two halves in straight through (as it was very clearly meant to be). The baby, however, utterly ruins the story—because the story, from Episode 2 onwards, becomes entirely about her. So much of what’s left of the show hangs on the very bland “What would you do if…?” question raised by the mere presence of the baby, and, beyond being a cheap and manipulative shortcut to emotional investment (which, ironically in this case, derived more to push away my investment…but I digress), it pulls all tension out of the story—because no one believed they were going to kill a baby—and refocuses it on a countdown to how they would use the baby as the excuse to kill Gi-hun. Boring. Lame. Stupid.

1I. …all of which comes back around to #333 being maybe the worst choice for ultimate villain of the season and, even worse, the finale having the ABSOLUTE LEAST INTERESTING COLLECTION OF CHARACTERS it possibly could have. We cared about literally NO ONE ELSE but Gi-hun in that entire sequence, and there’s not only no surprise about what happens but also no tension to what could happen. It’s just a bunch of disposable nobodies, the protagonist, and a baby whose flesh may as well have been hewn from plot armor. So…very…boring. I mean, imagine if the final game had a mix of good guys and bad guys! Or, even better, mostly our favorite characters! Can you imagine what happens if we’ve got Gi-hun, #120, the old lady, and #222 in the mix, as well as Shaman Lady and a couple of her cultist followers? Holy crap! There’s no telling what kind of tensions there would be! Hell, keep #333 in the finale, have #222 give birth during the game, have everyone trying to stave off the power that obvious best-choice antagonist and all-around #bestgirl Shaman Lady has over her desperate and slightly mad followers, coming down to the mathematical impossibility of all the good guys getting out and having to face off with each other—I mean, just imagine how intense that would be! But, no, we get cliche corrupt businessman and his cliche corrupt lackeys and stupid #333 apparently losing his mind and going irretrievably selfish for no good reason. All so Gi-hun could die in the most eye-rollingly pretentious moment of the series. Genuinely, f*** off with this nonsense. All of you get kicked into the sea. Especially you, Mr. Writer/Director. 

1J. And, to that point: what the hell, show?! YOU KILLED SHAMAN LADY?! Wh-whyyyyyyy?!?!?!?! What were you thinking?! She’s not only the most intriguing character of the season but clearly the best antagonist figure within the game! SHE HAS A LITERAL CULT AROUND HER. What the…just…WHY?! And, to add insult to injury, you have the absolute who-cares wussy dude do it??? EXPLAIN YOURSELF. Except, wait, you can’t—because there is no explanation, you intellectual off-ramp at Halfwit Pond. Ugh, I’m still so mad about this. 

1K. …that said, I had no problem watching the whole thing in one sitting, so I guess it wasn’t all that bad, right? I mean, yes, it wasn’t good, but I still thought it was safely watchable. 

2. By the way, I felt really stupid for not noticing that the pregnant girl and her ex-boyfriend were #222 and #333 until, like halfway through Episode 2 of this season. I cannot believe I missed that. 

3. I was happy to see that the Scammer Mom from The Atypical Family made it relatively far into S3. That was unexpected. 

4. I also appreciate that the very first thing we see is No-eul (Soldier 011) executing her plan to save #246 by faking his death and bringing him to the organ-harvesting ring. Because absolutely EVERYONE who watched S2 knew that’s what happened, and there was no sense in dragging that plot point out. 

5. So, with Thanos gone, his lackey, #124, inherited(/pilfered) his cross full of drugs. And, as he takes more and more of them, he speaks English more and more frequently. Is…this an effect of the drugs? 

6. I think my favorite moment of the season was the reaction I had to someone telling the Front Man that “The VIPs are here.” I let out such a laugh. 

6A. They were less ridiculous, this time. Still ridiculous, but…less than in S1.

6B. Also, nice to see they decided to add a lady to the mix, this time. Show everybody that girls can be mega-elite sociopaths, too! 

6C. Interesting that they made clear she was Chinese. (Interesting how? [shrug] Just…broadly of note.)

7. The Hide & Seek game is vague in its instructions. Which is not unusual for Squid Game games, since they frequently don’t tell people everything they’d need to know to make the best decisions—usually to see the naive fall spectacularly to the cutthroat while leaving room for the truly, um, creative to do something totally unexpected. But it felt like, with this, we got a couple of layers of vagueness that felt particularly noteworthy: there’s absolutely no indication that you would require three separate types of keys at once to exit the maze (which is not just an unnecessary level of complication but a MASSIVE disadvantage for the hiders), they never specify that failure to kill a player as a seeker or escape as a hider will result in your death (which we also assume would be true, but it seems odd not to mention it explicitly), and they never say whether a seeker killing another seeker counts or is meant to be forbidden (which…we never get confirmation of one way or the other in either case). Not the best game they’ve done. 

8. Oh! I noticed one new person that I recognized in S3 (though I could not say if he was around in S2 and I just missed him): the timid dude with glasses from Sweet Home who somehow makes it through all three seasons. He plays #039, who is among the corrupt businessman’s cadre by the end of the show. 

8A. He also decides to kill himself in the final game, which (narratively) dicks over #333, which I found very amusing. 

9. Yes, the jump rope song is a total earworm. 

10. Y’know…#222, #120, and the old lady are the strangest Maiden/Mother/Crone trio I’ve ever seen. That is, I do not doubt they are meant to be one, but…like, I have no idea which of them is supposed to be which, because they all slot into two of the roles at the same time: #222 is maiden and mother, #120 is maiden and crone, and the old lady is mother and crone. Which is the point, I suppose, in that there is no reason for them to be perfectly one archetype apiece, but…still. They make for an odd group. 

11. Relatedly, it was as difficult not to notice all the giant neon arrows indicating that #120 was about to die as we moved along through Episode 2 as it was difficult not to notice the very heavy-handed “Lightning Crashes”-style symbolism of #222 having given birth to a little girl just about when #120 died. 

11A. …um, “Lightning Crashes” is an excellent song by ‘90s rock band Live, if you don’t know it. And it’s very much applicable to this scene. So, if it’s not a song you’re familiar with, do yourself a favor and listen to it. And I’d recommend avoiding the music video (at least at first), just so it won’t influence what you take away from the song.

12. I think I’ve only just now taken a moment to realize that, in the end, the stupid cop is actually responsible for taking down the Squid Game operation by forcing them to initiate the self-destruct sequence. Sonovabitch. 

13. I dunno if you’ve heard this or not, but supposedly #388’s speech to Gi-hun about why he froze up during the attempted overthrow of the games at the end of S2 was slightly inaccurate in the English subtitles. Again, I can’t confirm this on my own, but supposedly he says that, rather than simply never having been in the military (as the subtitles indicate), he did his obligatory stint in the “social services” branch, which is where those with some manner of disability that prevents them from being active-duty (in his case, I’m going to broadly guess a kind of anxiety) serve. If true, that’s quite a different context—but also not a context that would immediately make sense outside of Korea. So, assuming this is the case, I think the translator was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Which, hey, is just how these things go, sometimes. Cultures don’t always have 1-to-1 analogs. 

14. So, we’ve got No-eul, who has a relationship with the guy who is the stand-in Front Man, doing her best to save a little girl (by saving #246 so he can get back to his sick daughter)...and we’ve got Gi-hun, who has a relationship (of sorts) with the Front Man and winds up doing his best to save a little girl (#222’s baby…by killing #333, the baby’s father). I don’t know if that’s particularly good, but it’s certainly a parallel. 

15. I’m sorry, no, I cannot let this go: #JusticeForShamanLady

16. Speaking of hashtags: I saw #Erin trending and wondered if everyone else had finally cottoned on to how great you are. But, alas, it was just concern about a tropical storm in the eastern Atlantic. Bummer.

16A. Well, a bummer in that more people should know you’re great. 

16B. Less of a bummer in that it feels kinda special that more people don’t know you’re great, but I do. Which is selfish of me, I know, but…still. (Not that I don’t want more people to know you’re great, of course.)

16C. That said, I did find this one line amusing, out of context: “Future Erin modeling is interesting in 2025.” The sheer number of ways to interpret that sentence absolutely tickles me. 

17. And let’s end on my final note for the series, exactly as it is written: “F***ING WHAT CATE BLANCHETT WHY?!”

And that is Squid Game 3. Which was really just Squid Game 2 (But Delayed a Bit). Sort of an inauspicious end to a worldwide phenomenon, but…that is the trend in entertainment, isn’t it. 

Did you have a similarly unimpressed response to S3, Erin, or did you think they capped off the series with an eloquent, philosophical bow?

Next up is a big surprise. (No, not that. (No, not that, either. (No—even bigger!))) It took some doing, but…well, you’ll see when we get there. And fingers crossed that you like it. 

Until then, though, I hope August is treating you well. As it should. 

More soon. 

—Daryl