Wow.
Really… wow.
And not in a good way.
There were moments when I finished an episode and just sat there thinking: What did I even watch?
Season 3 feels like a show that lost sight of what made it special. What started as a brutal exploration of human desperation, choices, and morality slowly turns into something much simpler:
Who dies next?
And that is the biggest disappointment.
From Strategy to Survival
In season two, I actually felt momentum. There was energy. There was rebellion, planning, and action.
The characters made decisions. They fought back. They tried to understand the system they were trapped in.
But in season three, that feeling disappears.
Everything becomes passive. Events happen around the characters, and instead of fighting against them, they mostly just accept what comes next.
Even our main character — the person we followed through two seasons — feels completely different.
The person who once fought against the game becomes almost a shadow of himself. A person running on empty. There is no spark, no determination, no real sense of purpose.
Only when he holds the baby does something finally begin to change.
And that is exactly the problem.
The Baby Storyline
When the season starts lacking emotional tension, the answer seems to be:
“Let’s add a baby.”
But why?
What does the baby actually add to the story?
The idea could have worked. A child in the middle of a brutal world has the potential to create a powerful moral conflict.
But here, it feels forced rather than meaningful.
Maybe that is because the entire season becomes so hopeless that, as a viewer, you stop feeling the struggle. You stop waiting for someone to overcome something.
You are just waiting for the next tragedy.
When Death Loses Its Meaning
The show shifts from:
“Let’s uncover who is behind this and why this system exists”
to:
“Let’s see who dies next.”
And that change hurts because Squid Game was never interesting just because people died.
The deaths mattered because they revealed something about the characters. They forced impossible choices. They showed what people were willing to sacrifice when pushed to their limits.
In season three, death often feels like the destination instead of a storytelling tool.
And that is especially difficult when you live in the Middle East and see real death and suffering constantly in the news.
The problem is not that a show includes death.
The problem is when fictional death starts feeling empty.
Entertainment can explore darkness, but it still needs to give that darkness meaning.
The Detective Storyline
The storyline with the detective and his brother is another example of wasted potential.
For an entire season, it feels stuck in an endless loop of:
“Where is the island?”
There is little progress, little emotional development, and very little payoff.
Their relationship — which should have been one of the most interesting parts of the story — remains unclear and underdeveloped.
It feels like a storyline that exists because it was started, not because the story knows where to take it.
Losing the Heart of the Show
The biggest issue with season three is that it feels disconnected from the heart of Squid Game.
The original appeal was never only the games.
It was the people.
It was watching ordinary characters make impossible choices. It was the question of what desperation does to human beings.
Season three still has the same brutal world, but it loses the emotional weight behind it.
Instead of feeling tragic, it often just feels exhausting.
Final Thoughts
I waited to see the main character rise after his fall at the end of season two.
Instead, I watched him sink deeper and deeper until he almost completely gave up.
And the frustrating part is that it doesn’t feel like a powerful message about despair, trauma, or evil winning.
It feels like the story itself lost its energy.
A successful show creates expectations because it earns them. Squid Game reached incredible heights, so of course viewers came into season three with high hopes.
The biggest disappointment isn’t that the season became darker.
It’s that it forgot why we cared in the first place.
Disappointing — and sadly, I don’t think I’m the only one who felt that way.
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