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” could be, the present does endure from one meandering storyline. Nicely, all proper — two meandering storylines, for those who embody Detective Hwang Jun-ho’s (Wi Ha-joon) countless, 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 definitely 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 objective past giving masked guard Kang No-eul (Park Gyu-young) an opportunity to look comparatively heroic.
Thankfully, this modifications in season 3, the place we discover out that “Squid Recreation” has been taking part in the lengthy sport 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 related with whereas working as a mascot in season 2.
Squid Recreation took a complete season to arrange the organ commerce storyline’s massive payoff
In season 1, a number of Squid Recreation guards pad their revenue by solely wounding among the gamers they’re presupposed 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 trying glass that enables the viewers to catch a glimpse behind the smoke and mirrors of the sport. It elements naturally into Jun-ho’s adventures on the island, and is instantly (and violently) faraway from the taking part in area after it serves its narrative objective. This makes it shocking and considerably irritating to seek out out {that a} new bunch of traffickers have taken over in season 2, particularly since they carry so little to the desk.
All that organ harvesting, nevertheless, out of the blue turns into massively vital 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 thing is in place, so she’s in a position to simply “be part of” the black market ring after wounding 246 and persuade one of many corrupt guards to take her to the surgical procedure hideout so as to rescue the poor man earlier than the harvesting begins.
Identical to that, what appeared like a pointless holdover storyline out of the blue 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 powerful dwelling stretch resurrection for a storyline that completely failed to carry its personal towards the terrifying video games of “Squid Recreation” season 2.
