Saram-eun...

There is no deeper exploration of human nature than what we already saw in season one. The characters, the plot, and the games themselves, are just variations on a theme.

It's entertaining, but it's not the same world class psychological horror mixed with political satire that originally broke new ground. The sell of the unexplored island, the VIPs, the history of the games was why people came back, but that's clearly been saved for yet another spin off.

The ending was going to be cliche whether he won and survived or martyred himself for his message. The realism went out the window when he went back into the games, so everything since was always going to be contrived.

These last two series are just an excuse to get him playing the games again so Netflix can make bank. It's weak characters, filler, more time seeing players vote than play games. Whatever plot there can be is only third priority after that.

The message that there is no justice in this world, and it will take your life to try and fight that, is realistic and makes the ending fine. The season was entertaining enough, so again fine. Not time wasted, but not the level we hoped for.

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 remind us about the sand snakes from GOT. Characters that are meant to add dimension but ultimately end up annoying and add nothing to the plot.

As for this season, since the concept isn't fresh it was dependent upon the pace and honestly it was slow. The concept of the games were nice but dragged on for so long that it lost steam. Out of all the games, Hide & Seek was the best one as it showed the main character being exposed to his dark side.

But bringing in a baby so the main character can show how noble he is was stretching it to a soap opera level and not needed.

But I am glad I watched it; though the freshness of the first season was lost.

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. --

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.