Red Light, Green Light, Yellow Light – “Squid Game” Season 2 Review
- Colton Gomez
- Dec 26, 2024
- 5 min read
Updated: Dec 28, 2024
Review
By Colton Gomez | 12/26/24 | 9:55 P.M. Mountain Time
Dystopian, Survival, Thriller | Rated TV-MA | Episodes: 7 | Median Episode Runtime: 1 hr 09 min |
"Squid Game" Season 2 Release Date: December 26, 2024
After the immense popularity of the first Season, Season 2 of “Squid Game” finally comes to Netflix. It’s been three years since the first Season captivated audiences across the globe during the pandemic. It provided us a very welcome distraction while making dramatically entertaining observations and critiques of financial pressure and classism. “Squid Game” creator, producer, executive producer, writer, and director Hwang Dong-hyuk will end the beloved show after Season 3 drops at the end of 2025. As a very bingeable series, fans of “Squid Game” Season 1 will devour Season 2 but find their appetite unsatiated after the bloated climax of the Season finale.
After winning the Games and 45.6 billion won ($31.5 million), Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) has spent all his time and money on trying to stop the people behind them. His path to find the ddakji-playing Recruiter (Gong Yoo) intersects him with a police officer who also wants the games to end. Now serious, brooding Gi-hun volunteers to participate in the games in the hope his officer acquaintance can track him and bring firepower. The rest of the series follows Gi-hun’s experience in the games and the officer’s tracking b-story. The world is built up a little bit more, like showing how Pink Soldiers are recruited, insight into the Recruiter’s backstory, and some small insight into how the organization operates outside of the Games.
Unfortunately, the second Season doesn’t offer much more than the first. After three years, you’d think they would do more than slap a new coat of paint on it and repackage it. It doesn’t really strive to say or do anything different from the first Season in story or format: being poor sucks, you can’t win in the system, play the game, go back to quarters, game, quarters, b story, game, quarters, etc. Without the resolution of the second Season, it’s hard to tell what the show is really saying. Play the game, the system is unbeatable, the system will always have a hold of you unless you’re at the top, reform is unsuccessful, any of those, really. After the first Season, fans have come to expect a lot from Season 2. It can’t just be more of the same.
The detective b story goes nowhere. It’s interesting in its setup and background but like everything in this Season, it stops suddenly. The creators seem to forget about it for an episode or two, in which they get no mention or screentime.
There are parallels between the two seasons that come off as lazy rather than tributary. The old man in the first Season who played as Player 001 (O Yeong-su) has a counterpart in Season 2, also as Player 001 (Now Lee Byung-hun). Kang Sae-byeok (Jung Ho-yeon) from Season 1 has two similar counterparts in Season 2 in Kim Jun-hee (Jo Yu-ri) and Se-mi (Won Ji-an). Similar to Heo Seong-tae’s Player 101 in Season 1, there is an overbearing jerk character who is known in the show world as rapper Thanos (T.O.P. or Choi Seung-hun); and they feel too similar in function.
There are noteworthy cast additions of Hyun-ju/Player 120 (Park Sung-hoon), a fierce competitor and trans woman who got kicked out of the army, Jang Geum-ja/Player 149 (Kang Ae-shim), a mother who finds her son also competing as Park Yong-sik/Player 007 (Yang Dong-geun), and Lee Myeong-gi/Player 333 (Yim Si-wan) who, in the show universe, is known for his YouTube channel MG Coin. Among the returns to the cast are Gi-hun/Player 456 (Jung-jae), the Recruiter (Gong Yoo), and the Frontman (Lee Byung-hun). Byung-hun does phenomenal work in this Season as his character plays more than just the Games. He is a fascinating character to watch as he feeds off the grief of Gi-hun.
The newest character and the one that is the most interesting, in my opinion, is Pink Soldier 011, No-eul (Park Gyu-young). She’s an escapee from North Korea who works for the games and uses the money to try and find her daughter. She’s a very strong character and I would have loved to see more of her. The rest of the series is very much rinse, repeat, but her inclusion brings an interesting dynamic to the it, even though I still have some questions about her.
Among the rinse, repeat aspects are several character interactions that essentially do the same thing every time. Between Thanos and MG Coin, Thanos blames MG Coin for his financial advice in the crypto market and threatens him each time. Between MG Coin or Lee Myeong-gi/Player 333 and Kim Jun-hee/Player 222, they talk about their past and what future they might have after 333 discovers 222 didn’t abort her pregnancy. Every time Seon-nyeo/Player 044 (Chae Gook-hee) came on screen I groaned. She is a religious fanatic who believes she is specially chosen by her gods and acts better than all the rest. Her character goes nowhere and was a bit annoying to watch.
The story offers interesting arguments for many of the players as to why they would choose to leave the games or stay. In doing so, it also offers great commentary on social classism and financial barriers. It does a great job at depicting pressure from every angle that would cause someone to lose their hope and humanity in search of self-preservation and financial security. It displays the dynamic of a collective social attitude towards financial aspirations and even though these characters are broke and in debt, they still think of themselves as better than each other because of their delusions.
A good Season, but it doesn’t compare with Season 1. Its climax takes too long to get as far as it did and feels disconnected from the rest of the series in tone and inventiveness. All the best ideas were used for Season 1 and Season 2 is left to make a meal with scraps. Fans of the show will have their itch scratched but will immediately develop another one that won’t be scratched until the end of next year. Some scenes really could have been cut down significantly (I’m looking at you, voting scenes). It’s a Season that ultimately lacks focus and is underbaked. There is potential for a great Season 3 but that will be difficult to pull off.
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Review by Colton Gomez
Colton Gomez earned his BA in Film Studies from Weber State University. He owns and operates ColtonGomez.com. Here, he covers new releases in theaters and on streaming. For short versions of his reviews, check out his LetterBoxd
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