After surviving the games in season 1, Seong Gi-hun is craving revenge in Squid Game season 2 episode 1. Here’s our review.
Warning! These reviews will be spoiler-free for the week in question but will discuss previous episodes, including the entirety of season 1 in detail.
Watching 455 people die while playing simple kids’ games would really mess you up, wouldn’t it? It’s really no wonder that we find Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), the winner of the deadly games introduced in Squid Game season 1, rather rattled in the first episode of season 2.
Squid Game, released in 2021, became a major hit for Netflix and broke several records with several nominations across Hollywood’s biggest TV awards shows. And no wonder: the first season was an entertaining, brutal watch, and very addictive too. The show’s political themes of capitalism and class added another layer to the otherwise quite straightforward, contained narrative which found the aforementioned 456 players playing various children’s games such as Red Light, Green Light and dying if they failed to complete or win the game.
Gi-hun (or player 456 as we mostly knew him), started out as the bumbling fool in season 1, a selfish gambler who owed money left, right and centre, but season 2 offers us almost a completely different character. When we last saw him, he decided not to get on the plane to go see his daughter in the US, instead devoting his time to finding the people who run the games. Good thing he now has several billion won to pay people to look for the recruiter who preys on people at train stations, challenging them to a game of ddakji, a traditional Korean game, before luring them to their squid-y counterparts.
Straight away, Squid Game season 2 feels heavier and more serious. As revealed in the trailers for the season, we will eventually end up back in the games as Gi-hun attempts to take them down from the inside, but episode 1 solely focuses on setting the scene. While we first pick up immediately where season 1 ended, the action quickly moves three years into the future. They say time heals all wounds, but if anything, Gi-hun is even more traumatised and driven to get revenge now.
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While the season’s start is light on children’s games, the episode’s final act does include a Saw-like game of Russian Roulette. Part of Squid Game’s charm was how ruthless the series was from the very beginning. While not particularly gory, the previous season was violent and harsh, just as a series about deadly games should be, and season 2 immediately continues that trend. Make no mistake, Squid Game season 2 isn’t looking to take it easy on us. Creator Hwang Dong-hyuk smartly keeps us waiting, wanting more while also serving us some of that same brutality that made the first season so memorable.
Returning to play Gi-hun, Lee Jung-jae turns in another incredible performance in episode 1. If Gi-hun was somewhat defined by his stupidity and selfishness in season 1, he’s a very different man now. Lee plays Gi-hun here like an exposed nerve, constantly on the verge of blowing up and taking everyone else down with him. It remains to be seen how the character evolves across the season, especially after he returns to the games, but so far, Squid Game season 2 is great fun.
All episodes of Squid Game season are now streaming on Netflix.
