I’m not a literary person so I have no idea if I’m using the right terms here but I’d like to share my review of Squid Game season 2.

This ended up way longer than I expected so feel free to jump to the ‘Season 2’ header below to get to the meat of it.

Backstory

First, some backstory.

Back in 2020 I had organised a skyrim sesh with my brother who told me he just had to finish watching an episode from this korean show before we start. I joined in halfway through episode two and once the credits started rolling we both looked at eachother and agreed we had to see what happened in the next episode. And then it happened again, and again, and again, until it was 2am and we had watched the whole thing (the skyrim sesh did not happen).

The next day I went back to watch the first episode, which I had originally missed, and the exact same thing happened. I continued watching the entire show through to the end, again.

I’ve since rewatched season 1 at least once and it’s cemented in my mind as one of my favourite shows.

I got the impression that a second season was never really planned and that if it was made it would be terrible. Nonetheless, I couldn’t help myself but give it a go. Now that I’ve watched it I’d like to get my thoughts in writing.

But before I talk about season 2, I need to explain why season 1 was so impactful for me.

What made Season 1 so good?

Themes

Game theory

In season 1, each of the main characters represents a distinct psychological profile and we get to see how those profiles fare as competing strategies in the games. Ali is trusting, which makes him a good team player, but his naivety ends up getting him killed by Sang Woo who is happy to exploit the trust of others if it means progressing to the next game. Deok-su is uncooperative and hostile, and it means he gets more food (by virtue of double-dipping on meals) and other perks, at the cost of ultimately being murder-suicided by the woman he betrays (Mi-nyeo). There is something fascinating about watching these strategies play out when you ignore the morality and just view them on their strategic merits.

Pure heart vs Ruthless pragmatism

But the season does have a moral and it revolves around Gi Hun and Sang Woo, who end up face to face in the final showdown. I see them as representing the archetypes of pure heart vs ruthless pragmatism. From the very beginning, Sang Woo has internalised what it means to win (i.e. everybody else has to die) and does exactly what he believes will help him reach that goal, no matter who else he has to sacrifice. He shows some glints of humanity (hesitating to warn Gi Hun when he picks the umbrella in the honeycomb challenge), but ultimately optimises for personal gain. Gi Hun is pure of heart and takes a while to appreciate what’s at stake. When he does, he tries to end the games to spare his friends, even if means walking away without the prize money. As is the way with this archetype, the pure of heart ultimately triumphs, and as a cherry on top, we get to see Sang Woo’s redemption at the very end, sacrificing himself ostensibly for his mother. That is some POWERFUL shit.

Breaking the rules

One of the things I liked about season 1 was the concept of bending or breaking the rules. Different characters have different risk tolerances: Sae-byeok crawls through a vent to get a clue for the honeycomb game. Mi-nyeo succeeds at that honeycomb game by heating the needle with a lighter under the cover of a bridge. Sang Woo loses at marbles then steals back the marbles anyway: arguing to the guard that there was no violence involved. Byeong-gi truly breaks the rules by participating in organ harvesting with some guards who are themselves breaking their own rules of engagement.

Money can’t buy you love

Although I found the conversion of humans into prize money in the big piggy bank a little too on-the-nose, there was something very powerful about Sang Woo’s mother asking if Gi Hun had seen her son recently, after Sang Woo’s death. Likewise with Gi Hun finding his own mother having died from diabetes. It really puts into perspective how ridiculous it is to optimise for money over your loved ones.

Characters

The characters were all great. Lots of nuance, depth, and character development.

Cinematography

Season one had some fantastic scenes. The night fight scene with its disorienting strobe lights was just amazing: even if you didn’t know anything about the characters, it was just an awesome scene with some great cinematography. The red light green light scene with ‘Fly me to the moon’ playing as players are shot in slow motion. The extremely slow-mo scene when the glass shatters at the end of the hopscotch game. Re-watch that scene: that’s cinema gold.

Intertwined plot threads

Squid game season one has three main plot threads: The games, the organ harvesting, and the cop. What’s so great about these threads is how they interact: Byeong-gi participates in organ harvesting in exchange for clues that help him win games, which he trades to Deok-su for protection. Jun ho inadvertently steals the identity of a guard who was involved in that very same organ harvesting conspiracy.

Season 2

Okay so that’s my spiel on Season 1. How does its successor compare? Let’s see how it fares on the same topics. First though, I want to address The Salesman.

The Salesman

It was great seeing a more unhinged Salesman, though I have no idea why he ended up killing himself. Something I liked about season one was how strong the survival instinct was, and that it would only ever be trumped by a sacrifice for love. There was something great about seeing Deok-su’s sycophant crony turn on him in the marbles game as soon as it was a one on one contest. When you watch a scene like that you think ‘oh of course, that’s exactly what would happen’.

That’s not the feeling I got when The Salesman pulled the trigger and killed himself. Did he do that out of pride? It just seems so bizarre that you’d kill yourself to make a point. I don’t buy it and I considered that death to be ‘cool’ and ‘poetic’ but not realistic. It also didn’t factor into the rest of the plot. What I would have liked to see is that the recruiter guy was no longer associated with the games and had lost the plot: that would have made more sense.

Themes

Game theory

I very much liked the tweaks to the rules: players vote after each game whether they want to continue, if they vote to leave then they split the prize money evenly, and they’re tagged with their choice for all to see. I liked how this influenced players’ behaviours, and I especially like how it led to murderous factionalism.

An example of game theory at play: the red team realises that they’re up one person meaning they’ll likely win the vote the following day, but that also means they’re likely to be attacked by the blue team at night, and so somebody suggests that they attack first to catch the other team by surprise. This is an example of the fascinating interaction between human psychology and the game. I actually wish they took this further by getting somebody during a game to choose somebody from their own faction without even realising they were making a factional decision. Instead it was mostly non-factional until a proper fight breaks out, outside a game.

Although the rules were interesting, I didn’t get a strong sense of the players each representing distinct strategies like I did in the first season. A lot of the characters were indistinguishable in how they behaved in the games (with the notable exception of Thanos and The Frontman) and their stories only really progressed outside the games.

Pure heart vs ruthless pragmatism

In season one, the ruthless pragmatist was Sang Woo. In season two, I don’t really think there’s a ruthless pragmatist. The Frontman is the closest example, given that he kills a guy in the musical chairs game, but in that very same game he’s putting other players before himself several times. So one of my favourite parts of season one is absent from this season. While I’m on the topic let’s talk about…

The Frontman

What is this guy’s deal? He drinks whisky while watching the games in season one, then shoots his own brother at the top of a cliff (conspicuously in the shoulder, perhaps hoping he wouldn’t die). Then at the start of season two he artculates to Gi Hun a philosophy of how the games are cleaning up the ‘trash’ humans who are desperate and in debt. So he seems like a pretty heartless guy.

Frontman then joins the games himself (similar to how the old guy, Il-nam, from season one did the same) and shows countless instances of selflessness to those very ‘trash’ people he was shittalking only hours before. And by the end he goes evil again.

I just don’t follow. I can understand Il-nam joining the games in season one as an old man looking for some excitement in his life. What’s in it for Frontman? Is he, like The Salesman, just in it to prove a point to Gi Hun? Why?

Are his acts of selflessness an elaborate ploy to gain Gi Hun’s trust? Why does he need that trust? Why betray him after beginning a military offensive against the guards, instead of many earlier points that would have been much easier to pull off a betrayal?

I really just can’t see any possible explanation that ties this all together. You could say he wanted to join the games to keep a closer eye on Gi Hun but is that really necessary with all the guards and cameras and so on? Why not just, not let Gi Hun back into the games?

The only conclusion I’d be able to accept is that upon joining the games he actually gained an appreciation for what it’s like on the inside and decided to go double-agent to take out the even higher-ups of the games.

Breaking the rules

There’s really not much rule breaking in this season. A couple items get smuggled in, but otherwise it’s quite tame (until of course the jailbreak happens).

Money can’t buy you love

This is basically the same as in season one. It’s actually a little tiring watching the piggy bank fill up, but the spin that I appreciate this time around is the fewer players die each round, the less money there is in the piggy bank to justify an exit vote. When Nam-gyu openly laments the number of survivors from one of the games, saying something like ‘Fuck me, did everybody survive that last game?’ I laughed.

Characters

There was a lot to like in the characters: I especially found Thanos very compelling. Like I said earlier, I don’t find the characters to be particularly archetypal like I did in the first season, but there were interesting stories nonetheless.

One unfortunate factor in Gi Hun’s character is that after the events of the first season, he’s locked into grumpy mode and we miss out on the range of the original character. What I did like is that we got to see a glimpse of the old Gi Hun when he converses with his old friend Jung Bae and forgets for a moment the gravity of the games. I just hope that by the end of season three, Gi Hun feels he is able to return to his less grumpy self.

Speaking of characters being locked in place: I’m not seeing much character development. I assume that’s all coming in season three.

Cinematography

There was a lot of shaky-cams and smash-zooms during the games and it gave me the feeling I was watching a tacky reality TV show. I don’t recall any scenes that were noteworthy for their cinematography.

On a similar note: the glitchy remix of the ‘Fly me to the moon song’ during the red-light green-light game was an understandable choice, but the original red-light green-light scene was so iconic that it only reminded me on how good the first season was in comparison.

Intertwined plot threads

Like season one, season two has three threads: the games, the search party, and Number 011’s experiences as a guard. Unlike season one, they’re barely intertwined. From the moment that Gi Hun enters the games, there’s no more interaction with his search party. That search party thread is especially dry and repetitive. Nothing interesting happens until the captain of the boat goes turncloak, and even that didn’t strike me as that interesting because it came out of nowhere and didn’t involve the death of an important character.

As for Number 011, there’s really no connection to the games except that she identifies one of the players as somebody she met on the outside. Number 011’s story is also pretty dry. She tries to stifle organ harvesting efforts, gets told off, keeps doing it, gets threatened, stops doing it. She’s a sympathetic character but overall it’s just not very captivating and I don’t feel particularly invested in her (I’m not entirely sure why given they gave her all that preamble in the first couple episodes).

Okay now onto some more stuff that’s specific to season two:

The jailbreak

I think the setup for this was great and it’s exactly where season two needed to go to set itself apart from the first season. What’s regrettable is that is dragged on for so long. You know a fight scene has gone one for way too long when every character runs out of ammunition and finding more ammunition becomes part of the plot. This was a bit too much action for me and a bit too little character / theme exploration. Also, how long can you shoot down a hallway without getting shot yourself?

Plot armour

In the first season, you never knew who was going to make it through a game. In this season, the plot armour is more obvious. In fact if I recall correctly only one character died in the games (Number 095). This kills the suspense.

Notably, Thanos and Se-mi did die this season and their deaths were impactful and unexpected.

Overall summary

I had very low hopes for season two: I was so confident that it would be terrible that I originally intended not to watch it, so I’ve been pleasantly surprised. Unfortunately, season one holds a very special place in my heart and I believe for good reason, as it delivered on character development, intrigue, themes, plot, and great cinematography. Season two falls short on all of these, but I’d still recommend it for somebody who enjoyed seaso one.

Overall I consider season 1 to be a 9/10 and season 2 to be a 7/10.

Thank you for reading. I’m interested to know what you thought of season 2.