Squid Game season three’s giant twist can’t save it ...Middle East

When dystopian Korean drama Squid Game landed back in 2021, it was nothing less than a phenomenon. And while consensus was that season two went somewhat off the boil, season three may well be hailed as a return to form – at least by those who are happy to suspend their disbelief from the highest rafters. Personally, I got a bit of vertigo.

After all, Squid Game’s magic is in its moral quandaries, writ cartoonishly large in the savage challenges it sets its contestants. Last season’s downfall was in taking too long to deliver that delicious, horrifying formula. The good news is, this series meets us at its apex, with a new focus on familial ties to boot. The bad news? Sometimes, those ties make no sense at all.

Picking up where season two left off – mid-tournament, after protagonist Gi-hun’s rebellion – the players are thrust into a hideous version of hide and seek, wherein one team has to evade the other, who must in turn kill at least once to avoid elimination. What follows is a bloodbath, with a twist – pregnant contestant Jun-Hee promptly goes into labour and gives birth, and suddenly the stakes are ratcheted higher than ever. Thought life-and-death was as urgent as things could get? Chuck a (distractingly CGI’d) newborn in there and think again!

While Squid Game has always relished the push-pull of people’s base instincts versus what is “right”, the presence of a defenceless baby sends its characters spinning beyond all reason. One player, Hyun-ju, dutifully dies defending the infant during the game – noble, if a bit OTT – while another, Mrs Jang, murders her own son to stop him killing the new mother.

While we are given some sense of Jang’s underlying motivation during a monologue, it’s not entirely satisfying – how could it be? Then again, if you can overlook the emotional specifics and accept the baby as a plot-amplifier, it’s undoubtedly an effective one.

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Squid Game should have been left alone

Gi-hun is soon caught in the infant’s orbit too, swearing to protect her when Jun-Hee dies. Again, if you can buy a character who has suddenly decided to prize the life of a stranger’s baby over his own, then the resulting drama is riveting. Just imagine how much more thrilling the challenges are when Gi-hun’s competing with a newborn strapped to him! If not, you might find yourself flagging by this point.

All the while, two b-plots are unfolding: one centred on security guard No-eul, and the other following returning character Jun-ho as he searches for the island where the games are taking place. Both are well-paced and diverting – but nothing is as gripping as the Battle-Royale, brutality-laid-bare action unfolding in the game as it approaches its denouement. I won’t spoil the end – just know that the last challenge deserves to go straight into a textbook as a case-study for ethics students, and I mean that as a sincere compliment.

Such squirmy, breath-taking moral dilemmas are where Squid Game excels – arguably, it should stick to them. The season’s incongruous acts of selflessness are presumably supposed to illustrate a higher human nature, one at odds with the grubby, desperate violence brought out by the game. And while that idea doubtless adds richness to the drama, it’s too often undermined by a lack of subtlety. People certainly do have the capacity for extraordinary selflessness as well as staggering cruelty, but “baby!” simply isn’t nuanced enough as justification for it, let alone in multiple characters at once.

Part of what made Squid Game’s first incarnation so riveting was its unflinching gaze at the darkest parts of ourselves. 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 – just don’t look too hard at the robo-baby.

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