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 sequence 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, beneath the pretense of enjoying a sport.
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 who went to see “Saw X,” and are ready breathlessly for “Saw XI,” during 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 really murdered in the midst 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, superbly acted, nicely directed; it had concepts and an ethical core — was even a bit of sentimental — with a hero who survives together with his humanity intact within the face of violence, decadence and corruption. Nonetheless, it isn’t the form of present I’d care to observe twice.
As a substitute, 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 There are, after all, new characters, most of the outdated ones having died within the first go-round — I suppose I ought to add for anybody who hasn’t seen the primary sequence, that it includes financially strapped residents lured into enjoying a sequence of murderous variations of kids’s video games with a large 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 individuals are.
The conclusion of the primary season did indicate additional motion, although the implication was sufficient to go on with; ambiguity may be extra highly effective than closure. (We have now 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 Recreation recruiter referred to as 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 dedication. 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 sequence by his just-unmasked stepbrother, Hwang In-ho (Lee Byung-hun) — a.ok.a. the Entrance Man, a former participant who now runs the sport. Having by some means survived that and a fall into the ocean, Jun-ho has transferred from main crimes to the site 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 lodge 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 Recreation. 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 final result beforehand — will probably be actually eradicated; whereas Gi-hun, who has returned, scrambles just like the catcher within the rye to save lots of 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 unhealthy) and group dynamics, which, after all, crumble as individuals die. (The video games really feel bloodier and much more evil this time round.) There are extra younger individuals 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 nicely (he’s additionally needed 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 Web 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 typical: kindness is healthier than selfishness, group trumps isolation, nevertheless a lot the deck is stacked towards it or how miserable the end result may be. That “Squid Game,” which is greater than a bit of miserable, may be learn as a critique of late-stage capitalism was usually famous in critiques and essays on the time of the primary season, and earnings inequality is clearly the structural foundation of a narrative in regards to 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 might should 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 by way of a pig-shaped speaker, echoing the enormous money-filled piggy financial institution that hangs above the gamers’ dormitory, tempting them to play on for an ever-bigger payout — typical sport present stuff.)
“They were all just losers of the game,” the Entrance Man says of the a whole bunch 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 wish to assume, will get it backward. However you by no means can inform.
