Squid Game Season 2 Review: A Compelling Sequel, But The First Season Remains Unbeatable!
The most anticipated Korean series Squid Game Season 2 finally landed on the Netflix platform. Just over three years ago Squid Game made its debut on Netflix. It was exactly September 17, 2021, when what looked like a strange but curious South Korean series turned into an unprecedented phenomenon. The survival game created by Hwang Dong-hyuk has become not only a worldwide success but, even today, holds two records: it is the most viewed non-English language series ever on Netflix, and its director, screenwriter, and producer made history by becoming the first Asian to win an Emmy for Best Director in a drama series. Today, this K-Drama that paved the way for the success of the South Korean series in the West has also returned to the streaming platform with its second highly anticipated season marking the return on the small screen of one of the most powerful serial stories of the last few years that has changed forever the way to make TV series and to use them.
Many times, one wonders about the need or not to carry on a story, especially in modern seriality and especially when a story touches us so deeply. With Squid Game, which in 2021 gave birth to a real cult phenomenon, this question arose naturally at the end of an excellent first season. It was understandable that Netflix still wanted to take advantage of the show’s resounding success, but the fears that the production would not be able to replicate the impact of its first edition were concrete. For Squid Game Season 2, you must inevitably make a double speech: the novelty effect of the first season is nuanced, but the general design set up by the creator Hwang Dong-hyuk called to himself, in fact, the need for a real conclusion. And with good reason Squid Game Season 2 something to tell has it, although this new season falls into a rather obvious trap: diluting the narration very much, to drag itself toward a third chapter that puts a point in the game of squid.
Squid Game Season 2 Review: The Story Plot
Three years have passed since Squid Game Season 1, but despite this, the second season does not offer discounts to the viewer: it starts right from where the story stopped in 2021, with Seong Gi-hun giving up leaving his old life behind to devote himself to one and only goal, stopping the games. The Squid Game Season 2 incipit, then, wastes no time and catapults us forward through a short but significant time skip that adds further pathos to the character played by Lee Jung-Jae: Gi-Hun practically dedicated his life, in the years following the victory in the game, to investigate the mysterious figure of the Recruiter, to find a way to return to the island on which the carnage takes place. Things move when he manages to find precious allies, get back on the trail of the equally enigmatic Frontman, and finally get what he wants: to get back into the game, to sabotage him from the inside. We then return to play, in a similar but different adventure: from this point of view, Squid Game Season 2 manages to remain faithful to the atmosphere of the past edition and, at the same time, to propose something new.
It is interesting, for example, the role of player 456, who this time has more awareness of his means and exploits what he knows to save as many people as possible: Seong is no longer a protagonist victim of events, but in all respects a sort of hero, who with his experience becomes a real leader. But the protagonist still has to deal with a lot of stray mines: above all, the unpredictability of games, largely different from those of the past, but above all on the new string of competitors. All desperate outcasts of society who, just as he did, participate in the deadly game in the hope of changing their existence for the better. From a point of view of structure, and perspective, Squid Game Season 2 has a more articulated plot: we are shown not only the point of view of the players but also a more in-depth look at their counterparts. Among the main subplots there is in fact that of a Guard, a novelty that joins the identity of the Frontman (we discovered it at the end of Season 1) and that allows to expand the knowledge on the “mythology” of the series.
Squid Game Season 2 Review and Analysis
For Squid Game Season 2 replicating the genius, originality, and unpredictability of the first season was practically impossible. This new standard chapter is less beautiful, less captivating, and less surprising than the previous one. And the “fault” of this is both ours – now, as an audience, we already know what awaits us from the story – and from the same series which, although rightly changed in this new version, has not been able to renew itself without changing too much and to keep his identity firmly in change. But we expected this a little. After all, success changes, the expectations of the public change, and there is more pressure in wanting – and having to – to satisfy a very wide spectrum of spectators but there is also behind the shadow of a company that aims for a very high budget on a title from which the repetition of a great success is claimed. And this, you want, or you don’t want, conditions.
The first “weak point” of Squid Game Season 2 is that it has not held up to the pressure of having to become the new serial phenomenon of the moment undergoing a clear process of westernization in its structure which has led the series to be increasingly similar to the products that we are used to seeing on the small screen. And so, he took a step back coming to miss one of the most interesting and distinctive features of this story, that is, to be different because it is strongly linked to the culture and the place of origin. Which a title, always South Korean, like The 8 Show instead, he managed. Obviously with far fewer expectations from the public and critics. There is a lot of action and much less attention to individual characters and their stories in these new episodes of the South Korean survival game, an element that makes this new season much more like a classic action thriller than an introspective, philosophical, and denunciation survival game social as it was in the early episodes.
There is less focus on the games that were distinctive features of the series and now become the least dominant element. This is a real shame, just as it is a pity not to focus enough on dialogues, breaks, digressions, and new characters in history to which the public can never become attached because they are not very thorough. Squid Game Season 2 is a series made more head than heart, perhaps more for “business need” than for real creative drive and it is also noticeable in the topics dealt with perfectly in line with all the rest of the Western titles debuted in this period on streaming platforms. And as undeniable as the good quality of this series and the creator’s commitment to trying to make a sequel to the previous chapter, this new part of the Squid Game story does not excite what was expected, it does not go deep enough and seems to want to focus everything on the rhythm, on the dynamism of the scenes, on the speed of the story that on the philosophical, reflective ideas, social issues that exist but are almost overshadowed by the action.
The team is precisely the keyword of the second season, even more than the first. The foul in which he could easily fall was to replicate the same narrative pattern that had made the fortune of the inaugural cycle. Fortunately, he managed to find a new way to present the games that participants will face, their development, and their dynamics. Just the greater awareness of Seong Gi-hun – and therefore of us spectators – proves to be a potential double-edged sword, because having already participated and won is not necessarily a good thing. After the first season massacre, the new seven episodes do not spare themselves (do not become attached to anyone) on corpses and bloody sequences, and above all they manage to characterize the participants quickly enough so as not to make the old ones regret. We become attached to their background, to the sad stories that brought them there.
Even if in parallel you would not want to see the story repeat itself. Following the sensational success of the series, fans of one such iconic show from having generated Halloween costumes, in addition to a maxi doll now recognizable, have become much more skilled. But even more easily bored, just like the so-called VIPs who created the game and sip champagne looking down on what’s going on. A disturbing mirror in which to look and to reflect. At the center, there are deadly pastimes that still take inspiration from the most famous Korean infant games as there One Two Three Stars. Squid Game represents the treason of childhood: you have to grow up and learn to take on your responsibilities. I color of the island, so lively for such a black story, is used again in a wise way, as well as some shots and machine movements, by the Emmy-winning director Hwang Dong-hyuk, who returns behind the camera to bring that nightmare back with his eyes open in front of the public.
A nightmare that however contains gods’ moments of hilarity compared to the past, which could make someone turn up their noses but at the same time represent the attempt of the human mind to defuse and exorcise a situation of extreme danger, faced with life and death. The same role plays in the soundtrack, which also works by contrast, and it would not have been possible otherwise for such a product. An allegory of the human condition and above all of the incredible ease with which its survival spirit and there greed win all too often on any other instinct and feeling, leading us to want to prevail over others as animals and not as thinking machines. In this, the new ending had an arduous task and, if at the level of tension, it does an excellent job, it leaves a bit of a bad taste in the mouth since having already announced a third and last season, it looks at that epilogue with a lucky twist that however leaves the doors of the games open. If you dare to return one last time.
Squid Game Season 2 has excellent ideas and elements that make this new season an effective and natural continuation of its previous iteration. But they are also the cross and delight of a plot that, with the passing of the episodes, gradually becomes quite predictable and cadenced by a fluctuating rhythm. It is not difficult to understand why: without making too many spoilers on the continuation of the story, Squid Game Season 2 is an important transition season, which opens many plots without really closing any of them, referring to the third and final chapter. The main theme of history remains fixed and central: a profound social complaint against the economic divide and class imbalance, a desperate and credible portrait of human greed, but above all a scream of very strong empathy and compassion, an increasingly inexorable descent into hell and total degradation in the name of survival and self-preservation. It is a message that is told through the new protagonists of the game, some in some ways even more interesting than the previous players.
And, as previously mentioned, everything is enhanced by a story that is also narrated through the gaze of the executioners, and not just the victims. The real problem is the space, often negligible, granted to many of these supporting actors, whose events and actions dilute the plot a lot, to lead the viewer to the big cliffhanger at the end of the seventh and final episode. And this is where Squid Game Season 2 undresses with that vaguely authorial patina it had in its first incarnation and yields to the enticements of the serial story with the most classic of stratagems: to lengthen the narration as much as possible, sometimes even repeating itself in connecting the events. It seems quite obvious that a broader and more complete picture we will have only with the vision of the third act, and it is equally clear that different aspects of the Squid Game narrative do not fully compare with the first season.
Knowing the identity of some characters – including villains – for example, makes some central junctions of the story quite predictable. Fortunately, though, the series still manages to “play” very well with tension, moving the suspense bar on the “when” rather than on the “thing”: we can predict very well what will happen in the season finale, but we are led to ask ourselves when certain elements will manifest themselves. On the other hand, from a staging point of view, Squid Game is still “tragically fun”: the series does not lose its touch in enhancing the most fascinating side of violence, pushing as much as possible on a visual frame as ever splatter. The presence of new games, compared to the last edition, adds further touches of panache: for the characters, since our player 456 will have to deal with situations never experienced before, and for the public, who will find different elements in this sense of freshness. Too bad that, in reality, compared to before games there are not many: because the plot takes place both inside and outside the island, taking on more thrillers and investigative tones, but above all because in Squid Game Season 2 – after all – the game is far from over. Indeed, it has just begun.
The real power of this season, in the face of some undoubtedly weak and confusing passages, if you are not a true fan of the saga, is that in the seven episodes of Squid Game two lives intertwine in a wacky and sick game of fate that makes you find victims and executioners, real or presumed, all with the same green suit and a number on the chest. If he leaves the role of Wi Ha-joon without particular emotions. Hwang Jun-Ho is a good-natured and determined detective who spends Season 1 looking for his missing brother, In-ho. When Jun-Ho finds out that In-ho is a competitor in the mysterious game, he goes undercover as a worker to find out more. The Jun-Ho who in the first season is horrified by what he finds and manages to escape from the Squid Game complex with the tests of the horrible competition, in the second round continues to search for the island without success. Although the first season ends with Jun-Ho refusing to surrender to his brother, In-ho shoots him and Jun-Ho falls off a cliff, apparently upon his death.
However, as the promo for Season 2 showed, Jun-Ho survived, and as we announced it will look forward to the cursed island at the end of his forces. His chapter, however, is so poorly told that it goes unnoticed. With great regret for a side story that I hope will find the space it deserves in the third season. The details of the pink suits are interesting. From the first season, we discovered that the games take place in a huge complex on a desert island somewhere off the Korean peninsula. They are an elaborate operation that requires bringing both workers and competitors. Workers wear pink suits with masks that hide both their identity and their worker status. From the lowest to the highest level: the rims are maintenance workers. Triangles are soldiers.
The squares are managers. Some of the workers have secondary hustle and bustle, collecting organs from deceased or dying competitors for sale on the black market. To guide them is the Front Man who supervises all Squid Game workers, making sure everything works smoothly in what is essentially a series of massacres. It also hosts wealthy men who come to watch the game in person, betting on results. The Front Man starts the first series as a mysterious figure, but in the end, we learn that he is the winner of the 28 ° round of Squid Games which took place in 2015. After winning, he was recruited to join the operation. His name is Hwang In-ho, and he is the brother of Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon). Its role will be one of the biggest surprises of this second season that promises more thrillers and blood (and, we assure you, it will not disappoint you from this point of view).
And what about the other players? While the number 456 tries to save their lives, the charm of the millionaire prize pool seems too difficult to resist. Where a certain 001 had managed in the first season to give players a second chance, the protagonists of this year’s arena – perhaps even more astronomical complicit debts – appear even more determined to win, exploding in episodes of frustration and anger over the “too few deaths”. It is the law of the game and enough to instill doubt in the spectator that the 456 player is just a Don Quixote, and that Squid Game is impossible to defend. But that’s how heroes are born … If we were to rate Squid Game Season 2, we wouldn’t be able to do it. And not because the series does not allow us to do it but because evaluating Squid Game is surreally impossible. Contemporary masterpieces, like and dislike at the same time always leave the viewer in doubt but with the perverse desires, as in the narrated game, to want me more and more.
Squid Game Season 2 Review: The Last Words
Squid Game Season 2 lives up to the tones of the previous season and carries on the main story by expanding a lot of perspectives and mythology. Unfortunately, it also falls into a series of somewhat trivial errors, above all the idea of diluting the narration a lot to drag up to a third (and hopefully conclusive) chapter. Fortunately, the playful element, both from a plot point of view and as regards the staging, remains a central element: in conclusion, the new season on Netflix will not have the same impact as its first iteration, but represents a solid confirmation. Don’t expect a Squid Game Season 2 masterpiece, just expect a series other than the chapter that preceded it. A beautiful but not exceptional series, one of those series that look with pleasure but do not leave their mark. Expect from Squid Game Season 2 a less South Korean and more “American” story but know that, despite this, the one created by Hwang Dong-hyuk remains a great series that did what it could to continue its story in style but succeeded only halfway.
Cast: Lee Jung-jae, Lee Byung-hun, Wi Ha-jun, Yim Si-wan, Kang Ha-neul, Park Sung-hoon, Yang Dong-geun
Creator: Hwang Dong-hyuk
Streaming Platform: Netflix
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 4/5 (four stars)
Squid Game Season 2 Review: A Compelling Sequel, But The First Season Remains Unbeatable! - Filmyhype
Director: Hwang Dong-hyuk
Date Created: 2024-12-26 15:13
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