It feels a bit like being a human pinball to go from celebrating Christmas, arguably the most commercial global holiday, to binge-watching a show about the insidious evils of capitalism one day later. But, then again, being stuck in a life-size pinball machine is perfectly in step with “Squid Game,” Netflix’s South Korean survival drama where unwitting contestants find themselves playing augmented, lethal versions of their favorite childhood playground games for a chance at a lifetime of riches. The first season of “Squid Game” tore up the rule book for streaming expectations, quickly becoming Netflix’s most watched show of all time — a title it held onto, despite heavyweight contenders like “Wednesday” stepping into the ring in the years since the show’s 2021 debut. The runaway success of “Squid Game” was definitive proof that audiences are looking for the spark of originality in familiar formatting, and that language is no barrier when it comes to streaming entertainment.
For those craving constant narrative velocity, “Squid Game 2” sometimes feels grating, and other times, downright exhausting.
But for all the hype surrounding the second season of “Squid Game,” there were also two major questions lingering over its release: How do you recreate the thrills of the high-concept first season without simply recycling plot points? And can that be done at all if the show wasn’t originally planned as a multi-season series? Shortly after Season 1 premiered, the show’s creator, writer and director Hwang Dong-hyuk disclosed that he hadn’t originally planned for additional seasons. But it wasn’t long before Netflix co-CEO and Chief Creative Officer Ted Sarandos confirmed a second season, saying, “The ‘Squid Game’ universe has just begun.” (That this confirmation came during an interview about the streamer’s quarterly earnings is a funny bit of irony, considering that “Squid Game” is all about the hyperbolized dangers of corporate greed.)
While Hwang succeeds in defying his creative hesitancy, “Squid Game” Season 2 — stylized as “Squid Game 2” — does occasionally fall prey to the inevitable drawbacks of trying to capture lightning in a bottle for the second time. Much of “Squid Game 2” recycles elements from the first season without much alteration. Several character archetypes, narrative tropes and plot details feel all too familiar. For many viewers who are simply looking for a fresh coat of paint on the tense violence and inequitable gameplay of Season 1, that won’t be a problem. But for those craving constant narrative velocity, “Squid Game 2” sometimes feels grating, and other times, downright exhausting. That is until its showstopping finale, which cranks up the excitement and abandons tedious subplots almost entirely to cap the season on a cliffhanger that, unfortunately, puts Season 2’s handful of blunders under a microscope.
Squid Game (Netflix)
Those who were hoping for a quick return to the death games were surely disappointed by Season 2’s slow start. Instead of jumping right back in, Hwang spends the first couple of episodes far from the mysterious island where the games take place, checking in with Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) in the years after he won the first season’s competition. While Season 1 gave viewers the time to steep in the dire straits that led Gi-hun to accept an invitation to the games, Season 2 beginning the same way feels expected, if ultimately necessary. Gi-hun’s fervent desire to end the games once and for all bifurcates “Squid Game 2” into two parallel narratives: Gi-hun’s reentry into the competition to destroy the system from the inside, and the investigation led by detective Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon) to locate the games from the outside.
Regrettably, Jun-ho’s investigation is a nothingburger — at least this season. Hwang uses it to fill time and arouse suspicion, but there is little narrative heft from this plotline until the finale. In Season 2’s final episode, we find out that the captain that Jun-ho has been paying to help locate the games island is a turncoat, seemingly working for the rich and powerful forces behind the scenes. While this reveal provides one or two answers (like how Gi-hun’s tooth tracker ended up in a tub of fishing bait), it ultimately feels like wasted time, made all the more glaringly apparent when we actually do get back to the games, and several repeated sequences, like the post-death game voting, are protracted to a wearying degree.
Make no mistake: The deadly survival games are still where Hwang does his best work. They are just as stressful this time around, and made even more uneasy by the introduction of a new Player 001 in Hwang In-ho (Lee Byung-hun). In Season 1, In-ho acted as the Front Man, the top dog controlling the games and calling the shots. When Gi-hun manages to track down his operative and get his attention at the top of Season 2, In-ho inserts himself into the new set of games to compete alongside Gi-hun, unbeknownst to our intrepid protagonist. In-ho plays the part of Gi-hun’s ally while collecting intel about what Gi-hun is planning, deceptively manipulating Gi-hun’s machinations. Hwang allows viewers to wonder whether In-ho is simply trying to put himself in his players’ white slip-on Vans as an act of sickly voyeurism, or if he has a larger plan of his own. This supplies a nice bit of dramatic irony to keep the story moving in its slower stretches, though it’s obvious how the season finale will turn out from the moment we realize In-ho has entered himself into the game.
But before that big, bloody showdown can happen, we must meet and say goodbye to a few new characters. Notably, Gi-hun’s old friend and gambling buddy Jung-bae (Lee Seo-hwan), whom Gi-hun hasn’t seen since he first entered the games three years prior. The two men are bonded by their shared addiction and all of the places it has taken them, and Gi-hun cares deeply for Jung-bae because he sees himself in his buddy’s masochistic desperation. Then there’s Hyun-ju (Park Sung-hoon), a trans woman — played by a cis man, which has already caused its share of controversy — who teams up with the pregnant Jun-hee (Jo Yu-ri), the sweet matriarch Geum-ja (Kang Ae-sim) and her failson Yong-sik (Yang Dong-geun).
Squid Game (Netflix)
One of the biggest new changes to the competition in “Squid Game 2” is that the players vote whether they’d like to stay or leave after each game. The votes divide the players more as episodes drag on, and eventually, those who want to leave (the X's) and those who want to stay (the O's) are engaged in an all-out turf war, realizing that they can diminish the numbers on the opposing side by brute force. Gi-hun, Jung-bae, Hyun-ju, Jun-hee, Geum-ja, Yong-sik and In-ho (who, again, is really the Front Man) are all O's, but they know that their pleas for peace will fall on deaf ears.
The finale begins with the savage result of this divide: a gang brawl in the restrooms that offs a few of Season 2’s supporting cast members. Afterward, just before mandatory lights out, Gi-hun devises a plan. He believes that the X's will attack them in the dark, and instead of their smaller alliance fighting back, he suggests they hide. When the masked guards enter to stop the chaos, they’ll scan the ID badges to mark the deceased without paying close attention, giving those who are merely playing dead the opportunity to disarm the guards and begin a coup. This plan goes off without a hitch — if you don’t call a lot of extra sacrificial dead bodies a “hitch” — and Gi-hun and the O's capture a guard and force him to lead them through the maze-like structure that houses the entire operation, all the way to their leader.
The coup gives Hwang an exciting chance for a big exercise in style and set design, showing off the pastel M.C. Escher staircases and hallways that adorn the games house. So many converging pathways and open areas cleverly present trouble when more guards arrive to push back on the coup’s forces, and it’s not long until the O's start to dwindle. Hyun-ju, a former military soldier seemingly discharged for being trans, leads their makeshift militia, while Gi-hun, Jung-bae (himself a veteran) and In-ho all lead the charge toward the Front Man. Of course, Gi-hun and Jung-bae don’t know that they’re in the presence of the Front Man already. That obliviousness creates a queasy excitement when In-ho volunteers to split from the group and Gi-hun passes In-ho the last remaining magazines for his machine gun
With the O's running out of ammunition themselves, Dae-ho (Kang Ha-neul) doubles back to the dormitory to collect leftover magazines from the pockets of fallen armed guards, but can’t bring himself to return to the warfare. Yong-sik refuses to take on the responsibility, staying back with his mother and Jun-hee. In a last-ditch effort, Hyun-ju sprints back to the dormitories to check on Dae-ho and retrieve the ammunition, just as another team of masked guards enters and opens fire. We don’t see anyone in the dormitory die before the final moments of the episode, but it’s not looking too good for the defectors, seeing as those who tried to surrender to the guards in the pastel maze were shot on sight.
Though the finale is a top-tier thrill ride, it arrives after a good bit of waiting around.
In the royal purple hallways, closer to the Front Man’s quarters, Gi-hun and Jung-bae have also run out of ammunition. With nowhere to go and nothing left to fight with, they’re held at gunpoint by the guards until the Front Man emerges, walking down the stairs to greet them. “Did you have fun playing the hero?” he asks Gi-hun, before turning his pistol toward Jung-bae. “Look closely at the consequences of your little hero game.” The Front Man shoots Jung-bae in the heart, and “Squid Game 2” ends on the image of Gi-hun being restrained by guards and wailing in anguish as the Front Man walks away.
This is a massive cliffhanger, and though its execution is satisfying, it doesn’t make Hwang’s plot writing any less predictable. From the moment In-ho entered the games at the end of Episode 3, it was clear that, with only four remaining episodes, the inevitable clash between him and Gi-hun would finish out the season. Though the finale is a top-tier thrill ride, it arrives after a good bit of waiting around. To get there, Hwang had to retread his steps from Season 1, taking viewers through enough death games to satisfy macabre hunger while fleshing out the characters that will clearly remain with us through the show’s final season. This process was equal parts exhilarating and arduous, especially since characters like Jung-bae and Geum-ja were secondhand emotional stand-ins for Season 1’s old friend and lovable (if ultimately devious) senior citizen characters.
Squid Game (Netflix)
Because the Front Man does not take off his mask to reveal his identity to Gi-hun, we know that a major plot point for the series will occur at some point next season. Gi-hun will find out that he’s been played, but for now, I’m feeling a little played myself. Hwang spent so much time on Jun-ho’s humdrum investigation storyline, only for it to drop off completely by the end of Season 2. That element feels more like a forgotten loose end than its own cliffhanger, and Gi-hun being reminded that the elite class will try to crush the proletariat until their dying breaths is far too thematically similar to the plot points that closed Season 1’s finale.
Looking at it from above, a good chunk of “Squid Game 2” feels like wasted time, watching the series spin itself in circles, admiring the way Hwang splatters his pretty pastel hues and conventional characters with new blood. It’s hard to shake the feeling that a show largely about the nefarious nature of capitalism and the hold of wealth’s razor-sharp claws is being milked for all its worth by a streamer that released the show without a second and third season already planned. This knowledge makes “Squid Game 2” feel like table setting for Season 3’s nail-biting main course, and released into the world when many Americans have time off for the holidays to binge it. While it’s still a good bit of fun, finishing the “Squid Game 2” finale feels like Gi-hun in those last moments, looking up at the Front Man to realize that, despite some progress, he’s still stuck under capitalism’s iron boot.
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