When the South Korean drama Squid Recreation hit Netflix in 2021, the present turned a bona fide cultural phenomenon. The story of individuals in debt competing to the dying for an enormous money prize appeared like nothing else on tv, juxtaposing candy-colored youngsters’s video games with horrifying hyper-violence. Squid Recreation quickly turned forest-green tracksuits into a stylish Halloween costume. It helped enter the phrase dalgona—the sugary deal with utilized in one of many contests—into the pop-culture lexicon. It was parodied on Saturday Night time Reside. For weeks after I watched, I couldn’t get the homicide doll’s music through the first contest, Crimson Gentle, Inexperienced Gentle, out of my head.
The second season, now streaming, begins the place the primary ended: with the sport’s newest winner, Seong Gi-hun (performed by Lee Jung-jae), selecting to not board the aircraft out of South Korea that may have reunited him along with his household. As a substitute, he threatens Hwang In-ho (Lee Byung-hun), the event’s supervisor often called the “Entrance Man,” over the cellphone. As he hails a cab, Gi-hun warns In-ho that he’ll discover him and cease the video games—however In-ho is unperturbed. “You’ll remorse your determination,” he coolly replies.
I started having regrets of my very own as I made my approach by means of Season 2. Gi-hun’s revenge quest is, for probably the most half, the other of thrilling. The present’s tedious opening hours depict him as a recluse who has employed a set of incompetent males to seek out the video games’ slap-happy recruiter (Gong Yoo). They’re monitoring each subway station in Seoul within the hopes of coming throughout him, however none of Gi-hun’s workers is aware of precisely what their goal appears to be like like. Gi-hun isn’t a dependable boss both; he’s too paranoid to go to the stations himself. Even teaming up with Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon), the police detective who found that the Entrance Man was his personal brother final season, to trace down the island the place the competitors occurred yields a monotonous search. With out the sadistic video games happening, the present lacks momentum.
After which—and that is solely a spoiler should you haven’t seen a single trailer—Gi-hun winds up again in that tracksuit, reliving his worst nightmare. It’s a neat trick: Season 2 withholds the lethal occasions simply lengthy sufficient for viewers to yearn for his or her return, making them ponder whether they’re really on the protagonist’s aspect. Because of this, when the video games do start, they make for an excellent uneasier watch than earlier than. Season 1 framed the event as a simple allegory for the punishing lure of monetary misery, rendering even the greediest characters as sympathetic to an extent. Season 2 isn’t as totalistic; it additional blurs the strains between the present’s victims and perpetrators. The sequence shows a meaner, extra crucial streak towards the cash-poor contributors this time round. It emphasizes how, as a lot because the capitalistic system could push folks to do rash issues for cash, the gamers themselves work to uphold such values. Thornier questions come up: Is it doable to beat cruelty, avarice, and selfishness? And if not, do the gamers really should dwell?
To Gi-hun, the reply to each questions is a powerful “sure”—however the present appears to experience countering his perspective each time it could possibly. Even earlier than this season’s competitors begins, Squid Recreation argues that people will chase monetary achieve above all else with an interminable scene wherein the video games’ recruiter mocks unhoused folks for selecting lottery tickets over meals. Gi-hun reenters the competitors in an effort to dismantle it from the within and save his fellow gamers, however the present instantly underlines the futility of his try, with a contemporary, brutal spherical of Crimson Gentle, Inexperienced Gentle. In-ho, too, toys with Gi-hun’s perception within the goodness of humanity by ordering gamers to vote on whether or not to finish the massacre on the finish of every trial; in the event that they do, they stroll away with far much less money than they may have in the event that they continued on, as a result of each dying improves their probabilities of touchdown the jackpot. These deliberations unfold time and again, they usually’re not particularly enjoyable to look at: Gi-hun sees every election as a chance to persuade gamers that, collectively, they’ll defy each the temptation of the prize cash and the sport makers. Every time, he fails.
Nonetheless, the present’s newest lineup of trials permits it to return to kind. Every contest is extra diabolical and intriguing than these Gi-hun had skilled in his first go-round. The violence is extra over-the-top, the visuals extra absurd. And in contrast to Season 1’s hopscotch-like glass bridge and biscuit-carving problem, which relied totally on an individual’s particular person luck, Season 2’s alternatives are extra depending on interpersonal abilities from the beginning, requiring the gamers to kind alliances and rivalries instantly. As such, the contests themselves assist increase the brand new characters past their preliminary archetypal trappings: The pregnant participant proves to be an asset. The wallflower being bullied by the obnoxious rapper has a callous aspect. One of many ubiquitous pink-suited troopers would possibly even care concerning the rivals. In Squid Recreation, folks are inclined to reveal who they are surely at their most determined.
In-ho appears to hope that by enjoying the video games once more, Gi-hun will uncover a shocking aspect to himself as effectively—and that doing so will break his spirit. The sequence shines most when the 2 share scenes, as a result of they’re diametrically opposed of their worldviews: In-ho is satisfied that persons are inherently heartless, whereas Gi-hun insists that they’ll select to be good.
When the season finale wrapped up with one more cliff-hanger, nonetheless, I discovered myself questioning whether or not the story had progressed in any respect. Squid Recreation was meant to be a restricted sequence; the primary season’s ambiguous ending merely underlined Gi-hun’s Pyrrhic victory. These new episodes simply emphasize the foolishness of his bravery, forcing him—and a batch of different gamers I’ve come to root for—to bear freshly excruciating checks. The present’s bleakness has all the time been fairly torturous to soak up, even when I couldn’t assist however maintain watching. However in Season 2, the gloom comes not solely from the violence. It comes from the present’s overindulgence in proving its personal protagonist improper.
