Few series have taken the world by storm like Squid Game has. The third most-watched series in Netflix history managed to do something that very few others have: offer the audience an engaging drama, full of twists and an easily reproducible yet hard-to-forget iconography. Something that has turned it into a true mass phenomenon.
Games inspired by the series. Costumes at all imaginable events. In addition to having popularized the genre that the series shamelessly draws from, the death games, these are just some of the consequences of the extreme popularity that the thriller created by the Korean Hwang Dong-hyuk has garnered. An author already well-respected in Korea, especially for his real-life based crime drama Silenced.
But now he is recognized all over the world. And he has a big problem on his hands. After the overwhelming success of the first season and the slight loss of momentum of the second, he is faced with having to close the series that has brought him so much success. Something that is not going to be easy at all.
A first season based on iconicity and novelty
If you have been living under a rock, Squid Game is a Korean series where we follow the misadventures of a group of people who find themselves immersed in a peculiar game. If they manage to reach the end, all their debts will be settled and they will leave with their lives sorted out. If not, they will die in the attempt. And given the desperate situation of most of those contacted to participate, they don’t even have the option to refuse.
With an evident sociopolitical critique, particularly towards Korean society itself, the series has managed to exploit its premise without ever overexposing it. Making it revolve more around the trials and the tension of discovering who is behind this sadistic game and whether they will manage to stop it in time, the series has managed to provide just enough depth to justify what is really important to keep us glued to our seats: the constant twists and the surprise of who will die next or who will come out unscathed.
A second season too focused on twists and surprises
After the novelty of the first season, the second season doubled down on its political aspects and some unbelievable twists. Making sure that no one was who they said they were and betting on shocking turns, perhaps what worked the least well in the finale of the first season, lost a bit of momentum compared to that one.
Especially considering that part of the freshness was lost in the trials and in the iconicity of the characters and the organization. No longer feeling new, but not making a particular effort to feel that way again, it over-relied on drama and revealing hidden secrets in a series that, ultimately, always worked for something else. The creativity of its premise, the terribleness of its trials, and the relatively plausible idea that any of us could find ourselves in that situation. Or that we could replicate it recreationally without having to risk our necks.
A third season balancing between the first two seasons?
The second season left us, indeed, with a post-credit scene. With three players walking, we could see the doll Young-hee, a mysterious new doll, and a glow of green light turning on.
Who is this doll? According to the creator of the series, his name is Cheol-su and he will be part of the new game. Although everything suggests that the third season will closely follow what happened in the second season, there is hope that they will pick up the baton from what occurred in the first. Putting more emphasis on the challenges and focusing on the iconography of the series and surprising us not with its twists, but with what it proposes to us visually and thematically.
Although we won’t have to wait long to find out. The series will premiere next Friday, June 27, at 8 AM, mainland Spain time. So if you have commitments that day, like going to class or working, it’s an excellent day to casually fall ill and see how the ending of one of the most popular series of the last decade turns out.
