Here's why Squid Games 2 and 3 Failed and how it Could Have Succeeded:

What they did wrong:

What the F happened with Squid Games 2 and 3? Classic trope of people repeating the same plot from the first one and failing.... you know you can't just repeat the same plot as the first season/film and succeed right? People are waiting for you to expand the story, not rehash the story. Please see Trigun for reference on how to properly expand a universe.

Korean people mostly know better than this. Rarely have I ever seen a sequel in Korea and very more rarely (only once) have I ever seen one repeat the same plot as the original. This was probably an American thing, or a desperation thing... I've seen like 100 American sequels that are just a rehash of the original plot from the first season/film.

So, when I saw that Season 2 and 3 were an almost exact rehash of Season 1 I was Surprised. Like really really surprised. I've seen enough world building expansion coming out of Asia to have assumed Koreans could just automatically move on to the next phase of story telling. I was being racist. I was treating them like Japan, for whom I've seen numerous anime artists properly expand on storytelling universes and how I generally learned to do it.

Second problem: The Squid Game S2 and 3 rehash are just copies of a different film from a different country called "The Platform" where people are trapped in a prison that goes up and down and a table comes through once a day with food that gets eaten from the top down until there's nothing left for the people at the bottom and in the end they find and save a child because the child is a symbol of hope. - Squid Games 2 and 3 totally stole the plot from the other film

Third: The plot for 2 and 3 broke the storytelling dynamics from Season 1 and the general concept that everyone signed up to do this voluntarily. In fact, they crapped on their own premise by forcing the baby to play when the whole premise and point was that a bunch of adults with free will voluntarily chose to stay and do this because of financial hardship. To force the baby to play is create a slave ring where children are forced to compete in violent games from birth - it's a completely, totally different premise from Season 1 and 2 - it's also so stupid it makes me want to gag. The whole point was that they were bored and this was fun and so on... but a baby will obviously lose and there's no point except to watch a baby get slaughtered in a gruesome and horrible way similar to Hostel... so basically they used Squid Games and then changed it into Hostel hoping people wouldn't notice the complete and total breakdown of the storytelling universe, which people noticed - duh.

Four: He never went to see his daughter or made it up to his daughter. How stupid and pointless, what was it all for? Why is this random woman's child the symbol of hope but his own child just some trash that can be ignored off screen for the convenience of him very stupidly rejoining the games again as if that would make some kind of different. It changes the character from making a noble sacrifice to generally very stupid and too selfish to care about his own daughter even though he has a fortune to do it with and, or to give her? Who's idea was it to turn the lead from a noble survivor into a moron and a still incredibly bad dad anyways? STOP - nobody wants to see bad parenting win and that's the show you actually made - WHY?

How to Fix It:

Here's what SHOULD have happened to keep the story going. Lead Character SHould Have Infiltrated the Working Side Himself (duh -seriously how did they not see this) and started trying to dismantle it that way.

He could have taken his huge fortune and turned it into an even huger fortune proving that money is the only thing standing in the way of the poor getting richer themselves and then used that money to hire a fake billionaire to infiltrate their "richest person ever club" and then had a spy mission trying to coordinate that guy!

The police could have been Anything except Totally Incompetent Children being lead around by their noses. Did the brother's connection even matter?

It's not that Season 2 and 3 is the "worst storytelling" or anything.... I've seen far worse... but like, the people who wrote it clearly don't love stories and clearly haven't read as many as I have because they literally could have just Copied the style from other successful sequels - you know, expanding the world, changing how the lead solves problems, giving the lead new problems to solve or new ways to try to solve the problem, letting characters be intelligent and not dumb just to serve the story. What the F?

People JUST WANT to SEE their favorite characters make progress on solving the main problem- not make the same stupid mistake over and over again. Couldn't he have saved the baby if he were a guard? Why was the baby even a thing - because the writer doesn't know how to dismantle the imaginary organization he/she built? Did they just see the Platform and think nobody would notice if they copied it? How hard is it to let the main character learn something new about how the Squid Games are put on and take a step in the direction of ending that? Then the Squid Game people could find a new way of recruiting or whatever they do and so on....

I just don't understand the point of a show where they say everything is hopeless and then give you no means of escape. I'm sick of hearing "children are the future" in some vague and pointless way. Who is going to raise the baby that survived Squid Games? How is that child the symbol of hope and not the leads child who he abandoned? How does any of this help stop the Squid Games. IF the lead hadn't been there the baby would have lived anyways because enough people would have been around to vote to go home... it's in so many ways so very very stupid.

I feel strongly that the sequels were not written by the person that wrote the original, but I haven't checked. Making sequels is pointless if you don't understand and didn't study what makes sequels sell and what makes them sell is - different storylines than the original - step one. That's just the most basic step.... come on

How hard is it to see a big conspiracy organization and then create a story about dismantling it? They made all the characters stupid and useless in the sequel that were there in the original. Why? Please stop.