Chances are you’ll ask your self, “Did the world need a ‘Squid Game 2?’” Hwang Dong-hyuk, who wrote and directed 2021‘s “Squid Game,” didn’t assume so initially, having devised the Korean Netflix collection as a single-season stand-alone. However success is a superb company intoxicant, and so Hwang has discovered one thing new to do with Lee Jung-jae‘s Seong Gi-hun (a.k.a. Player 456) and the secret island where luckless souls are murdered in the name of rich people’s enjoyable, below the pretense of enjoying a recreation.
You may additionally ask your self why a present with such a sadistic premise and content material has been such a worldwide hit, however maybe you’re the form of one that went to see “Saw X,” and are ready breathlessly for “Saw XI,” by which case that query will make no sense to you. Nor would you query the rationale behind final fall’s “Squid Game: The Challenge,” a U.Okay.-produced actuality competitors — additionally on Netflix — which can now be considered form of a curtain raiser to the sequel, premiering Thursday, to harsh your Christmas mellow. (Nobody was truly murdered in the middle of “The Challenge,” merely metaphorically.)
Not that I imply to indicate any form of qualitative or ethical equivalence between “Saw” and this. “Squid Game” was intelligently written, fantastically acted, properly directed; it had concepts and an ethical core — was even a little bit sentimental — with a hero who survives together with his humanity intact within the face of violence, decadence and corruption. Nonetheless, it’s not the form of present I’d care to observe twice.
As an alternative, I’ve watched its follow-up, professionally however with out grievance. As with most sequels, it’s — nearly by definition — much less important than the unique, whose conceits and M.C. Escher by the use of Fisher-Value settings it repeats. There are, in fact, new characters, lots of the outdated ones having died within the first go-round — I suppose I ought to add for anybody who hasn’t seen the primary collection, that it entails financially strapped residents lured into enjoying a collection of murderous variations of kids’s video games with an enormous money prize for the final particular person standing. There’s a rule by which the sport could also be stopped and the wealth shared, however you understand how persons are.
The conclusion of the primary season did indicate additional motion, although the implication was sufficient to go on with; ambiguity could be extra highly effective than closure. (We’ve in any case lived in that caesura for 3 years with no in poor health results.) It ended with Gi-hun, newly wealthy and presentable, about to board a flight to Los Angeles to see his daughter; glimpsing the Squid Sport recruiter often called the Salesman (Gong Yoo), he realizes the sport remains to be operating, turns again and walks towards the digicam, with an I’m-coming-for-you look of willpower. The brand new season picks up there, and focuses on Gi-hun’s campaign to destroy the sport as soon as and for all. There may be actually no different choice, dramatically talking, or consonant together with his character. And away we go.
Wi Ha-jun as Hwang Jun-ho in “Squid Game” Season 2.
(No Ju-han / Netflix)
Three years on, police detective Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon) awakens from a coma, having been shot on the finish of the primary collection by his just-unmasked stepbrother, Hwang In-ho (Lee Byung-hun) — a.okay.a. the Entrance Man, a former participant who now runs the sport. Having someway survived that and a fall into the ocean, Jun-ho has transferred from main crimes to the visitors division, for the readability it affords. (He can’t produce proof or the placement of the island, for which he has been looking in his off hours.)
Gi-hun, in the meantime, resides like a pauper, holed up in an empty fleabag resort he owns and refusing to spend any of the fortune he’d gained on himself. Calling it blood cash, he makes use of it solely to fund his inchoate plan to crush the Squid Sport. An try and find the Salesman by way of a community of brokers occupies the primary couple of episodes. These usually are not with out violence; nonetheless, it’s good to not be again on the island but, the place gamers — not knowledgeable of this end result beforehand — will probably be actually eradicated; whereas Gi-hun, who has returned, scrambles just like the catcher within the rye to avoid wasting as many as attainable.
Although I’m not going to rewatch the primary season for comparability, as a result of life is brief, my impression is that the brand new season has extra of an emphasis on interpersonal relationships (good and dangerous) and crew dynamics, which, in fact, crumble as folks die. (The video games really feel bloodier and much more evil this time round.) There are extra younger folks concerned: Thanos (Choi Seung-hyun), a former rapper, misplaced all his cash in a cryptocurrency rip-off pushed by YouTuber Lee Myung-gi (Yim Si-wan), who was bankrupted as properly (he’s additionally wished for fraud), alongside together with his former girlfriend, Kim Jun-hee (Jo Yu-ri). All are there, fairly coincidentally. Coincidental, too, is the presence of Jung-bae (Lee Search engine optimization-hwan), Gi-hun’s outside-world playing pal from Season 1, whose survival is greater than often private to our hero.
Thematically, it’s fairly easy, even standard: kindness is best than selfishness, group trumps isolation, nonetheless a lot the deck is stacked towards it or how miserable the result could be. That “Squid Game,” which is greater than a little bit miserable, could be learn as a critique of late-stage capitalism was typically famous in critiques and essays on the time of the primary season, and revenue inequality is clearly the structural foundation of a narrative concerning the jaded wealthy exploiting the determined poor, whom they divide with a purpose to keep in energy. If this season has its personal theme, it could need to do with telling the precise enemy from the false ones the enemy engineers.
“You think people are just horses in a race, and you own the horses,” Gi-hun tells the Entrance Man. (They’re talking through a pig-shaped speaker, echoing the large money-filled piggy financial institution that hangs above the gamers’ dormitory, tempting them to play on for an ever-bigger payout — typical recreation present stuff.)
“They were all just losers of the game,” the Entrance Man says of the lots of of lifeless. “Trash eliminated from the competition. A ton of new trash is being poured into the world as we speak.”
Gi-hun, who has been stockpiling weapons in Seoul and assembling a strike pressure, and Jun-ho, who desires to confront his brother — the Entrance Man, keep in mind — will start to converge of their missions, which appear to vow some form of battle royale. However that is simply the center chapter; a 3rd season is slated for 2025, and it’s my vacation want that it spells “comeuppance.”
Will “Squid Game” have the braveness of its philosophy, or will this be simply one other horror story? “The game will not end unless the world changes,” says the Entrance Man, which, one want to assume, will get it backward. However you by no means can inform.