Saram-eun...

This final season (supposedly) of Squid Game undoubtedly arrived on a far lower key than the last after the very poor reception of the second season (and I agree). Anyhow, this season is a pickup in form, but to be honest, it doesn't fully recover all the goodwill lost.

We're back on the island, and our remaining characters after the failed violent putsch are resigned to continue with the games. Everyone's favourite Korean cop is out there still sailing around in circles with his motley crew trying to find the island whilst the rest of the world remains oblivious of the games.

One major problem is that possibly there is little new that can be done any further here. So many plot points in this season had me thinking that this reminds me of this or that from season 1 and so on. The games are new but frighteningly violent as before. As before, we have the empathetic crew and a crass, selfish crew, it's much the same really.

Despite that, there's still much good too, in particular the acting and the emotive moments really are visceral. The settings & games are disturbingly immersive, and there's some neat twists too.

Yet overall it never reached the heights of the first season despite some very emotive moments. It's still worth a viewing, but probably they'd already hit a glass ceiling in the first season and will likely not come close to hitting it again.

Just be prepared for some follow-ups and spinoffs.

They dragged the ending a bit to much to tie up the loose ends in the end. WAY to much time was wasted with that over 20 minutes what could have gone to explore more of the games and what happened to it when the police arrived. I do think that the last scenes in la were really good i still believe that most of the rest of the 6 months later part was a big waste of time and totally unnecessarily. Although a pretty good ending it just feels like it could have been way better so i think the episode deserves and a rating somewhere between 8-9/10 because it was not a perfect ending in my opinion. --

Season 2, Part 1 and 2, feel rushed and appear to have been adapted for the US market. This is a waste of what was a promising story. The ending was terrible in every conceivable way. I'm so disappointed that this could have ended so poorly. Characters were stripped of their complexity, and the dialogue felt unnatural. The suspense was gone, replaced by lazy writing and predictable twists. It felt like fan service for a completely different audience. What once had depth and meaning has now turned into a shallow imitation. A total betrayal of what made Season 1 so impactful. Let's continue milking the cow!

I understand why people are rating this 1 star, because from a series like Squid Game, people were expecting a nice, heart-warming, happy ending where the protagonist survives and ends this violent and brutal game. But people forget, the world is not nice, is not ideal, is not peaceful, but is brutal, savage and nice people do not necessarily end up being happy. The reality of this world is shown in the series' finale and sadly not a lot of people understand it, or I should say, do not WANT to understand it. People choose to close their eyes so that they can keep thinking that good things happen with good people, and when it isn't shown in the end, they end up disappointed. The truth is, the world is feral, and will always be, reality is bitter, and people do not like bitterness.

Personally, I enjoyed the pacing and action throughout the whole season, but I didn't like the resolution at all. The last episode was good talking about technical aspects, Netflix did a nice job as always for squid game's cinematography. The main problem is the writing and how the episode leads to a very predictable and cliché ending.

We all knew what was going on with the main character and the side cast was also wasted of it's potential. 333's conclusion, The North Korean girl sub-plot etc... This is until the very end, with that scene in LA... In my opinion it was a dissapointing epilogue for such a captivating series with high entertainment and pacing. It kept me hooked before the last episodes for nothing at all.