Beyond surreal set design, economic desperation and abundant tension, “Squid Game” became a breakthrough sensation by delivering relatable characters facing an extraordinary life-or-death scenario. But one area that broke down was its fleeting depiction of the game’s shadowy patrons, or VIPs, who the show loathes so unabashedly as to turn them into cartoon caricatures.
That early misstep gets magnified in the show’s third and final season, which lands at an opportune time in terms of tapping into fears about oligarchs exploiting the lower classes but makes the point in such heavy-handed fashion that it undermines its impact.
Given the cultural moment, the third season — while still possessing plenty of the requisite suspense and more visceral thrills — feels like a missed opportunity. By portraying the masked VIPs as such outlandish avatars of evil, “Squid Game” dilutes the deeper understanding of the world the Netflix series inhabits and makes drawing parallels to our real-world circumstances fruitless.
The fact “Squid Game” struck such a nerve in the U.S. and elsewhere does suggest a gradually shifting mood, which seems notable given the show’s cultural origins — which are also evident in other less-heralded South Korean dramas — and its overt hostility to the dog-eat-dog nature of capitalism.
The roots of the premise extend to devastating financial crises that South Korea experienced in 1997 and 2008, triggering spikes in bankruptcies, debt and unemployment. As TV critic Kim Seonyeong told NPR when the show broke into the zeitgeist in 2021, the desperate circumstances of characters reflect “what many in South Korean society experienced during the economic crisis of late 1990s, when the middle class collapsed as a whole.”
Those themes and the focus on the class divide ripple through many Korean productions that, thanks to the appetite for streaming content, have found receptive audiences far beyond its shores, with Parrot Analytics data putting the global value of Korean dramas to Netflix at $3.4 billion. High-profile exports have included the Oscar-winning movie “Parasite” and the futuristic “Snowpiercer” (a movie first, and later a series), along with plenty of series like the Paramount+ entry “Bargain,” in which people are lured into a gruesome scheme to harvest and auction off their organs.
Lest anyone have somehow missed “Squid Game’s” jaundiced view of capitalism, director Hwang Dong-hyuk told TheWrap that what he wants people to take away from the show, beyond being entertained, is to consider, “Within the capitalist society that we live in today, how sustainable is this? And how will I survive?”
Describing economic competition as “the game of the world,” Hwang continued, “I hope that it will give us a chance to turn our eyes to those that have been forgotten by society because they have lost the game,” with the goal of inspiring conversation about “how can we leave a better world for the future generation.”
If that sounds idealistic for a series that has run up a body count in the hundreds three times over, the premise dovetails with a sense “winners” in the game of capitalism exhibit little regard for losers and also-rans. For all the hand-wringing in conservative quadrants about “socialism,” for many the term doesn’t carry the same taint it once did — underscored by New York’s Democratic mayoral primary, and the success of Zohran Mamdani, and before that Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaigns.
Hwang’s sentiments might account for the undercurrent of anger reflected by “Squid Game’s” final season (five of the six episodes were made available for screening purposes) and help explain why the VIPs remain its weakest element, as badly written as they are acted.
More broadly, “Squid Game” taps into a subgenre that consists of rich preying upon the poor, which dates back to the 1930s movie “The Most Dangerous Game,” a concept about the wealthy hunting people for sport that in the last few years served as inspiration for a series on the short-lived “quick bite” service Quibi as well as a 2022 remake.
Other recent examples include “Get Out” (which brought a racial component to the conceit) and “The Hunt,” which flipped the idea on its head by having well-heeled liberals hunting red-state “deplorables.” Before that, there were titles like “Surviving the Game,” a 1994 movie in which Ice-T turned the table on the wealthy men engaged in the sport of hunting him.
“Squid Game’s” latest season reveals the English-speaking VIPs as even deeper wells of moral depravity, indifferent to the loss of life while seeing humans as the ultimate prey. When you have too much of everything, the theory goes, the bar for stimulation climbs ever higher, making people’s pain, suffering and death the ultimate pastime.
Nor should the irony be lost that participants in the game keep voting to determine their fate — citing the need to keep things “free and democratic” — while knowing that these “elections” merely amount to choosing from among different paths that will likely lead to their ruin.
Throughout all these projects, the guiding theme is that in the eyes of the super-rich, the lives of those beneath them are cheap — in “Squid Game,” a payout that translates to less than $84,000 per player. As the show has methodically demonstrated in both editions (the second and third seasons really function as one), that kind of money still means a great deal to those mired in debt and grappling with everything from bad business decisions to gambling problems to crushing medical bills.
Trying to draw direct lines from what entertains us to political tides is an imprecise endeavor, given all the variables that go into what works and doesn’t, including the platform and timing.
With “Squid Game,” though, those connections feel like less of a leap. Because beyond the entertainment value its director discussed and the suspense over who lives and dies, it’s hard to ignore the messaging in a show that wears its worldview so openly on its very colorful sleeves.
Kayla Cobb contributed to this story.
