Squid Game Breakdown Review

by Olivia Kablik '26

NOTE: Contains **SPOILERS** for "Squid Games" Season 3
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Most people in this country have heard of “Squid Games,” a popular Netflix series worldwide, that is unless they are living under a rock. Yet the impact of the series seems to be watered down into a mindless death show.

I’ve watched “Squid Games” and witnessed how the entire message of the show has gotten misconstrued throughout the loss of media literacy in this day and age. “Squid Games” explores the issues with capitalism and how people get treated based on money in society.

The Squid Game is a death game where the rich prey on the poor by convincing the poor to play the games for a mass amount of money. The rich enjoy watching the games and bet on them while the poor in the games play the games and either die or win the prize out of 456 people.

The message should be straightforward about greed and money, yet it gets watered down by imbecile watchers who know no media literacy. People who did not get the meaning of this show are clearly out of touch with reality and should go outside to see real people as they seem to have forgotten what it means to be human.

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“Squid Games” Season 3 ends with everyone in the games dying, the only survivor being the baby that a contestant gave birth to during the games. The last player, Gi-Hun, also known as 456, could have survived by letting the baby die, but instead he gave his life to see the baby get to live the life he couldn’t. His final words before his death were: “We are not horses, we are humans, and humans are…” The emphasis of this unfinished sentence talks about how despite the fact that the rich were betting on the poor like horses, they are more than that. Every person is a human, regardless of how the world treats them.

The quote leaves an open interpretation to what it meant: the meaning that humans are so many things throughout life. Humans share the good, the bad, the evil, and everything in between. Yet, at the end of the day, regardless of what has happened, you are still human. This series pushes the message that there is an imbalance between the fortunate and less fortunate as humans. It shows at the end of the day, all that materialistic garbage doesn’t matter because everyone is a person of their own life and breath, and simply being alive is all that should matter.

Yet, some people seem to misconceive the messages in the show. The ending got chalked up to many people online as “pointless” because a baby won. Those people clearly lack competence to understand the media as the point wasn’t for everyone to survive as it was to spread the message that even in the worst situations, humans still will have humanity.

In the end, “Squid Games” is a beautiful rendition of just what humanity is capable of. It is a wonderful show that gets watered down. The loss of humanity these years truly has been appalling. People hide behind the ruse of the internet and TV shows, disconnecting us from reality. Yet these things legitimately happen every day; even if it's dramatization, it still makes a statement. People who are watching TV tend to find some humor in everything because it’s “not real,” but this is the downfall of our knowledge. Reality mirrors the media just as much as the media mirrors reality. Sure, a death game in South Korea won’t actually happen, but people are desperate for money every day.

We as people should learn to think for ourselves critically. Don’t be that one idiot in TikTok comments that gets swarmed because you can’t think critically about the media. You can do better than that.