Squid Game was one of the biggest TV shows ever made. But does season two measure up?

Squid Game 2, Netflix
★★★★

When you’ve had one of the most successful shows in history, what do you do for an encore – more of the same, or something completely different?

For Hwang Dong-hyuk, the creator and writer-director of Squid Game, the answer is “a bit of both”. More games, more bloodshed and double-dealing. But with more of the outside world too, and a bit more comedy to mix things up.

Lee Jung-jae as Seong Gi-hun in season two of Squid Game.Credit: Netflix

Season two of the Korean drama kicks off with Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) obsessively searching for a way to track down the powers behind the competition in which 456 people are plucked from the streets and made to play variations of childhood games, with the winner emerging with all the loot and the losers not emerging at all.

Gi-hun, aka Player 456, is a very wealthy man now (the prize of 45.6 billion Korean won equates to about $50 million). But it’s blood money, paid for with the deaths of his fellow players, each of whom was – like him – drawn into the game only through desperate economic circumstances. He can’t enjoy that wealth when it is the product of such a corrupt system.

Inevitably, his search takes him back to the game, and the mysterious island on which it is played. His experience gives him an edge, and he’s determined to use it to help his fellow players survive. But not all of them want their competitors to avoid death. The fewer there are, the bigger the prize. It’s a dog-eat-dog world, out there and in here.

Front Man is back.Credit: Netflix

Also trying to make his way back to the island is Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon), the police officer who infiltrated the game as a guard in season one, and discovered in its final moments that the Front Man, the organiser of the games, was Hwang In-ho (Lee Byung-hun), the missing brother he had come to find.

The first two episodes (of seven) this season take place outside the game, mixing violence and social commentary with a dollop of slapstick comedy. The final five largely take place within the complex where the game is staged. And In-ho adds yet another identity to his roster: he slips into the competition as Player 001, and becomes Gi-hun’s closest ally. What’s his game, you might ask?

Hwang Dong-hyuk’s command of all this is mostly supreme. Squid Game’s critique of cutthroat capitalism is unwavering, with a particular focus on the illusion of free choice for those whose options are virtually nil. Democracy cops a serve too: how much freedom is there when a majority on the other side can overrule your desire to leave the game and live?

At times, the competing story demands get the better of him. The Jun-ho thread – which involves a team of well-intentioned mercenaries searching for the island on a fishing boat – is a little lost at sea, and the games themselves have little of the Grand Guignol inventiveness of the first season.

But some of this, I suspect, is simply due to the fact we’re not there yet. The season ends on a cliffhanger, with the third and final batch due next year. No doubt it will feel complete when it is done, but abandoning the game at half-time makes season two a slightly frustrating experience.

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