The moment it premiered in 2021, no one dared to hope anything more from Squid Game. All written and performed in Korean, it took us to a dystopian hellscape, where the underprivileged people, in a game like children, worked to make money. If they lost, they were killed.
It was released without fanfare. However, it went global, racking up record television ratings for Netflix and making every Halloween costume of the year green jumpsuits and masks with triangles and squares.
Although show creator Hwang Dong-hyuk firmly stated that the initial season would be the only one, the Netflix machine has prevailed once more, here we are with a second to get us squirming, just in time, during the Boxing Day slump.
A low frequency has the effect of making us say hello again to Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae). Having won the games three years ago, at the cost of pretty much everyone he cared about, he’s now back.
In the same way as in the first season, things do not start immediately. Gi-hun mopes. The games remain tantalisingly out of reach. We learn about a huge ensemble cast without much idea of their relevance to the series such as the sadistic Recruiter (Gong Yoo) which lays the foundation for some of the most gripping scenes of the first episodes.
Contestants have to vote to stay or to leave the games. Gi-hun wages a desperate, avid ambition to free them himself with his knowledge of the games (be it the cat and the mouse dancing with the game masters during this whole season makes a lot of the tension, for instance) to save them all. Human value is not welcomed by anybody when hundreds of millions of won are concerned.
There are also many humans to look after this season, too. There is returning police officer Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon) who ended season one at the hands of his brother and joins forces with Gi-hun to search for the island upon which the games are conducted and of course, Gyeong-seok (Lee-jin Wook) which provides most of the laughs for the show.
With all the past contestants being killed off, director Hwang has the luxury of having an almost blank slate for characters for the second series, and he’s zoned in on some gripping back stories of this new motley crew.
There is a mother and her gambling-addicted son, both stunned to see the other has wandered in; vulnerable young women, veterans, a crypto personality and a menacing, pill-popping rapper (a fun easter egg for Korean music fans, performed with fun and energy by rapper Choi Seung-hyun, also known as T.O.P. It is suggested that this influencer lost all of the amounts invested in crypto currency.
The Squid Game narrative reveals the way contrasting priorities and a self-depended nature can lead to deep societal cleavages, parenting groupthink and barbarism.
With many mind-blowing turns and twists, these seven episodes propel the plot to a searing climax when Season 3 is released, in 2025. Second, the series is also a reminder that it is not so radical to be against injustice.
