You may be wondering, “Did the world need a 'Squid Game 2'?” Hwang Dong-hyuk, who wrote and directed 2021's “The Squid Game,” didn't originally think so, as he came up with the Korean Netflix series as a one-off series. independent season. But success is a great corporate intoxicant, so Hwang has found something new to do with Lee Jung-jae's Seong Gi-hun (aka Player 456) and the secret island where unfortunate souls are murdered in the name of entertainment for the rich, under the pretense of playing a game.
You may also wonder why a show with such a sadistic premise and content has been a worldwide hit, but maybe you're the kind of person who went to see “Saw question will not make sense to you. Nor would I question the logic behind last fall's “Squid Game: The Challenge,” a U.K.-produced reality competition show, also on Netflix, that can now be seen as something of a curtain raiser for the sequel, premiering on Thursday, to make your Christmas harder. mellow. (No one was actually killed during “The Challenge,” merely metaphorically.)
Not that I mean to imply any kind of qualitative or moral equivalence between “Saw” and this. “Squid Game” was intelligently written, beautifully acted and well directed; It had ideas and a moral core – it was even a little sentimental – with a hero who survives with his humanity intact in the face of violence, decay and corruption. Still, it's not the kind of show I'd want to watch twice.
Instead, I have observed their follow-up, professionally but without complaint. As with most sequels, it is, almost by definition, less essential than the original, whose conceits and MC Escher through Fisher-Price settings it repeats. Of course, there are new characters, many of the old ones died in the first round. I guess I should add, for anyone who hasn't seen the first series, that it's about financially strapped citizens lured into playing a series. of killer versions of children's games with a giant cash prize for the last person standing. There is a rule that you can stop the game and share the wealth, but you know how people are.
The conclusion of the first season involved more action, although the involvement was enough to continue; Ambiguity can be more powerful than closure. (In any case, we have lived in that caesura for three years with no ill effects.) It ended with Gi-hun, now rich and presentable, about to board a flight to Los Angeles to see his daughter; Catching a glimpse of Squid Game's recruiter known as the Salesman (Gong Yoo), he realizes that the game is still on, turns around and walks towards the camera, with a look of “I'm coming for you” determination. The new season picks up there and focuses on Gi-hun's quest to destroy the game once and for all. There's really no other option, dramatically speaking, or in keeping with his character. And we leave.
Wi Ha-jun as Hwang Jun-ho in the second season of “Squid Game.”
(Without Ju-han / Netflix)
Three years later, police detective Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon) awakens from a coma, having been shot at the end of the first series by his newly unmasked half-brother, Hwang In-ho (Lee Byung). -hun), also known as the leader, a former player who now runs the game. Having somehow survived that and a fall into the sea, Jun-ho has moved from major crimes to the traffic division, for the clarity it offers. (He cannot present evidence or the location of the island, which he has been searching for in his off hours.)
Meanwhile, Gi-hun lives like a pauper, locked in an empty seedy hotel he owns and refusing to spend any of the fortune he's earned on himself. Calling it blood money, he uses it only to finance his budding plan to crush the Squid Game. An attempt to locate the Seller through a network of agents occupies the first episodes. These are not exempt from violence; Still, it's nice not to be back on the island yet, where players, who were not informed of this outcome beforehand, will be literally eliminated; while the returned Gi-hun fights like the catcher in the rye to save as many as possible.
Although I won't be rewatching the first season to compare, because life is short, my impression is that the new season has more emphasis on interpersonal relationships (good and bad) and team dynamics, which, of course, are They crumble as they go. people die. (The games feel gorier and even more evil this time around.) There are more young people involved: Thanos (Choi Seung-hyun), a former rapper, lost all his money in a cryptocurrency scam driven by YouTuber Lee Myung-gi (Yim Si-wan), who was also bankrupt (he is also wanted for fraud), along with his ex-girlfriend, Kim Jun-hee (Jo Yu-ri). They are all there, by coincidence. Also coincident is the presence of Jung-bae (Lee Seo-hwan), Gi-hun's playmate in the outside world from season 1, whose survival is more than usually personal for our hero.
Thematically, it's pretty simple, conventional even: kindness is better than selfishness, community triumphs over isolation, no matter how much the odds are against you or no matter how depressing the outcome may be. The fact that “The Squid Game,” which is more than a little depressing, can be read as a critique of late capitalism was often noted in reviews and essays at the time of the first season, and income inequality is clearly the structural basis of a story about the jaded rich who exploit the desperate poor, whom they divide to stay in power. If this season has its own theme, it may have to do with distinguishing the real enemy from the fake enemy engineers.
“You think that people are just horses in a race and that you own the horses,” Gi-hun tells the leader. (They're speaking through a pig-shaped speaker, echoing the giant piggy bank full of money hanging above the players' bedrooms, tempting them to keep playing for an ever-increasing payout: typical game show stuff ).
“They were all just losers of the game,” the figurehead says of the hundreds of dead. “Garbage eliminated from the competition. As we speak, a ton of new garbage is being dumped into the world.”
Gi-hun, who has been stockpiling weapons in Seoul and gathering a strike force, and Jun-ho, who wants to take on his brother (the figurehead, remember), will begin to converge on their missions, which seem to promise some kind of battle. real. But this is only the middle chapter; a third season is scheduled for 2025, and my Christmas wish is that it means “deserved payment.”
Will “The Squid Game” have the courage of its philosophy or will it be just another horror story? “The game won't end unless the world changes,” says the figurehead, who, as we would say, has it backwards. But you can never know.
