Consideration, all gamers: This text incorporates spoilers for “Squid Recreation” season 3, episode 1 — “Keys and Knives.”
As entertainingly horrible as Netflix’s “Squid Recreation” will be, the present does undergo from one meandering storyline. Properly, all proper — two meandering storylines, in case you embody Detective Hwang Jun-ho’s (Wi Ha-joon) infinite, tension-breaking boat journeys. The one I am speaking about right here, nevertheless, is the organ commerce arc, which inexplicably returned for “Squid Recreation” season 2 solely to tread water all through its seven episodes.
“Squid Recreation” season 2 is each thrilling and underwhelming, and the return of the present’s most disgusting storyline actually belongs within the latter class. All through the season, the black market organ dealer subplot comes throughout as a bizarre leftover from season 1, the place it tied into Jun-ho’s island-infiltrating storyline and fell by the wayside when the Entrance Man (Lee Byung-hun) came upon about it. The sophomore season’s revelation that the Entrance Man’s black-clad proper hand officer (Park Hee-soon) runs the entire thing and has recruited a brand new batch of guards in his crime ring feels repetitive and unimportant, and appears to serve no function past giving masked guard Kang No-eul (Park Gyu-young) an opportunity to look comparatively heroic.
Happily, this modifications in season 3, the place we discover out that “Squid Recreation” has been enjoying the lengthy recreation all alongside. Right here, No-eul makes use of the organ merchants’ established methodology for transporting wounded sufferers to rescue Participant 246 (Lee Jin-wook), the daddy of the sick child No-eul linked with whereas working as a mascot in season 2.
Squid Recreation took a complete season to arrange the organ commerce storyline’s large payoff
In season 1, a number of Squid Recreation guards pad their revenue by solely wounding among the gamers they’re imagined to kill and taking them to a secret basement, the place the medically-trained Participant 111 (Yoo Sung-joo) removes their viable innards for black market organ commerce. The storyline is a ugly wanting glass that permits the viewers to catch a glimpse behind the smoke and mirrors of the sport. It components naturally into Jun-ho’s adventures on the island, and is straight away (and violently) faraway from the enjoying discipline after it serves its narrative function. This makes it stunning and considerably irritating to search out out {that a} new bunch of traffickers have taken over in season 2, particularly since they bring about so little to the desk.
All that organ harvesting, nevertheless, all of a sudden turns into massively necessary when season 3 kicks off. It seems that the big quantity of consideration “Squid Recreation” gave to this facet plot in season 2 was meant to familiarize the viewer with the precise manner the present trafficking operation works and what No-eul’s relationship to them is. When “Squid Recreation” season 3 kicks off, every little thing is in place, so she’s capable of simply “be a part of” the black market ring after wounding 246 and persuade one of many corrupt guards to take her to the surgical procedure hideout in an effort to rescue the poor man earlier than the harvesting begins.
Identical to that, what appeared like a pointless holdover storyline all of a sudden turns into a key plot level that gives an escape route from the island, and elevates each No-eul and 246 as characters. It is a formidable residence stretch resurrection for a storyline that totally failed to carry its personal towards the terrifying video games of “Squid Recreation” season 2.
