Critic Reviews
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In season three, the plot has lost some of that nerve, reaching for redemption that feels slapdash and therefore, sometimes, hollow. If you can forgive such muddled character motivations, there’s more than enough gripping action to compensate.
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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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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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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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This season is a melange of other stories.
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“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.