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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
48
Mixed:
23
Negative:
4
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Critic Reviews
The PlaylistOct 7, 2021
Season 1 Review:
Hwang knows how much convincing he needs to do to bring his viewers on board with the premise; unlike the cop, the audience will buy into “Squid Game’s” world without a fuss, a credit to Hwang’s skills as a filmmaker and writer. Forget the negative connotations the phrase “bingeworthy” stirs up. In the binge era, this show is as good as they come.
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Jun 27, 2025
Season 3 Review:
Though we do get the occasional glimpse of hope, it’s overshadowed by horror after horror, each revealing a new dimension of Director Hwang’s diatribe against greed. This doesn’t make Season 3 a rehash of Season 1 but a profound, frequently poignant, and, yes, thrillingly twist-packed deepening of its themes.
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Dec 26, 2024
Season 2 Review:
Boasting several mind-blowing twists, these seven episodes advance the story to what will undoubtedly be an electric conclusion when Season 3 debuts in 2025. Additionally, the show is a reminder that it is not radical to protest injustice. After all, dissent might be the only thing to save us.
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Dec 26, 2024
Season 2 Review:
The seven new episodes of Squid Game are stunning, shocking, heartbreaking, and even exhilarating. Squid Game Season 2 is good! It isn’t quite as good as the spectacular first season, but coming up a smidge short of utter genius means Squid Game is still pretty great.
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Oct 1, 2021
Season 1 Review:
Superb acting performances heighten the drama, particularly from Lee, who makes Gi-hun irresistibly likable despite his many flaws. All of the characters undergo enormous trauma and transformation, and the actors rise to the challenge of portraying believable emotions in an unbelievable setting. A big part of the series' success lies in its dramatic and eye-catching aesthetic. ... What makes it so well-suited for binge-watching is how well Hwang uses pacing and cliffhangers to make the series absurdly addictive.
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Jan 6, 2025
Season 2 Review:
It’s not just the violence; it’s not even the desperation. It’s the way the villains endlessly remind their victims that they chose to be there; that what’s happening to them is happening with their own consent, and is their own fault. That ugly paternalism, which arrives here primarily through Gong’s nigh-unflappable grin, has always been the true horror of Squid Game, and it’s what has me hooked again after so long away from its black and bitter charms.
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PolygonSep 24, 2021
Jun 27, 2025
Season 3 Review:
“Squid Game” Season 3 isn’t as haunting and spectacular as the first two seasons, mainly because of the repetitive structure of the games and the lack of new characters. Still, there are certainly some compelling twists that make the last six episodes of this intense saga worthwhile.
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Dec 30, 2024
Season 2 Review:
Hwang puts aside writing a cluster of dramatic types to surround Lee and Wi to build memorable portraits. .... This season allows us to get to know more of them beyond a few quirks or twirls of the figurative mustache, although there’s a share of that. But more are developed amply enough to give their performers something to sink their teeth into.
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EmpireDec 26, 2024
Season 2 Review:
But with a season finale which asks more questions than it solves, this very much feels like the middle act of Squid Game. Those who want answers will have to wait for its final season, due in late 2025. For now, there are still these seven episodes to enjoy: a dystopian treat for people who still all live in a country called capitalism.
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Dec 26, 2024
Season 2 Review:
Squid Game finds its second wind by exploring the complex layers of a deadly system. Storytelling continues to be the series’ strongest asset, and a leaner season helps to focus energy on a more nuanced approach to this expanding fictional universe. Season 2’s framework is a natural breeding ground for new characters and deeper backstories with Gong Yoo, Kang Ae-shim, Park Sung-hoon, and Choi Seung-hyun joining Lee Jung-jae and Lee Byung-hun as cast standouts. Most importantly, these seven episodes continue to be a cleverly gripping reflection of the world around us – one with plenty left to say.
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Oct 8, 2021
Season 1 Review:
The show is most intense and horrifying, most fully and confidently itself, at the moments when there seems to be no end to the abyss. The show’s gorgeous, intense visuals work best early, when it’s still full of mystery. ... As Squid Game’s ending reaches for answers and for a future, it gets less surprising and less visually virtuosic. It’s not the kind of apocalypse story that longs for hopeful human resilience; it’s most eloquent on the topics of financial despondence and weaponized nostalgia.
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The Daily BeastOct 8, 2021
Season 1 Review:
It’s black comedy at its bleakest, a tonal juxtaposition that is to be admired. I think it’s so effective, especially in a genre that is so extreme in its gore, that it masquerades as “fun.” ... Like Parasite, it uses genre as a Trojan horse for discussions about capitalism and class. We’re a culture attuned to hyper-violence, but the series manages to show it in a way that you never become desensitized.
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Sep 24, 2021
Season 1 Review:
The fate of the more sympathetic characters among them is where the drama lies. The ins and outs of the games are thrilling. When the team of scrappy protagonists—male and female, young and old—tugs and tugs at a rope, trying to drag a much stronger, all-male team over a precipice, I cheered for every step back they took, even though them winning would mean a bunch of other people would get crushed to death.
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Dec 25, 2024
Season 2 Review:
While this latest run of Squid Game feels like it would have been better served if it was cut down and combined with the upcoming third and final season, the series is still full of incisive commentary, well-founded rage, and fleeting moments of camaraderie. Its pacing may leave much to be desired, but at least its central rebellious spirit is alive and well. That said, it would be nice if it still had both.
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Dec 30, 2024
Season 2 Review:
Sure, Squid Game 2 gives us a satisfying roster of new games and twists, populated by a fresh cast of well-conceived contenders. However, the format loses some of its impact as we explore similar conflicts motivated by greed, betrayal, and the perils of buying into a sunk cost fallacy.
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Dec 25, 2024
Season 2 Review:
Season 2’s biggest flaw is ultimately that it’s an incomplete story — these seven episodes certainly take you on a journey, but it’s all setup for the third and final season, which has already been greenlit and is set to premiere in 2025. By the end of the seventh episode, you’ll be craving that conclusion, while continuing to wonder at the forces which keep you watching.
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ColliderJun 27, 2025
RogerEbert.comDec 30, 2024
Season 2 Review:
The art direction this year is consistently engaging, including some new games that once again turn childhood joys into adult nightmares. Some of it echoes last season thematically and visually, but when it’s good, which is often, it’s very good. The writing in the back half of the season struggles when it has to check in with characters outside of the Squid Game compound, but it hums in-game, introducing new ideas and bouncing these new personalities off each other.
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TV Guide MagazineOct 21, 2021
Season 1 Review:
Ultraviolent and terrifically gripping thriller. [25 Oct - 7 Nov 2021, p.9]
Sep 29, 2021
Season 1 Review:
There is some serious exploration of social and character dynamics in between sequences of mass carnage and gladiatorial combat. As these things go, “Squid Game” is fairly thoughtful, and the fact that there is no sexual component to the violence is something in its favor.
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Jun 30, 2025
Season 3 Review:
While the plotting could be tighter, that doesn’t diminish the amount of cruelty flung at both these characters and the audience alike. .... A good ending can be tough for any show, but it definitely helps if the showrunner knows exactly what they want to say with it, and that’s very true in this case.
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The GuardianJun 27, 2025
Season 3 Review:
If you can get on board with the new contestant twist – and that is a big if – then the final two episodes have a nicely grand and operatic feel to them, and ultimately, Squid Game does its job. But it leaves the impression, too, that it has become a more traditional action-thriller than it once was.
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Dec 30, 2024
Season 2 Review:
Although we see a ton of the Front Man this season, his plans or motivation remain frustratingly opaque. It’s hard to love a show so claustrophobically submerged in trauma. Even star Lee Jung-Jae recently said of returning to his role as Gi-hun, “it was almost like I was being pulled back to hell.” This season of Squid Game doesn’t really get us anywhere new— which may just be the point.
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Dec 26, 2024
Season 2 Review:
The new episodes are still well-crafted in many ways, even if they’ve succumbed to streaming bloat, with them essentially functioning as half a season, whose story will be completed sometime next year. But they never argue forcefully enough for their need to exist, unless you understand that Hwang deserves some compensation for the suffering he went through last time, and for all the money that he made for Netflix without previously getting to share in nearly enough of it.
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Radio TimesDec 25, 2024
Season 2 Review:
I was more than ready to give Squid Game season 2 an enthusiastic four-star recommendation based on the early episodes, but a loss of momentum towards the end and a strong sense of incompleteness has brought that down a notch...Nevertheless, I do believe that fans of the original series should go a few rounds with this follow-up and I remain optimistic that Hwang's brutal saga can stick the landing when its concluding episodes drop next year.
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SlashfilmDec 25, 2024
Season 2 Review:
Ultimately, Squid Game season 2 ends up feeling like it's trying to do one thing, and one thing only: get you excited for "Squid Game" season 3. And I guess on that front, it's successful — I want to see how this story ends. But I can't shake the feeling that too much of season 2 feels like it's spinning its wheels. Sure, it's entertaining and highly-watchable — don't be surprised if you binge through the entire thing in a day or two. But whereas season 1 felt like earth-shaking entertainment that came out of seemingly nowhere, season 2 is both too familiar and too inconclusive for its own good.
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The GuardianDec 25, 2024
Season 2 Review:
For all of its unevenness, particularly as it is warming up to the proper action, there is one big twist that really works, though whether it is distinct enough from what happens in the first series is unclear. And when you think you know where it is going, it turns away from its trajectory, upping the ante and finding its feet. What a shame it takes so long to get there though. Series three has some cleaning up to do.
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SlashfilmJun 27, 2025
Season 3 Review:
There's plenty of impressive production design coupled with some thrilling moments in these final episodes, and the last scene of the finale is bound to get lots of people talking (I know I almost let out a yell at the screen). But as "Squid Game" season 3 ticked off its final hours I could feel my interest slipping — and it certainly didn't help that those uber-wealthy masked VIPs return to spout more horrendous dialogue.
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Jun 27, 2025
Season 3 Review:
Squid Game might have obscured that hopefulness with how it fetishizes bloodlust, and how it normalized the accompanying gore so that we, too, craved more than what we needed. But if the series has a legacy, it’s in choosing not to finish Gi-hun’s statement in the series finale about what he thinks “humans are.” This time, Squid Game wants us to make up our own minds.
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ColliderDec 30, 2024
Season 2 Review:
The show still feels like it's constantly wagging its finger about morality and money in the arena, rather than actually building on the most interesting plots. Squid Game can't shake the desire to reiterate the same exhausting lessons about greed and human nature, and that does more to weigh down the narrative than lift it up.
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Dec 30, 2024
Season 2 Review:
As with most sequels, it is — almost by definition — less essential than the original, whose conceits and M.C. Escher by way of Fisher-Price settings it repeats. .... Thematically, it’s pretty straightforward, even conventional: kindness is better than selfishness, community trumps isolation, however much the deck is stacked against it or how depressing the outcome can be.
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Dec 25, 2024
Season 2 Review:
It's a huge shame, and it's unclear what went wrong and who's to blame. Did Hwang really want to continue the story, or did the success of Season 1 force the show to last longer than it should have? Will it all make more sense when Season 3, due in 2025, is released? Or will we find ourselves as trapped in a doomed "Game" as Gi-hun is?
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RogerEbert.comJun 30, 2025
Season 3 Review:
“Squid Game” suffers mightily in its pacing during this second half. The nihilism of its remaining characters also carries quite the strain. .... Netflix, in its zeal for more content for the trough, went back to the well for an extensive, overlong repetition of the beats of the first show, just more and tougher and nastier.
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The Observer (UK)Dec 30, 2024
Oct 8, 2021
Season 1 Review:
Murder is fetishized as a way to raise the stakes in a hazily political conversation without proposing a solution. ... To be clear, there is an obvious difference between spectatorship of real-world and fictional violence, even before Hwang’s script dramatically draws it out. But it might be easier to see that distinction if the pile of bodies had been slaughtered in service of an idea more interesting than that inequality is bad.
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Jun 27, 2025
Season 3 Review:
The last couple of games are bare bones in their conception, the only suspense coming from the choice of victims. And throughout, after having made Gi-hun’s guilt and his attempt at atonement the framework of the story, Hwang strains to bring those feelings to life, to make us believe in them. Here Lee, who gives a glum, one-note performance, shares the blame.
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Oct 11, 2021
Season 1 Review:
“Squid Game” has nothing to say about inequality and free will beyond pat truisms, and its characters are shallow assemblages of family and battlefield clichés, set loose upon a patently ridiculous premise. ... [The violence] is more than mildly sickening in its scale, its graphic presentation and its calculated gratuitousness.
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