I was very late to this given my exams, and only watched in somewhere in November. Finally, the last season of Squid Game 3 to wrap up the series, though really it's more of a season 2b. We pick up right where we left off in Season 2 following the failed mutiny led by Gihun (Lee Jungjae), following the "betrayal" by Frontman (Lee Byunghun) and incompetence of Daeho (Kang Haneul).
In the final stretch, the show up the ante with fewer contestants and increasingly depraved games. Unfortunately, the show took awhile to get going, with episode 1 moving at a mind numbingly slow pace that it seemed like nothing happened after the episode ended. In fact, our main character spends most of the entire series just glowering angrily at people with hardly any dialogue, which made for a fairly boring character.
We do spend more time with other characters, notably Myunggi (Im Siwan), the ex-boyfriend of Junhee (Jo Yuri) who is pregnant with their baby. Myunggi's character was absolutely fascinating and one of the high points of the series As someone who constantly claims to want to do the right thing, but always ends up doing nothing at all or doing too much, he epitomises the selfishness, greed and cowardice of a deeply flawed human. As for the rest of our "good" side characters such as Hyunju (Park Hyunwook), Geumja (Kang Aeshin) and Yongsik (Yang Donggeun), the show was merciless in killing them off pretty early in season 3, which I guess is true to real life.
Now about that baby - firstly the birthing scene was completely unrealistic, but we're suspending belief for the show. I didn't mind the addition of a baby to the game, as convenient as a plot device it was, at least it kept the games more exciting. On the other hand, we had Inho (Wi Hajoon) wandering around aimlessly on a boat "searching for the island" for 12 whole episodes and achieving nothing but wasting running time.
A third separate thread was the rebellion of guard Noeul (Park Gyuyoung) to save Gyeongseok (Lee Jinwook), which was at least slightly more exciting than Inho's wandering, with Park Heesoon's Head Masked Office there as the wrench in the plans.
Directing remained a standout since the first season with incredible sets for the games and appropriate use of music, which might have been the reason the show went viral originally. Acting wise, everyone was mostly serviceable with Siwan being the standout to me, and the less said about the VIPs the better.
All in all, while I did like how the show concluded, the show suffered from uneven pacing and plenty of missed opportunities that rendered it a slog to watch at times.