Squid Game has come to an end with Netflix after three seasons and four years, and the final season of the series can’t help but highlight one of the biggest problems now facing television shows today. Television is still considering one of the biggest entertainment mediums around, but the shape of what television has become is much different than has been seen in the past. Thanks to streaming platforms changing television from its traditional definition, the way fans have come to watch television shows has changed dramatically in the past decade plus. Which has also come to impact how shows are released.
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Squid Game Season 3 for all of its pros and cons, unfortunately falls into the same pit that many streaming juggernauts have over the last few years. It’s a problem that’s not exclusive to television shows either, but reflects a major shift in storytelling and how it’s delivered. Because for as much as Squid Game Season 3 wants to be treated like an entire new season of television, it can’t help but escape the fact that it really is a story that had been split in half unnaturally. Because of that split, Squid Game‘s finale just doesn’t hit as hard as it should.
Television Doesn’t Hit the Same Way Anymore
When streaming platforms like Netflix started producing their own content for viewing, it immediately changed how these stories were watched. Shifting over from the old broadcast format of offering 22 episode seasons airing weekly over several months, instead the new model trained fans to expect a new season of a series to be released all at once. There would be eight to ten episodes offered for a season, and fans would get to watch it all over the course of a weekend (sometimes even over a single evening). But this model soon revealed its own issues.
Successful shows needed to catch on with fans basically the day they released lest they be cancelled, and even if a show found success it would take many years to follow it up with more. Squid Game, for example, premiered back in 2021 but didn’t come back for Season 2 until late 2024. The cracks in this format really started to show with Squid Game as well as not only was series creator Hwang Dong-hyuk open about how long the series took to get made, but even more so about the fact that he made the new seasons for money. Stating “Money…Even though the first series was such a huge global success, honestly I didn’t make much…” was the reason he returned in an interview with the BBC.
The long in the works new season coupled with Hwang’s openness about not really having an idea for future episodes in mind before their production was a cloud hanging over Squid Game Season 2, and even more so in the third season. When Squid Game‘s second season came to an end with a cliffhanger right in the middle of the story, it seemed like an egregious and unnatural extension of the series put there by someone other than the creator himself. Which also meant there would be a bigger burden put on the finale to somehow stick the landing despite it all. Which, once again, is a unique problem that streaming has forced onto television shows.
Squid Game’s Final Season Never Stood a Chance
Increased budgets, longer production periods, and higher demands have put streaming shows into a unique kind of situation. Each new season needs to be bigger than the last in order to compensate for the long wait in between new episodes, and that wait seems even longer when you’re able to watch it in a single evening. This demand gets even bigger with huge franchises like Squid Game, and it’s why some shows even go as far as releasing in multiple parts.
Rather than have a complete season airing on a weekly basis, some shows instead vouch to release a couple of episodes at once before then releasing the next half later. When you add all of these elements at once, it’s a longer wait in between new seasons that run for much less time. Then sometimes you only get half the story. That’s what it felt like at the end of Squid Game Season 2, and that completely deflated the potential hype for Squid Game’s finale. Instead of opting to end it all with one very compelling season, it’s instead broken into two solid but not as thrilling halves.
The third season is six episodes, and doesn’t really feel like a full season of television. “Season” used to mean a serialized story would bring fans from its beginning to its end while laying the groundwork for the overall series, but now it’s changed to mean telling half of a story. That’s just something that has been an issue with television shows now, and unfortunately doesn’t look like it’s going to stop anytime soon.
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Image courtesy of Netflix
