It is finally here. The three-year wait has been well worth it. Season 2 of Squid Game, made up of seven episodes of about an hour each, packs quite a wallop, with lead actor Lee Jung-jae slipping into a steely, personal mission-mode avatar that presents a marked contrast to the more easy-going persona he was in the early stages of the first season.
Certain high points of Season 1 prove difficult to replicate. Do not expect anything that is as nail-bitingly tense as the tug-of-war sequences. Neither is anything here that is as emotionally fraught as the memorable game of marbles segment that defined the spirit of Squid Game like nothing else could.
Not that Season 2 is without its share of explosions and bust-ups, but these flashpoints might just pale a tad in comparison if memories of what the players encountered first time around are still fresh in your mind.
But there is every reason for you to watch Squid Game Season 2 even if you happen to be late to the party. The process of discovering the world that the show is set in, the people in it on both sides of the class divide, and the concerns it articulates will be well worth your time.
Few web shows have transcended cultural and geographical boundaries the way the Netflix series created by South Korean writer and television producer Hwang Dong-hyuk has done. It was always going to be a hard act to follow. Squid Game Season 2 comes very close to being a worthy continuation. It gets just about everything right.
Rooted in a specific ethos and time but addressing globally resonant and timeless themes, Squid Game uses a slew of children’s games as a means to comment on adults grappling with class disparities perpetuated and exploited by those that control the levers of power and will not let go of them.
Within the narrative ambit of the show are victims and perpetrators of financial scams, gambling and loan rackets, ill-fated business schemes and the mounting pressures of individual and family needs that push people into the abyss of crippling debts.
Season 2 sustains the refreshing spin that was put on battle between the haves – remember the VIPs that the Front Man hosted with much fanfare in Season 1, men who donned fancy, shiny masks – and the have-nots, the Shakespearean “flies to wanton boys”.
The game that these people are lured into is projected by its creator as an opportunity for them to escape their lot but, in reality, is a cul-de-sac. They end up as fodder for an evil business operation that thrives on the misery of people and farms their organs for profit.
In its examination of economic inequities, human greed, the brutality of unfettered power and the moral fortitude and frailty of people dangling between life and death, Season 2 does not add anything fresh to the discourse – it does not need to – but a bunch of new characters, not the least a rapper who doubles up as a bully pretty much in the mould of Season 1’s Deok-su, spice up the show.
The new season extends the strands that were masterfully developed in the show’s preceding nine episodes. New bonds of friendship are forged, old ones are sought to be renewed, connections are made and marred, teams are created and dispersed, bitter rivalries are fuelled and survival strategies are thought up even as the fear of imminent death hangs on players who seem to have nothing to lose.
The latest game of survival that 450-plus players are thrust into sees an array interesting participants – a past-her-prime shaman who still believes she has it in her to control things, a pregnant girl who hides her baby bump, a sexagenarian woman who follows her son into the deadly arena, a transwoman who needs money to fund her sex reassignment surgery, a cryptocurrency scamster fleeing his immediate past and a rapper deep in the red, among others.
As in Season 1, a female North Korean defector finds a place in the plot. She has made the trip across the border without her child. Driven by the desire to be reunited with her offspring, she, like Jun-ho did in the past, infiltrates the Front Man’s strictly stratified workforce of managers, gunners and foot soldiers whose job it is to enforce the rules of engagement and ‘eliminate’ the losers without mercy.
But the focus, expectedly, is squarely on Ssangmum-dong denizen Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), a previous winner (and survivor) of the deadly game devised for the human detritus of an insensitive society. He returns to the game with a plan. Last time, he was in it solely for the money. This time around, he is on a larger mission. Lee Jung-jae breathes life into the character that he had already made his own.
Detective Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon), continuing his search for his missing brother, joins forces with the once-impecunious gambling addict who now sits on a pile of liquid cash and plots an attack on the mysterious, masked Front Man’s evil empire.
Having seen first-hand what the ruthless creator of the game is capable of, Gi-hun intends to put an end to the sinister exploitation of those that are already down and out. But is that even possible? “The Game won’t stop until the world changes,” the Front Man says to him. That only strengthens Gi-hun’s resolve to go through with his plan.
The players are given the task of playing six games over six days with the chance of winning a jackpot – the money that accumulates as more and more players are eliminated. In a ‘democratic process’ designed as a tool of oppression and disaffection, participants are allowed to vote after every round to decide if the game should be continued or terminated.
The exercise divides the players down the middle and sparks chaos and free-for-alls – a reflection of the levels that cornered people will sink to in order to crawl out of the holes that they find themselves in. Episode 1 ends with a bang – the hero is drawn into a round of Russian roulette with a recruiter who has already demonstrated that he means business. The edgy face-off sets the tone for the remaining six episodes.
The finale is explosive. It is a bloodbath to beat any of the bloodbaths that the enforcers of the game may have engineered in the past on the island that Jun-ho is desperate to locate. While much of the action takes place inside the underground venue, Jun-ho’s search, a part of Gi-Hun’s mission, plays out on a sailing boat.
While the back-and-forth rhythm lends the show momentum, what plays out in Front Man’s covert den forms the crux of the show. That is where most of the appetite-whetting action is. Will it have Squid Game fans asking for more?
To be sure, there is more on the way. The open-ended sign-off keeps the door ajar for a third season. It is already reportedly in post-production. Rejoice, it will not be years but a few months that will separate Season 2 and the final act.
