Wealthy folks suck.
The message was loud and clear when Netflix‘s Korean thriller “Squid Game” arrived in 2021. Imagining wealth and class disparity at the heart of a high-stakes competition, it featured cash-strapped contestants playing a series of children’s video games to the demise whereas uber-wealthy spectators wager on their odds of survival. The present’s masked elites watched the carnage from a luxe, hid spectator field, chomping on cigars and chortling as participant after participant met a ugly demise. The Korean-language present turned the streamer’s most watched collection ever.
Comeuppance for the hideously prosperous appeared imminent and sure by the hands of protagonist Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae). The winner of Season 1’s “Squid Game” deserved vengeance after surviving a collection of horrific situations — a hopscotch-type match performed on a fragile glass bridge above a lethal chasm, a crimson light-green gentle contest the place gamers who moved on the incorrect time have been “eliminated” by machine gun fireplace. He watched nearly as good folks have been killed by pink guards, different contestants and their very own silly actions.
However no. The final six “Squid Game” episodes, now streaming on Netflix, did one thing solely unsatisfying. They veered from the prospect of well timed, eat-the-rich vengeance porn to unflattering commentary about the remainder of us, the opposite 99% who aren’t Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos. What did we ever do to deserve a deadly sport of double dutch with two big mechanical youngsters swinging a 10-ton metallic rod instead of a soar rope? So much, apparently.
“Squid Game” reveals that underneath the correct circumstances, common people are simply as grasping and morally corrupt because the obscenely affluent, regardless of if their cash issues stem from unexpected medical payments, wanton playing or generational poverty. Press the little man or gal onerous sufficient and so they’re simply as ruthless because the mogul that’s suppressing them.
The VIPs in “Squid Game” Season 3, who watch because the contestants trample each other.
(Dong-won Han / NohJu Han / Netflix)
Season 3 picks up precisely the place 2 left off. Gi-hun, who’d discovered his method again within the clandestine gaming complicated (located inside a mountain on a distant island), is Participant 456 once more amongst a brand new spherical of contestants. He’d deliberate to infiltrate the operation from inside, staging a coup towards the VIPs and Entrance Man (Lee Byung-hun) who run the video games. However now it’s clear he’s failed. He’s cornered by guards, the gamers who fought alongside him are lifeless, and he’s thrown again in with the remaining gamers, lots of whom survived as a result of they’re essentially the most craven of the group.
Free and honest elections are on the coronary heart of each democracy, or so “Squid Game” reminds us every time the bedraggled gamers are requested for his or her vote concerning the subsequent spherical: Proceed to compete and skinny the herd for a bigger reward or cease and break up their winnings with their fellow contestants? Majority guidelines, and every time the group choose to sacrifice their lives — and everybody else’s — in pursuit of cash. Collection creator Hwang Dong-hyuk has spoken about his dwindling religion in humanity because it pertains to his considerations about South Korea’s democracy, and also you’ll hear him loud and clear in Season 3: Voting is energy, however look what occurs when the inhabitants more and more places its personal self-interest above that of the better good. It’s a situation that ought to be recognizable to People by now.
“Squid Game” Season 3 takes that concept to the acute, and fairly fearlessly, Hwang places the collection to mattress with out punishing the wealthy. As an alternative he dares to put naked a reality that’s turn out to be all too obvious of late: Wealth wins over morality and cash trumps accountability. Good guys not solely end final, they wind up pulverized like everybody else beneath a sure tax bracket, regardless of their dedication towards humanity.
The Korean present’s run has ended, however not earlier than a finale that alludes to a Hollywood sequel. The episode, set in Los Angeles, reveals a well-known scene. A down-and-out man is approached by a mysterious, well-dressed determine who makes use of a easy child’s sport to check his need of cash towards his tolerance for ache and humiliation.
Those that’ve watched “Squid Game” will acknowledge it as the start of Gi-hun’s journey, which ended with a sliver of redemption in an abyss of darkness. The mysterious determine seems to be a recruiter for a brand new, English-language “Squid Game.” She’s performed by an A-list movie star — Cate Blanchett — working in a metropolis famend for its self-involvement and privilege. “Squid Game” has a complete new enjoying discipline.
