This season is so much deeper than the last. The plot is just a decoy; behind it is a deep reflection on life, strength, perseverance, our existence and free will. I had to stop a few times to reflect on life and my existence as a player. I feel so bad for anti intellectual surface level watchers who can't see past the story and dialogues. Some will even say the dialogues are superficial, but I think they're only superficial if you want them to be. This is the kind of drama that I would encourage watchers to consume with introspection.

Why are you here? What is real? What keeps you alive? curiosity? spite? hope? do you even neec a reason? Why are you still playing? Where do you get your strength? What does it mean to be real, to be a human? is your existence fair? Why do you hate life/yourself? What's the value of a life? How valuable is yours? This dramas raises alot of questions that will never get old, and for once instead of making you depressed afterwards it revives your will to exist, to fight and persevere.

Also the hidden symbolism is beautifully done, I just noticed how the people who stayed behind in borderland where people who aimed for control and domination meanwhile the ones that went back were willing to face the uncertainty of their life. So no matter how many times some characters where deathly injured they still wouldn’t die, because their will to live was too strong. And when the face cards leaders died they all said that they were glad to be finally free. I believe that when they accepted their citizenship to borderland they all had plans of grandeur and domination but deep down after a while they realized they weren’t as free as they thought.

There was no badly written character because every character embodied a thought provoking existential question. This is really about letting go of control and fear to face the hardest game of all, that is life.