Deen Pines

In short: Season 3 was underwhelming and disappointing. None of the main questions were addressed, all the buildup from Season 2 went nowhere, and some characters started acting like completely different people. Seasons 2 and 3 were written and filmed together, and it really feels like HDH ran out of energy or ideas by the end. Season 2 was strong—different from Season 1, but well-paced, rewatchable, and full of potential. Then suddenly in Season 3, everything falls apar. A few key choices did most of the damage: Gi-hun’s sudden hatred for Dae-ho made no sense to me. It felt completely out of character and led to Dae-ho’s murder that was never acknowledged again. Dae-ho’s arc was butchered, not even to push the plot. Gi-hun kills him, shows no regret, and we’re supposed to move on because Dae-ho lied? Then Gi-hun goes back to being a moral hero again. It was inconsistent and messy. Same with Myung-gi. Yes, he was selfish, but in Season 2 and in the beginning of season 3 he made real efforts to change and protect Jun-hee. Suddenly turning him into a psychopathic villain who’d kill his own child was a huge stretch. All the fan-favorite side characters were killed off early, one after another, with no time to process their deaths. It made me question whether I even wanted to keep watching. I think this is a writing mistake, a textbook example of what you shouldn’t do when writing a script. You can’t remove characters people love ONLY to fill screen time with characters nobody cares about. Jun-hee dies and you realize that the finalists are - Gi-hun, the baby and no-names. Worse, Gi-hun felt sidelined. Most of the action focused on players we don’t care about. Same with the Frontman—his Season 2 development was completely dropped. There was no need to team up with Gi-hun to give him that knife. What was supposed to be character development for frontman? Apparently nobody knows, I watched couple of interviews, and only saw lbh’s own speculations of what he thinks frontman thinks. The biggest letdown: we got no real confrontation between Gi-hun and In-ho—okay, maybe Gi-hun didn’t need it, but we were promised answers. We were given hints about In-ho’s past and personal traumas, but got no explanation of what motivated him to keep running the games. Can someone really be that inherently evil? Apparently yes—but how did it come to that? These were major questions the show built up, and none of them were answered, despite being heavily teased. That’s why, in the end, the season feels like it offers no real closure. And Jun-ho’s storyline, honestly, felt like a joke. If HDH said this season would be “funny,” maybe he meant that part. There was no resolution—just a buildup to nowhere. A detective who investigates for 10 episodes and achieves absolutely nothing at the end isn’t a good story. I believe HDH just didn’t know how to make Jun-ho and In-ho confront each other. The US Squid Game with ddakji - no comments