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Squid Game season 3 will "bring out the bottom parts of human nature," promises the Netflix hit's creator

Despite new games that will play to the worst parts of the human condition, Squid Game creator Hwang Dong-hyuk wants to focus on how to remain human in the face of capitalist horror

It’s right there in the title, but the ‘game’ part of Squid Game has proven to be one of the ways in which the Netflix drama has taken hold of the public consciousness, leading to fans actually playing a real version of the dystopian challenge for cash and for fun. So… how does the show deal with that, as it’s trying to build towards its climax? Series creator Hwang Dong-hyuk has the answer: making the games so much worse.

"In the case of season 3, I wanted to introduce games that could really show the lowest bottom of human beings, because the series itself is reaching its climax," Hwang teased to Entertainment Weekly in a recent interview. "I wanted very intense games to bring out the bottom parts of human nature."

Well, that's certainly one way to approach things. Despite what that makes the season sound like, however, the show's creator is teasing a final season of the show that will bring things to a conclusion in something almost approaching an uplifting manner... at least in the context of the overall series' admittedly downbeat view of humanity. 

"For season 1, I tried to focus on how there's intense competition going around in this extreme capitalistic society. In the case of season 2, I wanted to show how Gi-hun breaks the game's rules by trying to introduce this revolt of trying to upend the system, but then it ends in failure,” he explained. “In the case of season 3, I wanted to take a slightly different approach — I wanted to focus on how [people] have to preserve their humanity amidst this intense competition in this capitalistic era. I wanted to focus on how we can preserve our sense of humanity and how we should remain humans even amidst this intense competition. I try to pose that as a final question."

Squid Game’s third season drops on Netflix June 27.


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Graeme McMillan

Graeme McMillan: Popverse Editor Graeme McMillan (he/him) has been writing about comics, culture, and comics culture on the internet for close to two decades at this point, which is terrifying to admit. He completely understands if you have problems understanding his accent.

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