Squid Game season three divides viewers as bleak themes hit home

Koh Ewe, Juna Moon and Rachel LeeBBC NewsReporting fromSingapore and SeoulGetty ImagesA large killer doll, amongst different motifs of Squid Sport, had been a part of a parade celebrating the present’s last seasonWarning: This text incorporates spoilers.Thousands and thousands of followers are bidding farewell to Squid Sport, the Emmy award-winning TV sequence that has topped Netflix’s charts and turn into an emblem of South Korea’s ascendance in Hollywood.The fictional present follows cash-strapped gamers as they battle it out in a sequence of conventional Korean kids’s video games – with a gory twist, as losers are killed in each spherical.Squid Sport has sucked in viewers since 2021 with its candy-coloured units and bleak messages about capitalism and humanity. And with its third and last season launched final Friday, followers internationally are returning to actuality.Some South Koreans, nonetheless, have discovered themselves reflecting on the society that impressed the dystopian sequence.”I really feel like Squid Sport 3 revealed the true emotions and uncooked internal ideas of Korean individuals,” reads one YouTube remark underneath a clip from season three.”It mirrored actuality so effectively like how in actual life, at work, it is simply filled with ruthless individuals able to crush you. This present nailed it.”Relatable strugglesSquid Sport was born in opposition to the backdrop of cut-throat competitors and widening inequality in South Korean society – the place individuals are too burdened to have kids and a college placement examination is seen because the defining second of an individual’s life.The varied characters of the present – which embrace a salaryman, a migrant manufacturing facility employee and a cryptocurrency scammer – are drawn from figures many South Koreans would discover acquainted.The backstory of protagonist Seong Gi-hun, a automotive manufacturing facility employee who was laid off and later went on strike, was additionally impressed by a real-life occasion: a 2009 strike on the SsangYong Motor manufacturing facility, the place employees clashed with riot police over widespread layoffs. It is remembered right this moment as one of many nation’s largest labour confrontations.”The drama could also be fictional, nevertheless it feels extra reasonable than actuality itself,” Jeong Cheol Sang, a movie fanatic, wrote in his evaluate of Squid Sport’s last season.”Precarious labour, youth unemployment, damaged households – these aren’t simply plot gadgets, however the very struggles we face day by day.” Getty ImagesSquid Sport has turn into an emblem of Ok-drama’s prowess on the worldwide stageThose darker messages appeared to be brushed to the aspect on Saturday evening, as a large parade celebrated the discharge of the blockbuster’s last season. An enormous killer doll and dozens of faceless guards in tracksuits – amongst different motifs of the lethal video games – marched down central Seoul to a lot fanfare.For South Korea’s leaders, Squid Sport has turn into an emblem of Ok-drama’s success on the worldwide stage. It’s also a part of a string of successes – together with Ok-pop act BTS and Oscar-winning movie Parasite – on which newly elected president Lee Jae Myung needs to capitalise as he units his sights on exporting Ok-culture far and vast.There are indicators the Squid Sport hype might even go additional: the present’s last scene, the place Cate Blanchett performs a Korean recreation with a person in a Los Angeles alley, has fuelled rumours of an American spinoff.The sequence ended on an “open-ended” observe, Lee Jung-jae, the star of the sequence, informed the BBC. “So it poses a whole lot of inquiries to the viewers. I hope individuals will discuss these questions, ponder upon themselves concerning the questions and attempt to discover a solution.”What can followers count on from Squid Sport sequence three?Combined reactionsIn the present’s later seasons, viewers observe Gi-hun’s quest to convey down the eponymous video games, that are packaged as leisure for a gaggle of rich VIPs.However his rise up fails, and by the top Gi-hun is compelled to sacrifice himself to avoid wasting one other participant’s child – an ending that has polarised viewers.Some argued that Gi-hun’s actions didn’t sq. with the darkish portrait of actuality that showrunners had developed – one which had so effectively captured the ruthless components of human nature.”The characters’ extreme altruism was disturbing – virtually to the purpose of seeming unhinged,” reads a touch upon fashionable South Korean dialogue website Nate Pann. “It felt like a pretend, performative form of kindness, prioritising strangers over their very own households for no actual motive.”However others mentioned Gi-hun’s demise was in keeping with the present’s dedication to uncomfortable truths.”This completely describes humanity and the message of the present,” one other commented on YouTube.”As a lot as we wished to see Gi-Hun win, kill the frontman and the VIPs, and cease the video games as soon as and for all earlier than driving off into the sundown, that is simply not the world we dwell in and it is definitely not the one which Gi-Hun lived in.”Hwang Dong-hyuk, the present’s creator, informed reporters on Monday that he understood the “combined response” to the ultimate season.”In season one there have been no expectations, so the shock and freshness labored. However by seasons two and three, expectations had been sky excessive, and that makes all of the distinction,” Hwang mentioned on Monday.”Sport followers wished extra video games, others wished deeper messages, and a few had been extra invested within the characters. Everybody anticipated one thing completely different.”For some, at the very least, Gi-hun’s last alternative provided a hopeful reflection of actuality: that even in instances of adversity, kindness can prevail.”That paradox – of cruelty and heat coexisting – is what made the finale so transferring,” mentioned Mr Jeong, the movie blogger. “Watching the Squid Sport made me replicate on myself. As somebody who has labored in training and counselling, I’ve questioned whether or not kindness can actually change something.””That is why I stayed with this story. That is why I name this ending stunning.”