Squid Game will be returning to Netflix for its third and final season later this Summer, and unfortunately it’s going to be missing out on its best character after they were killed off in Season 2. Squid Game made its return to Netflix last year with its highly anticipated second season, and it was just as popular as the first season (and even more so in many cases). A lot of this popularity was due to all of the new characters in the deadly games themselves with more flashy and varied personalities than were seen in the first season. The biggest example of which was Thanos.
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Squid Game Season 2 introduced fans to the rapper Thanos, who was in the deadly games thanks to all of the debt he accrued after investing in a cryptocurrency scheme. The character not only stood out to fans for how absurdly he was approaching the life or death games, but also stood out thanks to actor Choi Seung-hyun’s distinct performance. But towards the end of the season, he was killed. Thus this final season is going to be missing out on the element that might have struck a chord with fans the most.
Squid Game Season 3 Is Missing Out on Thanos
With Thanos being killed off in between games (and even ahead of Gi-Hun’s revolution in the final episode), it really added an element of surprise to Squid Game Season 2 heading into its climax. He had been such a presence on screen that the series was seemingly building to him meeting his end during the games in some kind of grand fashion, so subverting that expectation by giving him such a non-glamorous death instead. It was something that fans would not expect from someone who named themselves after a major Marvel villain.
Squid Game is one of the most popular series of all time, and Season 2 is almost just as popular as the first season. It’s wild considering the scale of just how many people around the world have seen both of the seasons, and that means there was just a lot of general conversations to be had. Thanos naturally acted as a lightning rod for this conversation as not only was casting Choi met with some backlash (due to being arrested in the past), but he also inspired many of the viral videos, compilations, and remarks following the end of the second season. So that energy isn’t going to be matched by the finale.
Squid Game Season 3 Faces an Uphill Battle Now
Without a character like Thanos easily drawing attention, fans are going to be looking ahead to the end of the Squid Game story overall. It’s likely going to be a compelling one, but it’s going to miss out on the fun of adding new characters with their own fanbases like in Season 2. It’s directly continuing the story from the end of the second season, and is likely going to be a lot more serious as things need to wrap up satisfactorily. A character like Thanos would have stood out like more of a sore thumb in that case.
Even Thanos actor Choi Seung-hyun felt like the character “deserved” to die when he did stating in a recent interview with Netflix, “Thanos is someone who is under the influence of drugs…He’s a dangerous character. So when I first read how he dies in the script, I honestly thought that it was about time. I thought his death was quite timely, and I also thought he deserved to die.” The character just wouldn’t have fit with where the series is heading in its final episodes.
But even if he would have posed a mechanical problem for Squid Game, missing out on Thanos means that the final season will not have one of the biggest reasons fans loved the second season. It’s going to need to work a lot harder without this fan favorite, so we’ll see how it all works out when Squid Game Season 3 makes its debut with Netflix on June 27th.
