‘Squid Game’ Season 2 Review: The Netflix Hit Makes a Stunning, Shocking, Exhilarating Return
When Squid Game premiered on Netflix in September 2021, it offered the perfect catharsis for an audience recovering from the emotional trauma and economic strife of a global pandemic. Created by Korean auteur Hwang Dong-hyuk, the show imagined a brutal competition pitting poor people against each other for a massive cash prize. The deadly trials were all based on on children’s playground games and the drama’s visuals were all soaked in candy-toned bright colors. Squid Game soon hooked the world with its sophisticated blend of art and depravity and became Netflix’s most-watched show of all time. It was such a staggering success that a Season 2 seemed inevitable, even if matching the first season’s creative heights seemed impossible.
Now, Squid Game Season 2 is finally here. The seven new episodes of Squid Game are stunning, shocking, heartbreaking, and even exhilarating. Squid Game Season 2 is good! It isn’t quite as good as the spectacular first season, but coming up a smidge short of utter genius means Squid Game is still pretty great.
**Spoilers for Squid Game Season 2**
Squid Game Season 1 primarily followed Gi-hun (Lee Jung-Jae), a charming gambling addict in the process of smashing hard into rock bottom. When a mysterious stranger played by Train to Busan star Gong Yoo challenges Gi-hun to a game of ddakji in the underground, his life takes a stark turn. The game winds up leading to an invitation to a larger “game” where our hero will battle 455 others for a massive fortune. The twist, of course, is it that if you lose, you die, and it’s all just entertainment for a shadowy group of masked “VIPs.” Gi-hun wins the game, but loses his innocence.
Squid Game Season 2 opens with Gi-hun in vengeance mode, using his vast funds to hunt the secret society that staged the games. Eventually, Gi-hun teams up with heroic cop Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon), who has his own reasons for exposing the game: his long-lost brother In-ho (Lee Byung-hun) is secretly the “Front Man” organizing the mayhem. Gi-hun makes the risky gamble to re-enter the games in the hopes that Jun-ho can track him to the villains’ secret island base. Naturally, that plan quickly goes awry, forcing Gi-hun to relive the horrors of Squid Game.
If Squid Game Season 2 has one massive flaw, it’s the fact that Hwang Dong-hyuk has lost the element of surprise. When the first season hit Netflix, everything about it — from the maniacal robot doll Young-hee to the radical decision to let the players return to the real world for a beat — felt utterly fresh. The show’s unpredictability made its horror and tragedy hit harder. In Squid Game Season 2, it’s easy to share Gi-hun’s own jaded reactions returning to the familiar settings of the dormitory and “Red Light, Green Light.” We’ve already seen hundreds of pitiful poor people gunned down because they lost a children’s game. We know how everything’s going to go down. After all, we’ve seen this before.
Except we haven’t. Hwang Dong-hyuk introduces a fascinating wrinkle to Squid Game this season by adding a new rule: the contestants can vote after every game to keep going or not, and if they agree to leave, they split the existing prize money. The players are immediately polarized between self-preservation and all-out greed, creating a blunt, but effective, metaphor for our own modern political polarization.
Squid Game Season 2 also sagely introduces a new roster of intriguing players to the game. Gi-hun is quickly reunited with childhood friend Park Jung-bae, Player 390 (Lee Seo-hwan), whom we briefly met in Season 1. Jung-bae notably still has that incorrigible optimistic streak that Gi-hun initially brought with him into the games which adds much needed levity. Player 007, Park Yong-sik (Yang Dong-guen) continually finds his own worst impulses curbed by the fact that his own mother, Jang Geum-ja, Player 149 (Kang Ae-shim), followed him into the competition. Crypto scammer Lee Myung-gi, Player 333 (Yim Si-wan), comes into the games with baked-in nemeses, as flamboyant rapper “Thanos,” Player 230 (Choi Seung-hyun), nightclub bouncer Nam-gyu, Player 124 (Roh Jae-won), and pregnant ex-girlfriend Kim Jun-hee, Player 222 (Jo Yu-ri) all blame him for their crippling debt. There’s also an erratic mystic, a courageous transgender woman, and the most radical new addition to the competition of all: the Front Man himself, masquerading as Player 001.
That said, Squid Game Season 2 is not as breathtakingly good as Season 1. Again, for all the innovations this season, part of its beats do feel sadly route. The season also ends abruptly on a downer of a cliffhanger, leaving us desperate for what’s to come. Nevertheless, it’s still emphatically Squid Game. It’s a gorgeously shot, intensely paced, beautifully acted work of drama. Hwang Dong-hyuk simply knows how to write and direct incredible television. Lee Jung-jae, who won an Emmy for his work in Season 1, proves his mettle as one of the world’s greatest actors by playing a darker, haunted version of Seong Gi-hun. Indeed, the entire ensemble cast shines, with Lee Byung-hun getting a particularly twisted spotlight when the Front Man is called upon to put on an impenetrable emotional mask this time around. Squid Game is still very, very good!
Squid Game Season 2 may not be as innovative as Season 1, but it’s still fantastic TV. Hwang Dong-hyuk doubles down on his philosophy that humanity is sick, but worth saving. Lee Jung-jae throws down another incandescent performance and Lee Byung-hun effortlessly transforms into Gi-hun’s perfect foil. Should Netflix have left Squid Game as a perfect limited series? As half of the payers this season would chant, I enthusiastically say, “One more game! One more game!”
Squid Game Season 2 is now streaming on Netflix
