Squid Game sticks the landing and teases more with a shock cameo from an Aussie A-lister

Korean drama Squid Game has been one of the most acclaimed and successful shows of recent years and bows out in style with a shock assist from an Oscar-winning Aussie A-lister.

Warning - this story contains mild spoilers for the third season of Squid Game.

Few TV shows in recent years have had the cultural impact of the hit Korean drama Squid Game.

Not only did the first two seasons attain more than 600 million views globally on Netflix, and nearly 20 billion social media impressions, the show about a brutal game where contestants fight to the death for massive cash prize has also been spun off into a hugely successful multiplayer game, an Emmy-nominated reality TV show and even a live experience that ran for 12 weeks at Sydney’s Luna Park.

It made such an impression on Australians that consumption of Korean content on Netflix has grown by 40 per cent since the first season of Squid Game was released in 2021, sales of show-related Halloween costumes skyrocketed on eBay and language learning app Duolingo reported that study of Korean had increased 21 per cent year on year.

So it’s fair to say that anticipation for today’s release of the third and final season – although a mic-drop cameo in the final seconds from Aussie A-lister Cate Blanchett will add fuel to rumours of an English language spin-off set in America – is sky high.

And the good news is that it doesn’t disappoint. Creator Hwang Dong-huk has said that his savage and violent take-down of capitalism and the worst aspects of humanity, in which poor and indebted people take part in twisted and deadly versions of childhood games for the amusement of rich benefactors, was conceived as a single stand-alone series.

Lee Jung-jae as Seong Gi-hun in Squid Game season three. Picture: No Ju-han/Netflix

The critical and audience success of the first season, despite it being one of the most brutal and bloodthirsty series ever aired, made further chapters inevitable but some fans were dismayed that its singular impact would be diluted by sending winner Seong Gi-Hun (Lee Jung-jae) back into the arena for a second time.

The second and now third season – filmed back to back – never quite reach the genuine shock and awe attained by the first season’s inventively cruel games, but compensate by expanding the world and exploring different perspectives than just the players, including the pink-suited soldiers who guard them and the truly vile, masked VIPs who laugh at and bet on their demise.

The six-episode final series picks up right where season two left off, with Gi-Hun dealing with the fallout of his failed armed uprising against his captors that ended up with a bloody shootout. He’s also grieving the death of his best friend at the hands of the mysterious game organiser known as Frontman, who, unbeknown to Gi-Hun, has also been playing alongside him as Young-Il, aka Player 001.

Broken and manacled, he’s cast back into the game now dominated by the faction who want to see it through to its conclusion, no matter what the cost in human life. While the remaining games are best enjoyed spoiler free – to experience the horror of the unknown as the players do – suffice it to say that the producers have excelled in inventing new and terrifying ways of killing people that raise terrible moral choices.

Jo Yu-ri as Jun-hee, whose baby arrives at the worst possible time in Squid Game season 3. Picture: No Ju-han/Netflix

A game of hide and seek in a rabbit warren of tunnels ratchets up the tension to almost unbearable levels, a deadly game of jumprope is clearly designed to bring out the very worst aspects of some already very ordinary humans and the final challenge is a genius head game that will force the remaining players to weigh up their greed with their innate survival and protective instincts.

Inevitably, given the nature of the game, fan favourites are going to meet a sticky end – some heroically and all too soon – while some of the players viewers love to hate endure through rat cunning, treachery and a willingness to do the unspeakable for another day in the competition.

The arrival of Jun-hee’s baby at the worst time possible raises the stakes and changes the game for Gi-Hun as he finds a new reason to make it to the end again and Lee’s stately performance and the character’s transformation from hopeless grifter to hardened hero continues to give Squid Game its heart and moral compass. Gi-hun’s confrontation with the Frontman, who presents him with the same terrible opportunity that still haunts him years later, is mesmerising.

Elsewhere, the side stories of North Korean defector turned guard Sae-byeok, who left her daughter behind and is seeking redemption by helping a competitor with a child in peril – and that of detective Hwang Jun-jo trying to find his brother Frontman and bring the games to halt – are played out efficiently, in not particularly inspiringly.

Lee Byung-hun as Frontman in Squid Game season 3. Picture: No Ju-han/Netflix

Far worse are the English speaking actors playing the mega-rich VIPs, who swill booze and laugh from a luxury suite as they change the rules, talk about and bet on contestants as though they were racehorses, and even indulge in the slaughter as casually as they would go on safari. In the hands of better actors. these scenes could be caustic critique of combat sports and human suffering as entertainment, but often instead come across as preachy, overblown and even a little camp.

As it has been since that very first game of Red Light, Green Light back in season one, the most compelling scenes are in the exquisitely crafted arenas as the players are again and again faced with unfathomable and unforgivable decisions on how much of their own humanity they are prepared to sacrifice in order to stay alive.

Viewers hoping for happy endings and neat resolutions might be disappointed but they shouldn’t be surprised by now. Such luxuries are in short supply in Hwang’s dark and bleak world view where the rich prosper, the poor suffer, not everyone gets what they deserve and the system always wins.

But a coda after the final match does provide some respite for battle weary watchers as well as setting up the tantalising prospect of more.

In one of the more startling cameos in recent years Oscar-winning Aussie Blanchett appears in a call-back to the very first episode neatly dressed in a black suit and playing paper-flipping game ddakji with a down-on-his-luck man in a Los Angeles alley.

Cate Blanchett makes a surprising cameo at the very end of the third season of Squid Game. Picture: Joe Maher/Getty

Rumours have been circulating of an English spin-off series set in the same world overseen by master director David Fincher and set in America although Netflix would neither confirm nor deny this. Hwang told the Guardian this week that he’d had no confirmation of the project but as a big fan would welcome the involvement of The Social Network director.

Plenty of pieces would fit for such a project – Fincher oversaw Netflix’s breakout hit House Of Cards more than a decade ago, Blanchett appeared in the director’s 2008 romantic drama The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and also acted alongside Squid Games star Jung Ho-yeon this year’s Apple TV+ drama Disclaimer.

All three seasons of Squid Games are now streaming Netflix.

Originally published as Squid Game sticks the landing and teases more with a shock cameo from an Aussie A-lister