If you loved “Squid Game,” you know Seong Gi-hun’s journey couldn’t end with just one season.
For one, the show is just too popular. Netflix couldn’t resist continuing it, whether it needed it or not.
There’s also no way Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) could be content with sitting on his big pile of money, knowing that the deadly games he was a part of last season are still going on.
In fact, that’s the driving force behind Season 2. Despite being the sole survivor and victor of the games, he has no peace. He can’t sleep, and he obsesses over finding the games’ organizers and putting an end to them once and for all.
He even hires his former loan shark, Mr. Kim (Kim Pub-lae) to find the games’ recruiter (Gong Yoo), who is his key to getting back inside. It takes some time, but he’s ultimately successful.
Gi-hun’s face-off with the recruiter is easily the best part of the series. This season, Gi-hun is not only aiming to stop the games, he wants to dismantle everything they stand for. The recruiter, on the other hand, embraces the games and is a firm believer in how it levels the playing field for anyone to succeed.
This leads to a wonderfully written, acted and directed scene in which Gi-hun and the recruiter play roulette with a revolver, in which they stick it in their mouths until it kills one of them. It’s remarkably tense, and once the recruiter hands him the gun, Gi-hun is free to leave and kill him — but if he does so, he’ll have to admit that he is no better than the “trash” that enter the game.
He could ignore the recruiter’s words. But it would mean sacrificing his principles.
And so, Gi-hun is inclined to prove him wrong by beating him at his own game, which segues into him reentering the games as a contestant.
Back in the games
Having Gi-hun return to the deadly competition seen in the first season is a trope for sure of sequels to battle royal stories, but the show handles it quite well.
As expected, there’s a new cast of contestants. There’s Player 333 (Yim Si-wan), a cryptocurrency influencer whose financial decisions led himself and others to ruin. Player 120 (Park Sung-hoon) is a transgender contestant who is also a military veteran, who serves as a loyal ally to Gi-hun.
There’s also a mother/son duo in players 149 (Kang Ae-sim) and 007 (Yang Dong-geun), likely there to humanize the contestants and crack the games’ artificial barbarity.
A shaman even joins the crew via Player 044 (Chae Kuk-hee).
But the top three new players are easily players 390 (Lee Seo-hwan), 001 (Lee Byung-hun) and 230 (Choi Seung-hyun), who also goes by Thanos.
390, whose real name is June-bae, is Gi-hun’s longtime friend who fell into hard times. Like Player 120, he also has military experience that comes in handy.
Player 001 is revealed early to the audience as the game’s front man. He inserts himself into Gi-hun’s group to sabotage him. I actually don’t hate how this was done, though I admit it’s predictable and the reuse of the 001 number was lazy (in Season 1, the creator of the games also posed as a player and used that number).
Thanos, however, is integral to this season and serves as a driving foil to Gi-hun, who tries to convince people to abandon the games.
The games take advantage of people in dire financial straits and take place on an unspecified and secure private island to entertain anonymous rich and powerful benefactors. After each round, more prize money is put into a pot, which is evenly split up among the surviving contestants. The more people die, the larger the share for everyone.
However, at the end of each game, the contestants are allowed to vote to continue or end the games, which the guards honor (in Season 1, the games were actually suspended for a time).
Gi-hun sways some to his side because he’s a natural leader and, as a previous champion, he offers insights nobody else has, even if the games are a little different than last time. But Thanos plays into their worst instincts.
In fact, Thanos is outright psychopathic. He’s also a buffoon that’s hard to take seriously, until he successfully sways people to his side (much like President Donald Trump).
As expected, the deranged and cruel first flock to Thanos’ side to continue the games. But what puts him over the edge every time is his ability to convince those riding the line that this is the only way to get them out of their financial holes. These people convince themselves that they’ll stay in long enough to pay off their debts. The issue is, none of them knows when to call it quits.
Even so, the votes are remarkably divided, often decided by only a handful of people. This weaves great suspense in, but also draws parallels to the recent U.S. presidential election; sometimes desperate people are willing to flock to a dubious demagogue who promises to fix everything because they have nothing left to lose.
“Squid Game” is still a force to be reckoned with. Lee hasn’t lost a beat, and the show’s writing and direction are still as sharp as ever. It remains to be one of the best produced shows on TV.
However, it is firmly below Season 1 for myriad factors.
For one, no one is able to match Lee’s performance like Oh Yeong-su was able to do as the original Player 001.
It’s also held back by being an incomplete story lacking any proper resolution. Spoilers: We don’t even finish this iteration of the games; it ends on a cliffhanger.
This makes it feel more like a half a season of television than a complete one. We didn’t get Season 2 here; we got Season 2, Part 1, except Netflix declined to label it as such.
I still highly recommend it. But don’t expect a near-perfect ending like Season 1.
“Squid Game” Season 2 gets a 9/10
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