REVIEW: ‘Bloodhounds’ Season 2 Punches A Little Below Its Weight

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Our favourite pair of boxer himbos is back and scrappier than ever in Bloodhounds Season 2, but does the story hit as hard and fast as before? Not quite, but it sure does try!

Featuring the return of Kim Gon-woo (Woo Do-hwan) and Hong Woo-jin (Lee Sang-yi), among other familiar faces from its first season, the boys find themselves going face-to-face with a global syndicate led by ex-professional boxer Im Baek-jeong (Jung Ji-hoon aka Rain). While the stakes don’t quite hit the highs of the previous season, no one can deny that this is one slick, action-fest with the fight choreography taking things to a whole new level.

Consisting of seven episodes this go-round, Bloodhounds Season 2 takes place five years after the events of the previous season. Gon-woo has made huge strides in his boxing career with the help of Woo-jin, who has retired from boxing and become Gon-woo’s coach. They are a match made in boxer heaven, and it shows in the first episode when Gon-woo comes face-to-face in the boxing ring with an elite boxer from Uzbekistan.

This is also where we’re introduced to the series’s new villain, Baek-jeong, and his underground boxing league operation, as the Uzbek boxer loses and is dragged away by the villain squad. Baek-jeong faces the injured Uzbek boxer in the ring, and in a series of fast, underhanded flourishes, takes him out. As far as introductions go, it gets the point across, and Jung Ji-hoon is relishing every moment he gets to be evil and psychotic onscreen.

It’s not long before Baek-jeong fixates on his next target, Gon-woo. As someone who hits the brief for narcissistic personality disorder, he has to be on top and refuses to lose. When rejected, he will stop at nothing to get what he wants, and when Gon-woo rejects his offer to fight with him in his ring,

The villains in Bloodhound Season 2 are not comparable to Myeong-gil, but they are a different kind of evil.

Baek-jeong unleashes hell on the precious muscle man and everyone he cares for. You can probably guess where the rest of Bloodhounds Season 2 goes from here, as the story follows a familiar formula of a man trying to get out of being dragged back into the fray.

The thing is, compared to last season, the stakes don’t reach the same levels in Bloodhounds Season 2. Part of this is, frankly, due to how Baek-jeong’s impulses lead to bigger, stupider decisions overall. He is concerned about the anonymity of his enterprise to a point, and outside of ruling his underlings (all arguably smarter and more capable than him) through fear, he doesn’t quite stoke the same level of awe as Myeong-il. 

However, he does represent a more common kind of evil. Every time his ego is threatened, he erupts. With each failure, he sees red, and while we never get to see much depth or range from Baek-jeong beyond general pissiness, this is a familiar man.

This is a bully, the kind who punches and punches and punches until you agree to whatever he demands, more prone to brute force attacks than patience and deadly precision. In this way, Baek-jeong and his crew are a different kind of enemy for Gon-woo and Woo-jin, and it’s one that requires a specific type of endurance.

As for our protagonists in Bloodhound Season 2, a slow-growing feeling of inadequacy takes hold of the group as the series progresses. This is a group still reeling from injuries sustained in the previous season, some of which ended careers, like Woo-jin, and led to permanent disability, as it did for Kang Tae-yeong (Park Ye-ni).

Even when it seems like the group has an upper hand, with the help of their high-profile connections, Chaebol Hong Min-beom (Choi Si-won) and Min Kang-yong (Choi Young-joon), the leader of the Serious Crime Investigation Unit, writer/director Jason Kim reminds us that no one is safe from harm in this world he’s adapting.

The protagonists face their own challenges, still not having recovered from Myeong-gil’s impact.

Despite the villains being less intelligent than Myeong-gil, they face a group of protagonists who have been out of the defensive zone for five years. Even as their bodies and minds still carry the weight of trauma from the previous season, the group had found a sense of normalcy and comfort. Against Baek-jeong and his group, each faces their own battle to find their strength and overcome what’s holding them back. That said, some get less focus than others. 

For example, part of the draw of Bloodhounds was the dynamic between Gon-woo and Woo-jin. They were on roughly equal playing fields in Season 1. However, in Bloodhounds Season 2, the differences between the two are astounding. Gon-woo is a champion, and Woo-jin has been essentially forgotten.

This plays out in how Woo-jin is written this season. He is sidelined and gets notably less screen time than Gon-woo. The time we do spend focuses on his feelings of failure and inadequacy. Unfortunately, the reduced screen time doesn’t help his final moment of triumph hit as hard as it could have.

There’s also the issue of how the newer characters are introduced and developed in Bloodhounds Season 2. All of the returning characters have the natural benefit of the history they carry over from the previous season.

They connect more easily with the audience, which makes several key moments throughout the new season resonate. However, one new character is introduced halfway through but never developed onscreen, making many of the more intentionally emotional moments miss the mark. Of course, I’m talking about Kang-yong’s junior, Lee Woo-jeong (Cha Ji-hyuk).

Frankly, Woo-jeong added nothing to Bloodhounds Season 2 outside of reacting to the horrifying losses the protagonists sustained in the season’s latter half. We don’t get a grasp of who he is as a person, except that he is new to the team.

Part of this lack of development is due to the writing; there are no real scenes written in to peel back the layers of this new character. However, Cha Ji-hyuk might not have enough skill to improve his performance beyond what he’s been given. 

Similarly, new character Premium (Park Seo-joon) is introduced around the same time as Woo-jeong. Yet, his character benefits from the mystery of his position. Brief expositional dialogue paints a picture of the characters’ skill set, but with just a loaded stare, Park Seo-joon shows us even more clearly that this is not a man to be trifled with.

Both Woo-jeong and Premium are new characters to Bloodhounds Season 2, but you can see how one character benefits from more specific expositional buildup over the more vague “rookie” moniker. With little time to spare to maintain the series’s breakneck pace, these details make all the difference.

For anyone concerned that the action might take similar hits in Bloodhound Season 2, don’t worry. The action is bigger, better, and faster than ever before. No two fighters fight the same way, making each fighter we encounter unique and unpredictable in each fight scene.

Bloodhounds Season 2 takes the action to new levels.

For Jung Ji-hoon, Woo Do-hwan, and Lee Sang-yi, the work they’ve put into crafting their characters’ boxing styles in the ring shows their dedication, as well as the attention to detail Jason Kim has prioritized. In a series that has always spotlighted the fights, this matters. 

Speaking of things that matter, make sure you stick around for the post-credits. Where Bloodhounds Season 2 initially ends might seem underwhelming (and it is, let’s be real), it only serves as a set-up for the post-credits.

The groundwork is laid down for a potential third season in these final moments onscreen, and, in all honesty, hints at a bigger bad that, if handled properly, will be even scarier than Myeong-gil ever was. Of course, this is conjecture, but it does whet the palette for the future of this series.

Bloodhounds Season 2 is a fast, action-packed race from start to finish. Yet, throughout the course of the season’s run, it never quite matches up to the same stakes or intensity of its predecessor. It’s still entertaining, and it is so good to see our favorite duo pop up onscreen, yet something feels lacking from the story. If the series follows through on a third season, it can’t just be all about the action. The story has to match up in kind, too. 

Bloodhounds Season 2 is now streaming exclusively on Netflix.