While sitting down to watch Squid Game 2, I had an ominous feeling that it might swerve on the slippery Sweet Home or Gyeongseong Creature route. The South Korean smash hit returns for a second season, boarding Netflix’s hype train but crashes into lazy writing and rehashed character lines, and out of the debris of expectation emerges the smoke of a season that felt more like a prelude to the third and hopefully final season.
This season opens at the airport, with red-haired Seong Gi-hun getting off the plain to get to the roots of the game and crush it once and for all. Three years later, he is scooped up in a seedy motel, equipped with billions; a team searching the subways to find the elusive recruiter. Gi-hun’s search runs parallel to Hwang Jun-ho’s, who is now a traffic cop. Eventually, the show reaches the core with player 456 re-entering the dreaded blood sport.
I remember reading somewhere that “capitalism reconstitutes its own critiques and offers them up for consumption. It’s part of why it’s such a long-lived system.” This is what Squid Game, conceived as an honest commentary on capitalism, does after it became Netflix’s biggest hit, overburdened by the reality television series, merchandise and aggressive promotion for season two. Hwang Dong-Hyuk mentioned in an interview with Variety that he was tired of Squid Game and never envisioned a sequel when it came out in 2021. And does that show in this seven-episode season that does not deserve to be called so? You bet!
A new addition to the storyline is the voting, which is imposed (both on the participants and the viewers) after every game, eating up a considerable amount of time in a story that is already knee-deep in pacing issues. Susan Sontag was of the opinion that “in good films, there is always a directness that entirely frees us from the itch to interpret.” Well, in that case, I do not understand the point of including three voting sequences, as there is nothing remotely exciting about it after the first time. If this is about the underlying social critique, the hopelessness of democratic outfits covertly manipulated by those in power, we still don’t need three atrociously long scenes.
From the outset, the season seemed like a fine assortment of Korea’s big names in acting. But when you open this chocolate box, shoved down your throat at this point, you find that these characters taste like the ones from the first season, albeit without flavour and almost unpalatable. Seong Gi-hun takes up the role of Cho Sang Woo, offering tips and tricks. Despite Lee Jung-jae’s terrific performance, the character is tied down by messy writing. Gi-hun and his mother’s arc from season one is replaced by another mother-son duo, and the friendship subplot makes an appearance, exciting something close to a sigh. A pregnant woman is thrown into the mix with little to no effect, and there are no characters like Ali or Kang Sae-byeok this time.
Jun‑ho is on a ride of his own as if forcefully flushed out for satiating comment sections constantly asking about the officer shot by his brother. I cannot help but sympathise with the superiors who are annoyed by his endless search; for Wi Ha-joon’s character adds nothing to the plot and is tied to a twist that is anything but a twist.
Although many found the first two episodes boring, for the want of games, I thought it had the most compelling game sequence of the show, featuring a terrific Gong Yoo. There is too much searching for nothing and that, too, for a man who goes haywire in a public park. And even if you start watching from episode three, you might not really miss anything (except Gong Yoo).
The social commentary aspect is drawn out with the loaves of bread, Im Si-Wan’s Myung-gi, a YouTuber (scammer) caught in a crypto scam, and Thanos (played perfectly by T.O.P.—Choi Seung-hyun), a rapper scammed by Myung-gi. T.O.P.’s character is dialled up to eleven and is presented with so much potential, if not as a caricature. However, Thanos is no supervillain, as he never does anything that would disrupt the stagnant order of things.
Characters are molds of season one, without a story. The trans woman, played by cis-gender actor Park Sung-hoon, comes close to making an impact, and despite the skewed casting, the actor portrays the character with grace. The season also recycles a character with a North Korean connection that stood out in the initial episodes but lost its way like all others.
The finale seems wire-drawn to fit the one-hour mark of episodes with thirty minutes of ammo and firing that establishes nothing except killing off characters without names. In short, the season retains everything that was not reasoned in season one and adds more characters into the hotpot.
Creating Squid Game 2 was definitely no easy feat, as the exhaustive first season meant a sort of desensitisation to the extreme violence and the degenerate moral and social order. In season two, Dong-Hyuk had to deal with a seasoned audience and the risks of overfamiliarity. To make something by shattering the existing template is also not reasonable, as Netflix had a lot riding on the show. On top of that, other shows like Alice in Borderland and The 8 Show familiarised the blood game arena.
The show sleeps on its interesting elements and stumbles too many times. Yet, as I was watching this, I couldn’t help but feel like the VIPs of season one, who do not make an appearance this time, waiting to see something more exciting and to have more characters whose death could scrape your heart. Is that what Netflix achieved with season two, a live version of the game that percolates outside of the device, where the viewer craving for “better games” becomes the root that Gi-hun is desperately searching for? If that was the intention, the season is smashing. However, if it was to create a singular cinematic experience like season one, this squid is a damp squib.
Series: Squid Game (Season 2 )
Director: Hwang Dong-hyuk
Cast: Lee Jung-jae, Lee Byung-hun, Wi Ha-joon, Gong Yoo, Kang Ae-shim, Im Si-wan, Jo Yu-ri.
Rating: 3/5 | ★★★☆☆