Even since Season 2 aired late last year, though, the world has changed for the worse. You don’t need to turn on Netflix to see masked, anonymous goons abduct assault the poor and desperate anymore: The duly elected government of the United States of America is bringing this degenerate and disgraceful spectacle to a Home Depot parking lot near you, and bragging about it openly all over Truth Social (owned, illegally, by the President) and X, The Everything App (owned by Elon Musk, who worked, illegally, as the President’s boss). The pigs no longer feel the need to hide their cruelty on island complexes. They’ll do it right in your face.
So the question is, does this make Squid Game more or less timely? Had it only ever existed as one perfect season, the answer would be obvious: It’s a prophetic masterpiece. Spun out over three seasons, seemingly with creator-writer-director Hwang Dong-hyuk’s only relatively reluctant acquiescence, it can’t escape the sense that you’re watching a gigantic capitalist corporation stretch out a lecture about the dangers of capitalism in order to make more money off of it. That’s unfortunate.
But it doesn’t change what Hwang and his collaborators have accomplished. Few works of allegorical science fiction in recent memory have been this visually and stylistically daring and this politically and morally unapologetic. To the extent that the games are a metaphor for how our world is ordered, Squid Game is telling you it’s a world run by monstrous pigs who want nothing more than to eat you and shit you out again. Now the only question is whether Gi-hun, our hero, allows his soul to be gobbled up along with all those bodies. Can I quibble about the extra seasons? Absolutely. Can I argue with the central conceit? Absolutely not.
I reviewed the premiere of Squid Game‘s final season for Decider.