Squid Game released quietly in 2021 before quickly exploding in popularity. Season 1 was an expert blend of social commentary, unflinching violence, and imaginative production design. Initially conceived as a one-off, Netflix immediately went to work getting more Squid Game, even if some of the projects fly directly in the face of the central theme of the series. Creator Hwang Dong-hyuk returns to deliver a worthy follow-up that retains all of its strengths while doing its best to expand on a story that had already come to a satisfying conclusion. Despite being hamstrung by Netflix’s release strategy, Squid Game Season 2 introduces new compelling characters and finds fresh avenues of its central theme to explore.
Run it back
The anti-capitalist message at the core of Squid Game is still the central theme with the games as a proxy. Lee Jung-jae returns as Seong Gi-hun, hell bent on finding the Front Man (Lee Byung-hun) and putting a stop to the games. Since winning, he uses his considerable cash price to devote himself to his new purpose. Even after “winning,” Gi-hun’s trauma won’t allow him to move on and the game continues to rule his life. After three years of work, Gi-hun’s is only able to confront the Front Man by allowing himself to be put back into the games. This time he finds his friend Jung-bae (Lee Seo-hwan) and a whole new cast of players. The new batch of players make an impression immediately even if a couple of them feel like remixed versions of characters we’ve already seen.
Season 2’s approach to the games introduces a new wrinkle in the form of a vote after every game, allowing the players to leave the game and split the current pot. Voting is the newest way to create division among the players, and Season 2 explores whether majority rule is the best way to make decisions. In a vacuum, voting seems like a fair and balanced way to take into account the needs of a group. However, when the people voting must endure extreme pressure, the system gets taken advantage of.
The voting immediately splits the players into factions. The players wanting to leave are held hostage by the players determined to stay. The series presents sharp examples of how these factions can use a variety of tactics to sway people to their side. Player’s votes sway due to a barrage of influence, as others appeal to their sense of self preservation, logic, and emotions along with fear mongering. Even direct intimidation comes into play. Taking all of this in after an election felt a bit on the nose but also undeniably realistic.
The second major shake-up to games is how many players have ties with one another in the player pool. Season 1 mainly consisted of strangers thrown together, but the emotional climax of the games hinged on the relationship between Gi-hun and his childhood friend Sang-woo. This season builds on that theme by including a mother and son, an ex-couple with a baby on the way, and a YouTuber whose crypto scheme bankrupted his viewers, some of whom also find themselves in the game.
Season 2 is at its best when it examines how the game influences these relationships, causing turmoil and often forcing players to survive at the expense of the people closest to them. The most compelling new characters are the mother and son, Geum-ja (Kang Ae-shim) and Yong-sik (Yang Dong-geun). Surprised by the other being there, they learn they’ve both entered to clear Yong-sik’s gambling debts. Having a pair of players that are so closely intertwined ratchets up the tension to a whole new level. Their relationship and shared journey is both oddly sweet and heartbreaking. As the games progress, new relationships form, and existing ones are put to the test.
They can’t all be winners
Season 2 continues the tradition of introducing players to root for and villains to root against. While the show can still break your heart by killing off a character in a shocking manner, not all of the new characters are successful. Underground rapper “Thanos” (Choi Seung-hyun) doesn’t quite work as the season’s resident bully and feels too much like a palette swap of the gangster character from Season 1. There’s a loud and off-kilter woman again only this time she’s a shaman.
A few of these characters have no dimension beyond the archetype they represent. This only becomes a problem when they take up valuable screen time better spent elsewhere. Thanos for example takes up far too much screen time while not contributing much in regards to the larger themes the show wants to examine. Even Lee Byung-hun as the Front Man can only do so much with his considerable presence as part of a repeat plot from the first season.
The other area that the show continues to miss is everything concerning the inner workings of the games. There’s a fun twist early on in the season through the introduction to No-eul (Park Gyu-young), a North Korean defector who needs money to extract the daughter she left behind. The familiar language of the show sets her up as another player only to reveal that she is actually at the games as one of the soldiers.
There’s potential to explore a new avenue for how systems like the game not only directly exploit the players but also exploit people like No-eul by forcing them to become part of the system itself and put them to work in service of perpetuating the system. Unfortunately, despite spending time with No-eul in nearly every episode, we learn very little about her and gain no further insight into what drives the employees of the games.
Ultimately, many of the struggles of Season 2 may resolve themselves after the release of Season 3 later this year. It becomes painfully obvious at the end of the final episode that this is an incomplete story. The ending is abrupt and while there is a climax, there are no resolutions for the plot or the journeys of these characters. Despite these issues, it’s hard to fault series creator Hwang Dong-hyuk and his team for Netflix’s release strategy. This season proves they can still construct incredible tense situations and mind boggling locations for richly drawn characters to inhabit. Squid Game remains among the best TV the streaming era has to offer.
Squid Game Season 2 is available to stream now on Netflix.
Images courtesy of Netflix.
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Squid Game Season 2 - 7/10
7/10
Jose Cordova is based in the San Francisco Bay Area. A lifelong appreciator of film, television, and video games, he can usually be found sitting on his couch desperately trying to make a dent in his watchlist.
Season two sucks; plain and simple. It failed the maintain the momentum it gained in the first episode and never recovered. The rest of the episodes are pure torture.