The biggest surprise in Season 2 of the Netflix superhit,Squid Game,isn’t the deaths we see on screen. It’s the death that happens inside us. Somehow, this once fresh, fiery, bloody, and bingeworthy drama managed to kill off our feverish interest in it. (ish)The sophomore season ofSquid Gamegoes from being the hugest Netflix series in its history to a head-scratching disappointment. What wrath this will unleash online remains to be seen, but fear not: Were it not forEmmy-winner Lee Jung-jaeand some truly surprising twists, the season would be a complete dud.
That said, one hopes for redemption.A third, perhaps broader, season could change everything. For now, the popular South Korean dystopian survival thriller written and directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk finds Seong Gi-hun (Jung-jae) initiating a big plan to return — say it isn’t so? — to the infamous games he won to save, well, humanity maybe. The show’s concept remains intact for the most part: a slew of characters compete against one another in deadly games with the hope of grabbing a big cash prize. But the focus hones in on Gi-hun, and it backfires.
Big twists abound, however. Gi-hun’s main thrust, beyond donning his green tracksuit and 456 marker, is a kind of redemption. Tossed in a psychological tizzy after becoming the sole winner of the games in Season 1 — can we blame him? — the man wants to dismantle the game from the inside. On he goes, butone of the biggest twists this time around is that the players can vote whether to continue or not after each game. That gets tricky as it can then pit players against each other. Ah, the joys of greed and survival.
Redemption Takes a Gritty Turn in ‘Squid Game’ Season 2
Squid Game - Season 2
The second season of the hit South Korean thriller on Netflix. Hundreds of cash-strapped contestants accept an invitation to compete in children’s games for a tempting prize, but the stakes are deadly.
Gi-hun’s destiny pivots early on in Season 2. Suddenly, we’re in a two-year time jump, and the man stalls his plans to meet his daughter in the U.S. just as he’s boarding a plane. He decides to go after the game’s Front Man (Lee Byung-hun) and the people working behind the scenes. Welcome to Season 2’s big twist:Front Man also decides to play the game, taking over Player 001, and taking on the persona of Young-il. The season becomes a quest between two rivals, Gi-hun and Front Man.
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Overall, the first few episodes of the season are fast and furious as we also learn more about The Salesman (Gong Yoo), the game’s recruiter. Entering into Gi-hun’s quest are the loan shark (Kim Pub-lae) and his accessory, Woo-seok, who are eventually captured by the Salesman. By the time Gi-hun enters the scene, a brutally intense game of rock-paper-scissors ensues and the loan shark takes his life to spare Woo-seok. All this makes for a great set-up—a mission to stop the games completely. It’s a bold and worthy one, but something is amiss. Season 1 was a fabulous social satire in many ways, but all that fizzy fun takes a nosedive here, opting instead to lean heavily into the dread. And there’s only so long audiences can swim that current.
If you recall the consensus of Season 2 ofHouse of the DragonorThe Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,where the achiness felt drawn out, and we always seemed to be wanting more, that’s how we walk away from Season 2 here. Showrunner Hwang penned all seven episodes solo, and along with that achy vibe, it takes quite a while for the actual game to get rolling. Be patient. There’s still plenty of blood spill.
Builds Up to the Next Round of Episodes
It’s also interesting to track the fate of police officer Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon), who was shot by the Front Man last season—as we all learned, the Front Man turned out to be Jun-ho’s brother. This time around, the cop is alive and working in the “less-stressful” traffic enforcement arm of the force. He’s also trying to prove that the Game is still out there, and that people are still embarking on playing out childhood games to their death while animal-mask-wearing higher-ups watch on.
But the biggest letdown of seeing Gi-hun return to the Games is that it ultimately narrows the series considerably. It goes from a 456-player romp, in which we know the backstory of many of the players, to a one-man quest and a trippy kind of torture for the new players who, in essence, are being punished because of Gi-hun. That has its own thrills, we guess. However, creatively, the season feels myopic.
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New Characters, Same Old Games
As for the games themselves, expect the blood to splatter yet again. There’s some fun in it, of course. One intense outing finds a group of players with their legs tied together participating in a six-legged pentathlon. Collectively, the games hit their mark but fail to elevate the overall season. Even with K-Pop tie-ins by way of Jo Yuri (of the girl group IZ*ONE) and Choi Seunghyun (BIGBANG’s T.O.P).
Bottom line: the series never develops any of these newer characters. That changes how we respond to all the deaths we experience. Without much investment in the characters, the body count in Season 2 never grabs us emotionally. So, what we’re left with is a kind of lengthy foreplay that may find its best peak performance come Season 3. Game on. Let’s pray for that.Season 2 ofSquid Gameis streaming on Netflix through the link below:
