‘Squid Game’ Season 2 May as Well Be Ripped from the Headlines

Warning: spoilers for Squid Game season two ahead

Is it possible to get PTSD from a television show? Squid Game is not listed as a cause in any medical journals, but bingeing the second season of Netflix’s global hit left me feeling like the haunted figure in Edvard Munch’s The Scream.

The first season of the series dropped in 2021, amidst a pandemic in which millions around the world died from Covid. Its apocalyptic vibe felt perfectly in step with that death-drenched moment, even as the show’s propulsive action distracted us from what was happening in our real world. Its savage critique of capitalism was so cleverly wrapped in a thriller’s clothes that Netflix was able to transform Squid Game into a cash cow, squeezing out of its premise a video game, a live interactive game (yes, I tried it), a reality show (which ironically resulted in some complaints of exploitative treatment), and lots of merch—including green track suits and pink guard uniforms, in case you feel like cosplaying.

This time around, Squid Game doubles down on both its relentless brutality and its critique of capitalism. One of the episodes is even called “Bread and Lottery,” in case the drama’s premise didn’t already have the idea of “bread and circuses” whirling around your head. The show is steeped in income inequality and a winner-takes-all mentality, as broken, debt-ridden people debase themselves for bored billionaires. What could be more timely?

Once again, our guide through this wasteland is Gi-hun (Lee Jung-Jae), the survivor of last season’s game. His win was the definition of a pyrrhic victory, and it has changed him. No longer an antsy gambler willing to throw his fate to the wind, Gi-hun is a traumatized man. He sees his prize earnings as “blood money,” to be used only for tracking down the game’s creators and ending the bloodbath. That hunt brings Gi-hun together with Jun-ho (Wi Ha-jun), the policeman from last season who has been trying to find his way back to the island.

Both men are fixated on bringing the game’s perpetrators to justice, and both actors bring a sweet humanity to their roles. Unfortunately, convoluted plotting and searching takes up the season’s first two episodes, substantially slowing down the beginning of this go-round.

“You manipulate people who feel like they’re at a dead end,” Gi-hun says, teary-eyed, when he finally makes contact with the Darth Vader-masked Front Man (Lee Byung-hun). “You think people are just horses in a race and you own the horses.” The Front Man is disdainful, citing (in a funhouse reference to our distorted current politics) The Matrix. “They could’ve lived in peace if they took the blue pill, but still they chose the red pill to play the heroes. Do you also think you’re a hero who can change the world?” The answer is yes, and thus the season begins properly as Gi-hun is once again dropped into the game as Player 456.

This time is different, though—for him and for us. Where he initially entered the game as an innocent, now our hero knows exactly what he’s in for as he awakens on a bunk bed clad in his green tracksuit. That makes him increasingly hysterical as his warnings fall on deaf ears. “This is not just a game. If you lose the game, you die!” he screams, to snickers and eyerolls. “That guy must be drunk,” says one contestant dismissively.

Although Squid Game is steeped in South Korean culture, I couldn’t help seeing the season through the prism of contemporary Western politics—especially when the powers-that-be announce that players can vote en masse whether they want to carry on after every game. “We respect your right to freedom of choice,” the voice from above announces blankly. Gi-hun assumes the majority will choose to leave after they’ve witnessed the first bloodbath—but once they see the paltry amount in the current prize pot (equivalent to about $16,000 each), they freak out. “We almost died, and they’re giving us 24 million [won]? Thats fucking bullshit!”

The voting process begets some of this season’s most grim and suspenseful setpieces, as players take turns choosing an X (for those who want to leave) or an O (for those who remain). In the wake of the American elections, it’s hard not to feel the resonance of a tiny majority vote putting the rest of the players in existential peril. Even more so when some of the contestants start concocting conspiracy theories. “Did you plant him to mess with our heads?” an old man asks at the guards, pointing to Gi-hun. Others are convinced he’s trying to scare them in order to win the prize money himself.

It’s like being the person in the horror movie who can see the killer—or the person who can see authoritarianism looming yet can’t convince fellow voters to believe the threat is real. The two sides become increasingly polarized, seeing each other as the enemy while the Front Man sneaks into the game and manipulates them all.

The new crop of contestants is much like the old crop—people with little to lose who can’t imagine anything worse than their existing lives. Some of the characters are puzzlingly broad, like the self-described shaman Seon-nyeo (Chae Kook-hee), who lounges around issuing curses and muttering cryptic things like, “The gods have already decided.” But there are some fun updated touches, like real life K-pop star Yim Si-wan as Myung-gi, a crypto influencer who has bankrupted himself and many of his followers. One of those unlucky former acolytes is also in the house: Thanos is a purple-haired, hard-tweaking rapper (played by another K-pop performer, Choi Seung-Hyun, a.k.a. T.O.P.), who is determined to destroy his crypto-nemesis by any means possible.

Another lynchpin character is Hyun-ju, a former Special Forces soldier who was dismissed when she came out as trans. Though she is played, problematically, by a male actor (Park Sung-hoon), Hyun-ju is also one of the few participants who actually connects to the other players around her. When Gi-hun finally has enough and tries to summon others to fight back, she is one of the few who truly understands the assignment.

Hyun-ju gets one of the most devastating moments this season, during a game called “Mingle.” The players stand on a revolving platform, listening to giddy children’s songs until they are ordered to retreat to rooms in specific ways. When the young woman that Hyun-ju has taken under her wing gets left behind, she furiously tries to rescue her. Instead, she ends up looking in her friend’s eyes as the young woman is gunned down. After her lifeless body is dumped in a casket that looks like a gift box, the contestants emerge from their rooms and look around at each other like people who survived a holocaust. Then they are forced to do it all again. As if the imagery isn’t literal enough, we see workers put the boxes into a crematorium.

When asked whether Squid Game’s second season would have the same thematic preoccupations as the original, creator Hwang Dong-hyuk told Vanity Fair, “I want to ask the question, ‘Is true solidarity between humans possible?’” That query plays out on multiple levels: among the contestants, among the various gangsters and oddballs helping Jun-ho search for the mysterious island, and even among the pink-clad soldiers. But there are crushing betrayals (or should I call them shocking plot twists?) in store for all of the above, so the question remains unanswered for season three.

In fact, lots of questions remain frustratingly open. An organ-harvesting subplot from the previous season continues, for example, but with very little new insight or narrative impact. It makes sense that the game’s profiteers would want to monetize all those unneeded body parts, but the show offers no further details about who they are selling to, or even which factions within the Game management are warring. This season does further implicate the soldiers themselves, while also making clear that they may be just as desperate as the players, judging from the storyline about a young female soldier. But although we see a ton of the Front Man this season, his plans or motivation remain frustratingly opaque.

It’s hard to love a show so claustrophobically submerged in trauma. Even star Lee Jung-Jae recently said of returning to his role as Gi-hun, “it was almost like I was being pulled back to hell.” This season of Squid Game doesn’t really get us anywhere new— which may just be the point.

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