On December 26, the second season of the South Korean thriller Squid Game was released, following up the uber-popular first season released back in September of 2021.
The show depicts people with heavy debt participating in childhood-mimicking games to compete for 45.6 billion won, with one minor twist: if a player is eliminated, they are killed. Throughout these horrid chances at redemption, rich VIPs are betting on the winners of each game.
During the show, players are given many chances to leave and return to their lives, claiming the accumulated money up until that point, if a majority votes to do so. The fact that, for many, competing in death games for money is preferable to living in debt feels dystopian, yet incredibly resonant with certain societies today.
The first season sits at 95 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and brought Netflix 900 million dollars, cementing Squid Game as their most profitable series to date.
“The producers did a really good job promoting the show,” explains Theo Neri (V). “The first season was good, so why not watch the second?”
In the second season, the big winner of the first season, Seong Gi-hun, is spending all of his money to track and take down the Squid Games. After confronting the Front Man, who runs the games, he agrees to be sent back as a contestant.
When asked about how the second season compares to the first, Johnny Liang (III) shares, “I liked the diversity […] and the action-type thing [in Season Two].”
Although Season Two’s characters aren’t able to reach the highs of Season One’s, the new group of characters is incredibly diverse and works well together, including Jung Bae, a character who made a quick appearance in Season One as Gi-hun’s close friend. Although Cho Hyun-joo parallels the character of Oh Il-nam (in Season One), as both are elders who attempt to lighten the mood throughout the show by caring for the contestants, she has completely different motives: to pay off her son’s debt.
The show introduces some new ideas as well. Choi Su-bong, or Thanos, played by Choi Seung-Hyun, is a fan favorite, being a bodacious rapper that got caught up in a crypto scam. Actor Choi Seung-Hyun was a K-pop idol in South Korean boy band Big Bang and got sentenced to prison in 2016 for smoking cannabis at home. His appearance in this show serves as his return into Korea’s entertainment industry.
In this season, the Front Man decides to participate in the game in an effort to stop Gi-hun’s operation to shut down the games. The games also take a different, more cooperative direction this season. Aside from “Red Light, Green Light,” these games are completely different from the ones presented within Season One. When asked about what he thought of the games in Season Two, Mack Losi (IV) immediately shares: “The six-legged race was very interesting, and the Front Man snapping someone’s neck during mingle was pretty metal.”
The ending of the show is considered less appealing, however. Neri shares, “The ending was kind of predictable as the Front Man was always going to be bad, so it wasn’t that much of a surprise.”
Although the second season of Squid Game may not reach the thrill and sensation as Season One, it does everything a good sequel should by trying new ideas that iterate upon things that initially worked and adding new ideas to the table. Given the fact that Season Two was written in three years, in comparison to the decade it took Season One to air, it is a relatively big success.