“Player 456. Welcome back to the game.”
The dawn of the 21st century has seen an explosion in the soft power of South Korea on the global stage. With K-pop stars such as PSY and BTS regularly topping the charts and Bong Joon-ho’s 2019 film “Parasite” becoming the first non-English language, non-silent film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, general audiences are now finally overcoming what Bong Joon-ho calls the “one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles” to discover a whole new world of entertainment.
With the COVID-19 pandemic starting the 2020s off to a dismal beginning, the world was forced to stay home and watch as life devolved into a monotonous routine. Many chose to delve headfirst into escapist entertainment. One of the biggest streaming successes of this time was Netflix’s “Squid Game: Season 1” (2021), where 456 players are forced to play a twisted series of six Korean children’s games to the death for the chance at earning ₩456,000,000 (approximately $310,000 in 2025). The series was met with overwhelming critical acclaim and won two Primetime Emmy awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for Lee Jung-jae and Outstanding Direction for a Drama Series for the show’s creator, Hwang Dong-hyuk. A second season was soon ordered and premiered on Dec. 26, 2024, to a decidedly more mixed reception.
The plot picks up three years after Seong Gi-hun (played by Lee Jung-jae) won the Squid Game and shows his attempts to hunt down the Ddakji-playing Recruiter (played by Gong Yoo, who also starred in the acclaimed 2016 zombie film “Train to Busan”). He teams up with his former debt collector Choi Woo-seok (played by Jeon Seok-ho) and a police officer who previously infiltrated the games, Hwang Jun-ho (played by Wi Ha-joon). They manage to get in contact with the illusive frontman Hwang In-ho (played by Lee Byung-hun) and start their plan to take down the games for good.
Upon reentering the games, Gi-hun soon realizes that quite a lot has changed within the last three years and that his successful strategies will not be as useful this time around. He also meets a series of new allies, such as his friend Jung-bae (played by Lee Seo-hwan), the mother and son pair of Jang Geum-ja (played by Kang Ae-shim) and Park Yong-sik (played by Yang Dong-geun). Along with an ex-marine named Dae-ho (played by Kang Ha-neul), the pregnant Kim Jun-hui (played by Jo Yu-ri) and a transgender soldier named Cho Hyun-ju (played by Park Sung-hoon). There were also two other notable antagonists, those being the North Korean defector No-eul (played by Park Gyu-young) and the English-speaking rapper “Thanos” (played by Choi Seung-hyun).
Despite the general consensus for this season being more negative, it seems that I am in the minority of people who felt that Season 2 fixed every issue I had about the original season. While Season 1 was primarily focused on the games themselves, Season 2 places much more emphasis on the time between them, with the addition of elections on whether to continue playing or divide the money equally after every game stoking further division and hostility between the players. Many also criticized the final episode for being nothing more than a “setup” for Season 3, but I find that claim to be laughable and unsubstantiated. Audiences these days are accustomed to instant gratification and short-form slop and have forgotten the golden virtue of patience. A good cliffhanger is meant to build anticipation and set up for something greater, which Episode 7 most certainly accomplishes in spades. The almost operatic level of action and tragedy had me on the edge of my seat, and it was my personal favorite episode of the entire series.
The games themselves are more creative than ever, with the second game, in particular, equaling the best set pieces of Season 1. I can only wait for what beautiful nightmares Season 3 will bring.
In short, “Squid Game: Season 2” is the best show I have seen all year, and I am eagerly awaiting the third and final season that will premiere later this year. My final rating for “Squid Game: Season 2” is a 10/10.
P.S. The correct way to watch the show is with subtitles. Because certain characters, such as the VIPs and Thanos, often speak in English instead of Korean, the original Korean language audio is the only way to maintain the original intent of their dialogue. I am not against dubbing, but losing out on meaning and context in any circumstance can only lead to a worse outcome for the viewer.
