It would have been easy to take the successful high-concept premise of “Squid Game” — hard-luck contestants compete to the death in a sadistically kiddie-themed battle royale — and simply replicate it for Season 2. After all, the show’s first season, which appeared on Netflix to little initial fanfare in 2021, was embraced as a shrewd fable of late-stage capitalism and drew a reported 330 million viewers worldwide, becoming the streaming service’s most-watched title of all time.
But the second season of the show, which premiered on the day after Christmas, introduces an intriguing plot element that cannily taps into the current political moment. Critical reviews for the new season have been mixed, but the new installment of “Squid Game” might be the best pop-cultural examination yet of the social dynamics that have led to a series of rightward shifts around the globe — from the election of Yoon Suk Yeol, South Korea’s hard-line conservative president, in 2022 to a second victory for Donald Trump here at home. If the first season was about how capitalism forces people into impossible choices (such as braving a murderous game show in hopes of improving a desperate lot), then the second season is all about the toll of tribalism: how the push to pit ourselves against one another in a winner-take-all political battle leads to destruction and despair for all.
To understand the show’s second-season evolution, it helps to recall a highlight from Season 1: the second episode, titled “Hell,” in which traumatized survivors of the game’s first challenge were given the opportunity to vote on whether they’d like to continue the game. Given that the game’s first challenge led to dozens of casualties among the contestants, a viewer might assume the contestants would unanimously vote for escape. But when confronted with the persistent hopelessness of their plights in the outside world, the contestants opt universally, by the end of the episode, to re-enter the game — believing that its perilous contests offer them the best chance for changing their fortunes. The game is cruel, but the world is crueler. And so they vote to play.
In Season 2, this winner-take-all dilemma becomes not just a one-off vote but an event after every round. Surviving players must decide, by majority vote, whether to end the game for everyone or continue in hopes of collecting the largest possible jackpot. And there’s another twist: Prematurely ending the game no longer results in everyone going home empty-handed but rather in everyone splitting the winnings evenly. It’s a classic game-show dilemma — quit now and take the money you’ve won, or press on in hopes of a bigger fortune — but in the hands of the “Squid Game” creator it becomes a malevolent social experiment.
The contestants quickly cluster into two opposing factions: The red “X” team, which wants to get out and avoid further bloodshed, and the blue “O” team, which is eager to press forward despite the risks. The show isn’t subtle about its political allegory. The voting scenes are staged to feel like political rallies, with X and O camped out on their own sides of the aisle. In a later episode, a wave of populist fervor seizes the group, buoyed by desperation, greed and survivorship bias. “We’ve made it this far, so let’s do this one more time!” a contestant urges the slow to convert. What ensues should come with a trigger warning for any American who was dismayed on Nov. 5, as the ensuing electoral landslide for the blue team is accompanied by chants of “Four more years!” — sorry, “One more game!” — that sweep the players’ dormitory.
Ultimately, the contestants realize that a more expedient way to gain an edge is to eliminate the opposition, rather than convert it — and as the corps fully devolves into tribalism, they take up arms and attack one another. That’s the eventual message of the show’s second season: Tribalism is a conflagration that consumes itself.
Hwang Dong-hyuk, the show’s creator, started writing the second season just after Yoon Suk Yeol was elected to the presidency in South Korea. He clearly had political division on his mind. At a panel last fall in Los Angeles, held a few days before the U.S. election, he said of the show that he wanted to tell a story “about how the different choices we make create conflicts among us” and how he hoped to “open up a conversation about whether there is a way for us to move in a direction where we can overcome these divisions.”
It’s most likely no coincidence that “Squid Game” comes out of South Korea, a young republic with a turbulent history marked with authoritarian leaders. As recently as December, Mr. Yoon attempted to declare martial law and has since been impeached after widespread and sustained pressure from the Korean public. Footage of their joyous protests went viral around the world and echoed similar mass demonstrations that led to the removal of President Park Geun-hye in 2016.
There is a moment in the Season 2 finale that, to me, felt like a beacon of hope for the human spirit. A member of the Xs (played by the star of the series, Lee Jung-jae) manages to rally enough allies among the contestants to mount a rebellion against their armed, pink-suited guards, as they attempt to storm the control room and take possession of the game. Some of these volunteers sacrifice their lives in service of the larger mission to free all the contestants — even members of the opposing team. Only when tribalism falls can all the players rise.
As America awaits the second term of Donald Trump, I wonder how we as a citizenry will respond. Are we too deeply divided already, into a red team and a blue team, and too preoccupied with our individual comforts to act in a way that considers someone else’s welfare? According to the parable of “Squid Game,” we can be either conspirators in our mutual destruction or deliverers from it. We’ll find out whether or not we can muster the courage and the compassion necessary to work for our collective betterment when a new season of the American drama begins on Jan. 20.
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