Things get very tense in episode 5 as the games continue to unfold. Here’s our review of Squid Game season 2 episode 5.
Warning! Spoilers for previous episodes but none for episode 5!
There’s a really strong case to be made why weekly releases are better for TV shows. For one, they give you time to process what’s happened in each episode rather than just mindlessly binging every episode in quick succession. It also keeps the show in question in the public consciousness longer when a new episode emerges every week.
But I am incredibly happy Squid Game season 2 has been released all at once.
Last episode ended on a cliffhanger during the next game, which included our teams to complete minigames on a circular game course.
I mentioned in the last review that the cliffhanger isn’t quite as effective as it would be if this was released weekly, but episodes 4 and 5 make for an excellent double-bill of episodes and it’s a nice change of pace to have the second game spread over two episodes.
Episode 5, titled ‘One More Game’ is by far the most stressful, tense episode of the series yet, and that’s saying something. One of the aforementioned minigames is The Spinning Top, which finds the player in question wrapping a string around a spinning top – quelle surprise – and releasing it, hoping the top will spin on the floor.
The team consisting of the mother and son, the sea shaman (Chae Kook-hee), Hyun-ju (Park Sung-hoon) and Player 095 (Kim Si-eun) is finding this particularly difficult and as time ticks on, it’s becoming increasingly likely the team will get gunned down. Thankfully, Huyn-ju takes the lead and slaps the living daylights out of the shaman in order to get her to focus on the game. This season of Squid Game has been a little more serious than the first one, but moments like these bring a lot of levity to it.
Disappointingly, Hyun-ju, the transwoman looking to win the prize money to get bottom surgery, isn’t played by a trans actor. This isn’t Netflix’s fault really as showrunner Hwang Dong-hyuk told TV Guide they wanted to cast a trans actor but the LGBTQ+ community in Korea is still largely marginalized and there simply aren’t a lot of publicly out trans actors available. It’s still great to have a trans character be so central to the plot of a major, global success story like Squid Game.
Eventually, we get to Gi-hun’s team’s turn to take on the games. Here’s where things get interesting. Gi-hun has no idea that 001 is actually the Front Man and the team works together to proceed in the challenges, but 001’s turn is a bit of a disaster. Now, it’s almost impossible to say at this point whether he’s messing up on purpose, to put more pressure on Gi-hun when it comes to his turn or if he’s genuinely playing and just kind of bad. Regardless of what the answer is, this writer was on the edge of her seat the entire episode.
Episodes like this are a rarity in Squid Game: there is lots of laughter and joy as the players begin to cheer other teams on. When a team completes the challenge, everyone celebrates, but the celebrations are often interrupted by the sounds of rapid gunfire as another team has failed and their blood is now staining the playing field.
Episode 5 is certainly one of the best, if not the best, episode of Squid Game yet. Emotions run high, both within the show and at home as we watch one player after another struggle with their respective games, and the episode’s razor sharp focus makes the tension even more deliciously intense.
Suggested product
Film Stories issue 49 print edition: 168 pages, the UK's biggest film magazine
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