When the South Korean drama Squid Recreation hit Netflix in 2021, the present grew to become a bona fide cultural phenomenon. The story of individuals in debt competing to the dying for an enormous money prize seemed 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 classy 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 Evening Stay. For weeks after I watched, I couldn’t get the homicide doll’s track through the first contest, Purple Mild, Inexperienced Mild, 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 airplane out of South Korea that might have reunited him along with his household. As a substitute, he threatens Hwang In-ho (Lee Byung-hun), the event’s supervisor referred to as the “Entrance Man,” over the telephone. 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 manner via Season 2. Gi-hun’s revenge quest is, for essentially 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 came about yields a monotonous search. With out the sadistic video games occurring, the present lacks momentum.
After which—and that is solely a spoiler for those who 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 truly on the protagonist’s facet. Consequently, when the video games do start, they make for a good uneasier watch than earlier than. Season 1 framed the event as an easy allegory for the punishing entice of monetary misery, rendering even the greediest characters as sympathetic to an extent. Season 2 isn’t as totalistic; it additional blurs the traces between the present’s victims and perpetrators. The collection shows a meaner, extra crucial streak towards the cash-poor individuals this time round. It emphasizes how, as a lot because the capitalistic system might push individuals to do rash issues for cash, the gamers themselves work to uphold such values. Thornier questions come up: Is it attainable to beat cruelty, avarice, and selfishness? And if not, do the gamers truly should stay?
To Gi-hun, the reply to each questions is a convincing “sure”—however the present appears to enjoy countering his perspective each time it could actually. Even earlier than this season’s competitors begins, Squid Recreation argues that people will chase monetary acquire above all else with an interminable scene wherein the video games’ recruiter mocks unhoused individuals 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 Purple Mild, Inexperienced Mild. 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 possibilities of touchdown the jackpot. These deliberations unfold time and again, they usually’re not particularly enjoyable to watch: 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 choices are extra depending on interpersonal expertise from the beginning, requiring the gamers to kind alliances and rivalries immediately. As such, the contests themselves assist develop 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 facet. One of many ubiquitous pink-suited troopers may even care in regards to the opponents. In Squid Recreation, individuals are inclined to reveal who they are surely at their most determined.
In-ho appears to hope that by taking part in the video games once more, Gi-hun will uncover a shocking facet to himself as effectively—and that doing so will break his spirit. The collection 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, nevertheless, I discovered myself questioning whether or not the story had progressed in any respect. Squid Recreation was meant to be a restricted collection; 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 endure freshly excruciating checks. The present’s bleakness has at all times 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 unsuitable.
