Season Two of Netflix Hit Loses Its Edge

It’s been 1,196 days since Netflix premiered, with little promotion and no critiques, an odd South Korean drama about financial desperation, bloodsport and childhood video games that rapidly grew to become one among its most-watched sequence.

That’s a protracted hiatus — even by the erratic launch requirements of post-COVID, post-strike tv — so I compelled myself to do a full Squid Game rewatch, fairly cautious of how the sequence’ stealthy tonal twists would play with the stress of expectations.

The nice shock was that the primary season of Hwang Dong-hyuk‘s present was equally efficient with out the aspect of shock. The darkish social satire, bleak stench of despair and nostalgic undercurrent nonetheless entertained me utterly. The one episode I initially disliked — the appropriately maligned “VIPs” — remained, for me, a cartoonish aberration.

The second season of Squid Sport is a radical letdown. It is going to be fascinating to see whether or not essentially the most disenchanted viewers are these craving solely a intelligent replica of what the primary season did so nicely or these demanding extra depth within the sequence’ mythology and world-building. As a result of by some means, over seven episodes, the second season of Squid Sport manages to do neither. It’s missing within the enjoyable and whimsy that stored the primary season from wallowing in its backdrop of distress, and completely missing in new particulars or insights on the character of the Sport.

The second season of Squid Sport is disappointing, nevertheless it isn’t terrible, and it isn’t a violation of what was profitable concerning the first season. (Netflix already did that with the competitors sequence Squid Sport: The Problem.) In fact, it’s barely a season in any respect. It’s a seven-episode build-up to a concluding third season that’s anticipated in 2025 — a protracted bridge missing the structural integrity to justify inevitable Empire Strikes Again comparisons from its defenders. As a substitute, it’s extra just like the glass bridge in “VIPs,” with Hwang and firm stepping on a pane of untempered glass and falling by way of.

The second season, as with the primary, solely written and directed by Hwang, begins the place we left off within the first season finale: Lee Jung-jae‘s Gi-hun, soul crushed regardless of profitable 45.6 billion within the Sport, eschews a aircraft ticket to the U.S. to see his daughter and, as a substitute, vows to search out the elusive Entrance Man (Lee Byung-hun) and put an finish to the Sport for good.

The plot leaps ahead two years. with Gi-hun continues to be looking for any approach to entry the Entrance Man or the Sport. His main goal is the Recruiter (Gong Yoo), who within the first season discovered him on a subway platform, lured him into more and more violent rounds of the sport “ddakji,” after which introduced him with the cardboard to take part within the Sport. The Recruiter will not be simple for Gi-hun to search out.

In the meantime, police officer Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon), final seen as he was shot by the Entrance Man, who turned out to be the cop’s brother, is alive and dealing a much less demanding beat in site visitors enforcement. In his spare time, he’s struggling to search out proof proving that there’s a Sport on the market wherein strange folks play childhood video games to the loss of life underneath the leering gaze of animal-masked VIPs.

Finally, you recognize Gi-hun will make it again to the island and into the Sport. You recognize that as a result of it’s the one factor that makes any sense and since that’s what Netflix has been aggressively selling. However the period of time it takes for that reset to happen? Holy cow, it’s for much longer than you’re anticipating. 

Squid Sport‘s first season had its personal deliberate tempo Its pilot is greater than half-finished earlier than the primary spherical of Pink Gentle, Inexperienced Gentle, after which the second episode is basically game-free. However that point is devoted to creating viewers perceive the extent of desperation felt not solely by Gi-hun, however the entire characters, manifesting the up to date financial inequality in South Korea. 

The second season takes two full episodes to get again into the Sport, however what that point establishes isn’t as common as “Right here’s a man who has hit all-time low.” It’s “Right here’s a man who needs season two of a TV present.” For 2 hours, it seems like Squid Sport is setting the season as much as have Gi-hun and Jun-ho — who met solely briefly final season — come collectively to work in tandem. However by the third episode, Jun-ho is again to being a distraction. On my rewatch, I discovered that I remembered 90 % of Gi-hun’s plot and 5 % of Jun-ho’s plot. That persists right here; the character is a momentum-killer and nothing else.

You recognize Gi-hun is getting again into the Sport, and it’s negligent narrativizing to have it take so lengthy for him to get there. However as soon as he will get there, it forces a elementary shift onto the Sport that the sequence isn’t sensible sufficient to deal with. 

The elemental irony of the Sport, as introduced initially, is that it’s grotesque, however in an unfair world it’s essentially truthful. The Entrance Man turns a blind eye to black market organ harvesting, however what actually pisses him off is when he learns that a few of the pink-clad guards have been telling a participant which video games are upcoming. 

However returning Gi-hun to the Sport eliminates the fairness and transforms it from a 456-player competitors wherein every participant is the hero of their very own tragic story right into a 1-person, elaborately staged lesson wherein 455 gamers are there to take part in and be killed for Gi-hun’s punishment. Is that fittingly nihilistic? Positive! Is it almost as satisfying? Not even shut. The opposite particular person members get no flashbacks this time round and so they barely get tales. They’re tragic character sorts: a former soldier (Park Sung-hoon’s Hyun-ju) seeking to full her gender transition; a mom (Kang Ae-shim’s Geum-ja) and son (Yang Dong-geun’s Yong-sik) seeking to repay his playing money owed; a former crypto-bro (Im Si-Wan’s Myung-gi) who went belly-up and his ex-girlfriend (Jo Yu-ri’s Jun-hee), who can also be pregnant.

As a substitute of laying the muse for character relationships constructed throughout the sport, the second season is full of pre-existing relationships — together with the one between the rapper (Choi Seung-hyun’s Thanos) bankrupted by Myung-gi’s crypto scheme and Jung-bae (Lee Website positioning-hwan), one other of Gi-hun’s mates from the skin. The drama is built-in and subsequently much less earned.

The Sport, as soon as Gi-hun is there, may be very related. There’s no proof that anyone has given the M.C. Escher day-glo set a contemporary coat of paint, and the brand new video games themselves really feel barely on-theme. In some unspecified time in the future within the first season, everyone banters concerning the numerous childhood video games that might be performed subsequent, however even with so many to select from Hwang already feels stretched skinny.

By that commonplace, you nearly perceive why the Sport turns into an afterthought within the season’s new evolution. Hwang clearly obtained the message that folks didn’t love the VIPs themselves and so they’re nowhere to be seen this season. Someway, although, he additionally obtained the concept that what folks loved most was the a part of the pilot when gamers voted on whether or not or to not finish the sport. A brand new rule has gamers voting each single competitors, and the voting course of completely takes as a lot display screen time because the video games themselves, with no comparable payoff. If I’m being beneficiant, I can clarify the way it turns into a commentary on how ceaselessly democracy forces folks to vote in opposition to their pursuits, both as people or a collective, which could be utilized to South Korea however actually any democracy. It’s some extent that’s made after which repeated into tedium.

Democracy, the sequence argues, is grim. And every little thing throughout the present has turn into grim. Lee Jung-jae received an Emmy for the primary season in a task characterised by live-wire dexterity. Every thing in Lee’s efficiency was massive, from broad comedy to broad tragedy, reconciled completely by the tip. Whereas Lee is an efficient sufficient actor to make Gi-hun’s one-note haunted facet a becoming growth of the character, he’s much less fascinating because of this. Apart from Choi, who makes Thanos wildly unpredictable and vibrant (if by no means near an actual particular person), each new character seems like a lesser alternative for any individual we misplaced the primary time round and the sequence suffers vastly from the absence of O Yeong-su’s wily Il-nam, Jung Ho-yeon’s deeply tormented Sae-byeok and extra. 

Of the brand new faces, Jo and Kang come shut to creating their characters memorable. And if you happen to don’t have memorable characters, there’s no impression in killing them off. So, up till the sixth episode — for me, the one new episode that matched the visceral impact of the primary season — there’s a number of bloodshed, no impression. 

That’s with out entering into the questionable selections associated to cis actor Park Sung-hoon taking part in a thinly developed trans character. I can utterly settle for and acknowledge that merely together with a trans character in any respect for a drama produced in South Korea is boundary-pushing in a big means. However for a global tv present in 2024, there are fundamental expectations that it falls quick. Each issues could be true.

Equally, it may be true that a lot of the classes that Hwang seems to have taken from the primary season have been misapplied, however I stay curious as as to whether a lot of the extra inventive parts and format-shaking twists and revelations could be saved for the the third season. What was primally thrilling concerning the sequence’ premise hasn’t been misplaced solely (the juice generated by the sixth episode confirms that); the type stays intact, if stagnating; and Lee’s efficiency stays sturdy, if much less entertaining than what attracted audiences within the first place. 

It’s not a elementary stage on which Squid Sport is damaged, however season two merely doesn’t work.