In TV streaming terms, 2025 will always be remembered as the year that Squid Game ended. The Korean survival thriller series created by Hwang Dong-hyuk has become a global streaming phenomenon incomparable with any other show. Aside from bringing millions of new eyes to Korean drama for the first time, the series has completely changed the face of television.
Besides Squid Game’s cast of K-drama heavyweights and gripping plotlines, what really sets the show apart is its ingenious premise, which arguably taps into the zeitgeist more than any other work of contemporary fiction. Its story is about life under the crushing weight of modern-day capitalism, encompassing phenomena such as debt slavery and unaffordable healthcare costs.
What’s more, the financial security – and, by extension, the general wellbeing – of Squid Game’s characters depends on them engaging in a fight to the death with one another for the amusement of the super-rich. The show’s titular competition is, in fact, a damning allegorical indictment of the system we live under.
The series is one of the most daring challenges to present world order ever rendered onscreen, which is the real secret of its immense popularity. Squid Game isn’t just one of the best TV shows on Netflix. It surely now ranks among the greatest series of this generation, if not of all-time.
Squid Game Became More Than Just A TV Show For Netflix
As well as being one of the most notable Netflix originals everyone should watch at least once, Squid Game cemented the streaming giant’s status as the undisputed number one among major global TV platforms, following its release in 2021. Netflix’s unassailable position as top dog of the streaming world was facing serious challenges at the time.
Although the platform has continued to top the rankings for number of subscribers over the last decade, other streaming services have caught up in terms of the quality and range of their screen offerings. Meanwhile, Netflix has faced serious questions over the sustainability of its model for investing in TV shows for the first time since the turn of the decade.
The unprecedented streaming success of Squid Game rewrote the rules not just for Netflix, but for the entire TV landscape. An extraordinarily innovative thriller series dreamed up by a Korean auteur, commissioned by Netflix themselves and dubbed for a global audience, achieving an enormous return on its relatively small budget of $21 million, pointed the way forward for streaming.
Squid Game’s Popularity Made It Easy To Forget That The Show Was Incredible
Squid Game season 3 predictably broke Netflix viewership records upon its release, building on the runaway success of the show’s first two seasons. But the overwhelming popularity of the series means that there’s a danger it gets dismissed in critical terms. After all, immediate mass appeal doesn’t always equate to artistic merit in TV terms.
Netflix has a history of churning out phenomenally successful shows of highly questionable aesthetic value, with romcom series Emily in Paris being the most prominent example. Yet, Squid Game is far removed from this category of streaming release.
The Korean survival drama was genuinely exceptional as a work of art as well as entertainment. It would have received widespread acclaim even if it only accrued a small fraction of the global audience it has.
Director Hwang Dong-hyuk May Have Created A Timeless Classic With Squid Game
We should be thankful that Hwang Dong-hyuk ended Squid Game with season 3, ensuring that the show’s quality was prioritized over continuing to milk its commercial value until it jumped the shark. As a result, Dong-hyuk may well have created a timeless work of television, which could still be revered several decades from now.
What truly marks high-quality TV series out for greatness is their originality, and it’s safe to say that no one has made anything quite like Squid Game before. The inventive idea behind the show is delivered with tonal consistency throughout its three seasons, while its uniquely polychromatic visual aesthetic feeds into the unsettling dystopian elements of its plot.
Every aspect of Squid Game is carefully crafted to form part of a self-sustaining story world, which serves the higher purpose of the show’s allegory in its entirety. It’s hard to find fault with any part of the series, such is its overall command of the timeless story it’s telling.
Even Squid Game’s Worst Season Was Still Worthy Of Praise
Critics and fans alike have pointed to things that went wrong with Squid Game season 3 compared to the show’s previous two outings. Yet, many series would do well to reach the heady heights of this season in dramatic terms. The final six episodes of Squid Game delivered a worthy conclusion to the series, even if it divided viewers.
Protagonist Seong Gi-hun’s iconic final line, “We are not horses. We are humans,” the follow-up to which was left hanging in the air as he fell to his death, was one of the most powerfully profound moments of the entire series. Even Jun-ho’s brief encounter with his brother, In-ho, was suitably series-defining, if a little anti-climactic.
In years to come, Squid Game will be recognized in its entirety as a landmark work of television. The show’s ending was always going to split opinion, but its overall legacy is beyond doubt.
Squid Game
8/10
- Release Date
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2021 – 2025
- Network
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Netflix
- Showrunner
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Hwang Dong-hyuk
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Lee Jung-jae
Seong Gi-hun / ‘No. 456’
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Wi Ha-jun
Detective Hwang Jun-ho
