The arrival of Squid Game in 2021 was met with overwhelming resonance and relevance. In a world ravaged by the pandemic which had shifted power structures, altered priorities for both individuals and institutions and given birth to an existential crisis which compelled many of us to question purpose and privilege, the South Korean series — that Netflix dropped with very little fanfare — may have spoken, much like the Oscar biggie Parasite, about the class chasm in that country as well as fast-growing debt and the perils of the rise of capitalism in the South Korean economy, but it found itself touching a chord with audiences across the world.
Squid Game’s appeal lay in a story tempered with a satirical edge, revolving around an almost-500 group of debt-ridden citizens willing to even put their lives on the line — and those unlucky dying a brutal death in the process — for a rich winning haul. The darkness of its theme was cushioned by the fun childhood games the contestants were made to play, all of them tinged with thrill and tension, in candy-coloured environs. The global success of Squid Game — courtesy its theme and treatment as well as the socio-economic issues it thrust into the spotlight — spawned a whole new pop-culture machinery, making it one of the biggest phenomenon in modern television history.
Greed propelled by need still forms the bedrock of Squid Game, which had its second season dropping on Netflix on Boxing Day. But the same is not true for the existence of Season 2. For starters, there was little need for a second season, its story and format inherently suited to a limited series. But the success of the first season made it a cash cow which needed to be milked.
That, of course, goes against the very grain of Squid Game’s biting and disdainful look at late-stage capitalism. In fact creator, Hwang Dong-hyuk had said that he wasn’t ready for a second outing, even though he ended things on a cliffhanger. So why did Hwang eventually agree to make more? “Money,” he bluntly told the BBC. “Even though the first series was such a huge global success, honestly I didn’t make much. So doing the second series will help compensate me for the success of the first one too.”
That has resulted in Squid Game 2 where, to be honest, the novelty has worn off. In fact, this is not a season at all; it acts like a bridge between Season 1 and Season 3 (that arrives next year) and doesn’t have much dividends for the viewer at the end of its seven episodes.
For starters, S2 has succumbed to streaming bloat. The episodes are stretched unnecessarily and it kicks into some kind of palpable action only in its third episode. Before that, one has to wade through a few hours of protagonist Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), who won the whopping prize money of 4.56 billion in Season 1, changing his mind about making a new life in the US and deciding to use the ‘blood money’ to band together a motley crew in order to stop the games from continuing. He finds an ally in Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon), the cop who has been in search of his brother. The idea, as has already been revealed in the trailer, is for Gi-hun to venture back into the game as a player and sabotage it from within, even as he attempts to uncover the identity of its kingpin known as the Frontman (Lee Byung-hun).
The problem with S2 is that everything in it has already been done in S1, and in most cases, done better. What felt like a new world in the first season is no longer so, with the players mostly being force-fitted into already familiar prototypes built to elicit certain emotions in the drama. These include, but are not limited to, a mother-son pair, a crypto addict, a former soldier awaiting gender-reassignment surgery, a pregnant youngster, a high-handed bully.... The games, an essential engagement trope in Season 1, are almost an afterthought here, with at least one of them repeated from the previous season.
One of the rare moves this season that helps to somewhat heighten the tension is the power, or so it seems, given to the players to vote in favour of staying or leaving the game at crucial points, which brings with it an insight into human psychology and the limitless abyss of greed.
Gi-hun continues to be the beating heart of Squid Game, with S2 once again ending on a note that naturally segues into a third season. For the makers, there is much to course correct in S3. For the sake of Squid Game fans. And for the sake of Squid Game itself.
