A Netflix TV Series, Created and Directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk

Like many fans of early 2000s Asian cinema, I fell in love with the dystopian “murder game” film Battle Royale, which is most likely why I like Squid Game so much. Despite being all but banned in the United States for nearly a decade (because of Columbine supposedly), I managed to snag a shoddy bootleg “gray market” DVD on eBay. In a way, the movie’s illicit status only added to its mythology, making it feel even more iconic and underground. When I later heard that a sequel was in the works, I was ecstatic – until I actually watched it. Like many film aficionados, I quickly realized that Battle Royale II: Requiem was an absolute disaster. It replaced the original’s sharp social commentary on youth exploitation with a strange, pro-9/11, anti-American agenda that completely missed the point of the first film. Watching the characters march off to Afghanistan at the end as if it were some utopia was baffling. It’s no wonder this sequel is so universally loathed. That said, I might need to revisit both films here someday and give them proper reviews.

Now you’re probably wondering, “Hey! Isn’t this a review of Squid Game 2?” Yes, it is, but I had to lay all that out to explain my initial concerns. Squid Game was a phenomenon, much like Battle Royale. It was a cultural lightning rod that took the world by storm with little initial promotion from Netflix. Despite this, it became an instant hit, offering scathing satire on wealth inequality at a time when tech billionaires have seemingly taken over the world, making the robber barons of old blush in comparison. So, naturally, I wondered how they could possibly top it. Would Squid Game Season 2 up the ante? would it live up to the same cultural benchmark as its predecessor? It’s a complicated answer – a bit of yes and a bit of no – but in my opinion, that’s actually a good thing.

In the opening moments of Squid Game 2, viewers catch up with the lives of two survivors from the 33rd Squid Game, now two years removed from the events that turned their worlds upside down. Hwang Jun-ho (played by Wi Ha-joon), the determined policeman who infiltrated the games in search of his missing brother, only to discover that his brother was running them, and Seong Gi-hun (played by Lee Jung-jae), the sole winner of the games, now bent on revenge. Gi-hun has used a significant portion of his prize money to hire his former debt collectors and their crew to track down the elusive “recruiter” responsible for pulling countless players into the deadly competition. Meanwhile, Jun-ho, left for dead after being shot and falling into the sea, has enlisted the very captain who rescued his comatose body to search for the island where it all unfolded. Both men are consumed by their obsession with dismantling the sinister masterminds and the VIPs who sustain the horrifying games.

After a pretty harrowing ordeal, Gi-hun goes back into the games to be a hero. He has delusions of being the person that rallies everyone around himself to unanimously take all of the guards and The Front Man down. He envisions a role as a wise mentor that many will flock behind, but you know what happens? Practically the exact opposite. Gi-hun is labeled as a fraud, a crazy person, or perhaps a man in league with the powers that be. Those that even believe his story that he is a previous game winner see him as problematic or an obstacle in their way of winning all of that money, because when faced with a task such as food or a lottery ticket, or in this case a little bit of money and freedom or the hope of that big payoff, far too many people stick with the games, betting against all odds that they are going to be the ones to win it all.

There is also a new element of voting to end or continue the games after every game, causing drama between those that want to continue and those that do not, as well as showing just how terrible human nature and greed can be.

The Front Man, intrigued by this volunteer re-insertion into the games, not only changes the games up, making Gi-hun look like even more of a fraud as he tries to tell others that he knows the games, only to be met with different ones, but he himself jumps into the 001 uniform and enters the games as well. Somehow, some way, Gi-hun decides to trust this new 001, who throws red flags out constantly, yet again despite what happened the last time. Sure, Gi-hun has trained to be Korean Batman, but he still is the same person that got in trouble gambling all his money away in the past. He is too confident, misjudges his insight and skill, and misses the obvious. Sensing his failure, Gi-hun eventually lets all of his morals collapse and willingly allows many people to be sacrificed as a way to attempt to take over the games control center, which is clearly a huge desperation move when his original plan became hopeless. Did he give up on hope? Humanity? Hopefully season three goes into this.

I actually appreciated this portrayal of Gi-hun because he’s far from the picture-perfect, infallible hero archetype we often see in similar stories. Characters like Katniss from The Hunger Games, for example, can sometimes feel overly polished or “too perfect,” which makes them less interesting. Gi-hun, on the other hand, is deeply flawed. He makes an enormous series of mistakes throughout the story, and then, at a certain point, seemingly throws caution to the wind and starts using everyone around him as pawns in his singular mission to take the games down. It’s a bold and layered approach to character writing that I think a lot of viewers misunderstood or overlooked entirely.

Speaking of that, while it seems like this show has been generally liked, I can see that there is a strand of “reviewers” that seemed to only like the first season for how violent it was, and lost their minds when faced with a slower, more dramatic character-driven turn here. It takes nearly two full episodes for Gi-hun to even set foot on the mysterious island where the games are held, and for most people that was far too much. In my opinion, if the show had simply rehashed the same tropes from season one, it would have ended up as a boring retread. Similarly, if it had gone the route of making the games bigger, badder, and more deadly, it would have risked glorifying the violence, which goes completely against the core message of the series. Instead, by letting the games themselves take a backseat to the backstory, the inner workings of the island, and the human drama unfolding around them, Squid Game 2 feels like it’s building toward something much bigger. This deliberate shift in focus seems to be setting up an enormous payoff for season three.

speaking of games, if you are wondering what games are featured in Squid Game 2, here is a list:

• Rock, Paper, Scissors Minus One: In this two-handed variant, one player will shout “minus one” after the initial play. Each player removes one hand, and the winner is decided by the remaining hands in play.
• Russian Roulette: One bullet is loaded into the chamber of a revolver, the player has a one in six chance of death.
• Red Light, Green Light: A return of the iconic game from the first season, where players had to move towards a finish line when “Green Light” was called and freeze during “Red Light,” with any detected movement during “Red Light” resulting in elimination.
• “Six-Legged Pentathlon”
  • Ddakji: Players used folded paper tiles to flip their opponent’s tile on the ground, a game that tests both strength and technique.
  • Flying Stone: Contestants threw stones into a designated area, testing their aim and control. Precision was key to avoiding elimination.
  • Gong-gi: A game similar to jacks, where players tossed small pebbles into the air and attempted to catch them in specific sequences, demanding dexterity and timing.
  • Spinning Top: Participants competed by spinning tops.
  • Jegi: a game similar to hackey-sack with a ball covered in streamers

• Mingle: Contestants stand on a rotating platform with childish carousel music playing. At various intervals a speaker will announce a number, contestants must then form up into groups that size and head for an ever decreasing selection of safe doors. Too many or too few people? Dead. Outside of the doors? Dead.
• Lights Out: A brawl instigated by the gamemasters that is designed to sow discord in the group and cull the herd. This time around, this “game” is used in Gi-hun’s plan to attack the game itself.

In conclusion, Squid Game 2 subverts expectations in a good way. I’m not usually a fan of filmmakers going against what makes a genre film by doing the opposite (Star Wars the Last Jedi is a great example of that), but I feel the bigger risk here would’ve been just making the same show twice. Everyone expected heroic Gi-Hun to dominate and mastermind an uprising, foiling the Front Man at every turn. What we got was much better – Gi-Hun becoming no better than the Front Man.

He could have easily used his vast fortune to help his fellow Koreans – feeding the homeless, stopping gambling addiction, setting up charities, and more. Instead, he’s using human lives to make a point, and I know his actions will come back to bite him. Seeing that the bunkhouse has a picture of a chessboard on the wall, presumably a game yet played, I can envision a human chess game between Gi-Hun and the Front Man coming into play, and that will be amazing and show just how misguided our so-called hero is. Overall, I loved Squid Game 2. Sure, it doesn’t have the shock value that season one did, but I feel everyone made the right choices and created something better than I expected.