Rich people suck.

The message was loud and clear when Netflix’s Korean thriller “Squid Game” arrived in 2021. Imagining wealth and class disparity at the heart of a high-stakes competition, it featured cash-strapped contestants playing a series of children’s games to the death while uber-wealthy spectators bet on their odds of survival. The show’s masked elites watched the carnage from a luxe, concealed spectator box, chomping on cigars and chortling as player after player met a gruesome death. The Korean-language show became the streamer’s most watched series ever.

Comeuppance for the hideously affluent seemed imminent and likely at the hands of protagonist Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae).

The winner of Season 1’s “Squid Game” deserved vengeance after surviving a series of horrific scenarios — a hopscotch-type match played on a fragile glass bridge above a deadly chasm, a red light-green light contest where players who moved at the wrong time were “eliminated” by machine gun fire. He watched as good people were killed by pink guards, other contestants and their own stupid actions.

But no. The last six “Squid Game” episodes, now streaming on Netflix, did something entirely unsatisfying. They veered from the prospect of timely, eat-the-rich vengeance porn to unflattering commentary about the rest of us, the other 99% who aren’t Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos. What did we ever do to deserve a lethal game of double dutch with two giant mechanical children swinging a 10-ton metal rod in place of a jump rope? A lot, apparently.

“Squid Game” shows that under the right circumstances, regular folks are just as greedy and morally corrupt as the obscenely prosperous, no matter if their money problems stem from unforeseen medical bills, wanton gambling or generational poverty. Press the little guy or gal hard enough and they’re just as ruthless as the mogul that’s suppressing them.

Season 3 picks up exactly where 2 left off. Gi-hun, who’d found his way back in the clandestine gaming complex (situated inside a mountain on a remote island), is Player 456 again among a new round of contestants.