REVIEW: Squid Game Season 2 Pulls Off A Striking Sequel Season

Squid Game Season 2 is best entered with as little knowledge as possible. While this review is spoiler-free, even the smallest of plot points are best seen within context, like many who watched Season 1. But if you want to keep reading, well, here are 2000 words on why Squid Game Season 2 blew me away.

At its release, Netflix’s Original series Squid Game was the top-watched show the platform overnight. A cultural phenomenon, the South Korean drama series lived squarely in the well-established death game genre. Packed with star power like Lee Jung-jae, Lee Byung-hun, Wi Ha-jun, and Gong Yoo, the series was always going to do well.

But becoming the only thing anyone could talk about? That was astounding. The choice to make a second season though? That was as questionable as the choice to make actor Lee wear a fire engine red wig.

Set three years after winning Squid Game, we again meet Player 456, Seong Gi-hun. He has given up going to the States and comes back with a new mission. Stop the games. Gi-hun once again dives into the mysterious survival competition, starting another series of life-or-death games with new participants gathered to win the prize of 456 billion won ($474,506,760,000 USD).

Director Hwang Dong-hyuk is back as showrunner after making history as the first Asian to win Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series Emmy. And while the high profile main cast return to reprise their roles from Season 1, the cast grows in depth with Yim Si-wan, Kang Ha-neul, Park Gyu-young, Lee Jin-uk, Park Sung-hoon, Yang Dong-geun, Kang Ae-sim, Lee David, Choi Seung-hyun, Roh Jae-won, Jo Yu-ri, and Won Ji-an.

When the first season took social media by storm and American audiences clutched their pearls at the violence, those of us who have watched Korean films and genre television didn’t see anything shocking. I mean, comparing Lee Byung-hun’s role in this series compared to his work in the iconic I Saw The Devil alone shows a disparity in how much Korean media viewers had watched.

It was a disconnect. While the first season was stellar in every way, the undercurrent of callousness and meanspirited selfish violence didn’t come through. The deaths were not as explicit or damning as the social media posts had led me to believe. But Squid Game Season 2 is not this.

Squid Game Season 2 uses our knowledge to its advantage.

To be entirely honest, I didn’t think that Squid Game Season 2 was necessary. I thought that a second season would cheapen the sharp critique of capitalism that the first season shared. And then I watched it. It ups the ante of just about every stake and shock in the first season by losing itself to the spectacle.

Somehow, Squid Game Season 2 is meaner than the first season (oftentimes, it’s the level of violence and meanness that American audiences described the first season as on social media). More importantly, Season 2 devotes itself to elevating the first by throwing a wrench into every element of the machine we thought we understood. Ultimately, the games are machines that will grind every single person through its gears, in, out, or just on the periphery of power; it really doesn’t matter.

In many ways, we are Gi0hun. Yes, Lee Jung-jae is a fantastic actor who’s anxiety and charisma let you latch on to him. Still, his ignorance and knowledge oscillating at any moment play to the audience. We think we’re getting the same games in the same way. We think we have it all figured out. But the reality is that we don’t.

Instead, our arrogance breeds misunderstanding and the reality of the games is clear. Humans will always be greedy. Squid Game Season 2, even more than the first, lives and dies by the fundamental principals of the death game genre. People suck. Like, people really suck. Despite Gi-hun’s warnings and guidance, people choose themselves every single chance they get whether in an individual game or by keeping the games going.

All the while, Squid Game Season 2 pulls the curtain back, and we can see the manufacturing of elements happen in real-time. Like the first season, the rigging of things isn’t explicit per say, but it’s all done to make everything last. Like every death game series, suspense is what tightens the tourniquet of tension as each episode moves forward.

Suspense builds with three parallel narratives in this Netflix sequel season.

With three parallel stories happening this time, waiting for each one to intersect and resolve is an excellent widening of the narrative. Actor Kim Byeong-cheol shows us inside the games, Detective Hwan Jun-ho shows us a man on the hunt to stop them, and one new character brings us into the guards’ space, who don’t have nearly as much autonomy as we would have thought at the end of Squid Game Season 1. 

Squid Game Season 2 also puts Hwan Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon) and Front Man (Lee Byung-hun) into the spotlight in a larger way, with Recruiter (Gong Yoo) making a rousing and expanded appearance that gets at how broken the men of the games truly are. For Wi Ha-joon, his intimate connection to the games are something he tried to forget. However, his attempts to find his missing brother isn’t something easily erased when all the signs begin to point to being able to find the games and stop them one more time.

Where this second season excels, however, is how the showrunner brings the audience’s attention to the ensemble cast of new players as much as he makes us play with those returning. Here, we’re introduced to several antagonists: retired rapper Thanos (T.O.P – of Bigbang fame), Lee Myung-gi (Yim Si-wan), and Shaman Player 144.

Each plays the deadly games selfishly, shamelessly sacrificing others for their own gain. They keep it all interesting as their cowardly shadows loom over the choices, and the guards’ perspective specifically makes the enforcement of rules all the more intriguing. Where their remorse stops and self-preservation begins, they each hang by threads waiting to drop. For them, there is no fierce clash so much as a series finale that pulls every aspect of their narrative impact into perspective.

But just getting see the antagonists isn’t how a series thrives. Squid Game Season 2 also gives the audience a core group of competitors to root for. Yes, there are familiar faces here with Gi-hun and Hwang In-ho. That said, the addition of mother-son duo Park Yong-sik (Yang Dong-geun) and Jang Geum-ja (Kang Ae-sim), the troubled and pregnant Kim Jun-hee (Jo Yu-ri), Gi-hun’s real-life friend Jung-bae (Lee Seo-hwan), and then the resilient Hyun-ju (Park Sung-hoon) that rounds out the group we care about.

Squid Game Season 2 doesn’t put all of its narrative weight in Lee Jung-jae’s Gi-hun.

Yong-sik and Geum-ja’s relationship is expected even if you’ve only seen the series’s first season and not the wealth of other series from South Korea that highlight the familial burden that debt creates. In the first season, Gi-hun’s relationship with his mother is in focus; here, Yong-sik is a reflection of him. Their love and vulnerabilities are on display in a way that constantly presses on the audience. To see such a close relationship unfold and buckle under the pressure of the games is one of its strengths.

For Jun-hee, being put into the games with the ex-boyfriend who abandoned her adds another layer of intimacy. This isn’t just strangers selling out other strangers. It’s not about the price you put on any human life, but the price you put on those who know you, unlike anyone else. Her fortune is that, for once, she is surrounded by people looking out for her, even with her ex, Myung-gi, looking on from a distance.

Then there is Jung-bae. A friend on the outside, he sees past Gi-hun’s history with the games. Their friendship is why he trusts Gi-hun implicitly, but it’s also how he works to help pull others together. While Gi-hun’s empathy was on display in the first season, Squid Game Season 2 gives Gi-hun a friend to ground him even further. He knows him deeply, and in a game where death is assured, that makes making moves all the harder.

And finally, Hyun-ju is a wonderful addition to the cast. A trans character, her growing relationship with Geum-ja is not only heartfelt but a window into understanding the importance of communicating across generations. While there have been queer characters coded and otherwise in Korean media, it’s only the last few years that LGBTQ characters have gotten the spotlight in a way that highlights their humanity, depth, and the importance of seeing them as more more than set-dressing or props in a story.

While the increased production of gay romance series and reality series like His House (which inspired the Netflix Japan series The Boyfriend) has begun to be highlighted in Korean media, it’s still far from a popular perspective outside of being used for fanservice by idols and production companies.

Squid Game Season 2 approaches trans identity with tenderness.

In the back half of Squid Game Season 2, as Hyun-ju begins to take more of a central focus, we learn more about her. We see her build relationships. We see her becoming a friend and a sister and, most importantly, embracing who she is, even embracing parts of her past to protect those around her.

While I’m sure that those only aware of American productions may have critiques, in the landscape of Korean dramas and series, Hyun-ju presents a dynamic trans character we would be lucky to see more of. Hyun-ju is never presented to be anyone other than who meet in the game or deadnamed. Instead, she has her identity affirmed by those she is playing with in a way that does more for the inclusion and acceptance of trans people than we’ve seen in recent Korean media.

Yes, Hyun-ju is played by Park Sung-hoon, a cisgender actor. Still, before exploring valid critiques, we should do so by understanding the larger and more conservative landscape of Korean television and pop culture more widely. Specifically at a time where there is only an extremely small number of actors and idols who are out as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. The situation that trans actors and idols find themselves in South Korea is an even heavier discussion and one that deserves to be explored within its own cultural context and now an American lens.

With so many characters and only seven episodes to explore them, it would have been easy for this season to buckle. It doesn’t. Instead, it builds out dynamic profiles in small moments that amount to big pay-offs. We don’t need entire backstories. Instead, we’re given exchanges with others, slow-dripping circumstances, and beliefs just like the other players receive them. And it works.

The series’ violence and Squid Game Season 2’s fantastic ensemble cast all come into focus in the game. As we saw in the other season, ddakji is how it all started for everyone, as the recruiter finds them one by one on the subway. And while Red-Light-Green-Light begins the story, this season is careful not to show the same games as a comeback. Instead, the variety of games play reaches into childhood but also looks beyond it and attempts to exploit every relationship and person to the fullest.

To avoid spoilers, I can’t discuss each of the games. The best way to experience this story is in real time without anything coloring your thoughts. That said, I can say that the ruthlessness it pulls out of people is higher, as is how they try to force comradery simultaneously. Work in teams, get to know others, then watch them fall or die yourself.

Intimacy and care make every ensemble cast member more than fodder for the death game.

The new investments in team sport are honestly what makes the wins and losses in Squid Game Season 2 come in like a sledgehammer. While the Marbles episode of the first season sent a shockwave through people, there are multiple games and choices made throughout Season 2 that invoke the same feeling. Still, too much sadness can break down an audience as relationships stand to erode under the pressure.

Instead of burying our expectations under a mountain of “why bother,” Squid Game Season 2 also injects levity into moments. The tenderness expressed between characters and the joy shown in teamwork early in the games is a salve. Or at least, at first. As the joy and resiliency ripples through the game, they lull you into hope only to rip it all away. Squid Game Season 2 embraces the truth that empathy is core to building fear in an audience, and here, there are copious amounts of it.

Squid Game Season 2’s only flaw is how it ramps up. At only seven episodes, every single moment of each one needs to count. While the first episode of the season dives into Gong Yoo’s Recruiter, it does too much to do so. Half of his appeal is the mystery under the suit, not the pathos. That said, how his character exits the season more than makes up for it. While the pacing in the first two episodes could be better, it is truly not even on your mind as you habitually press next episode.

Squid Game Season 2 is made to be binge-watched. It’s engrossing and with its shocking finale has me begging for a new upcoming season. While we don’t confirmation on a Squid Game Season 3, I am eating crow and praising how showrunner Hwang has continued to tell the story. Self-contained stories are something I’ve become used to with Korean television, but Squid Game Season 2 is using its multi-season format to the fullest.

Meaner and equally more intimate than the first, Squid Game Season 2 pushes the series’ impact further. While the first season had its sights squarely on how capitalism and classist bigotry erode our sense of humanity and selves, Squid Game Season 2 turns the spotlight on us. Those of us who tuned into this new season. What happens when, even when armed with knowledge, people prop up capitalist competition and actively let the hypothetical idea of climbing the class ladder by becoming rich dictate their future? What happens when we are the problem?

Squid Game Season 2 is out now on Netflix.