‘Squid Game’ Season 2: When Rebellion Kills the Thrill

I watched the entire second season of Squid Game as soon as it premiered on Netflix. Although I hadn’t seen the first season, I quickly realized this wouldn’t be an issue. However, by the final scene, I have to say this season is far from impressive. As a thriller centered around brutal survival games, it suffers from notably poor narrative efficiency and slow pacing. The character development is equally flat. After catching up on the first season, I found that, compared to it, the games in Season 2 felt like merely to showcase how certain games were played, with minimal impact on character development.

More crucially, I experienced a persistent sense of contradiction and disconnect while watching Squid Game Season 2. The season picks up where its predecessor left off, with protagonist Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) now awakened to the brutality and unfairness of the games and determined to fight against the it’s organizers. Yet, the series has him resist by participating in the Squid Game again. The absurdity of this premise needs no explanation—one cannot overthrow oppression by submitting to it.

At the same time, as viewers, we can’t help but empathize with the protagonist and adopt his perspective. When he feels competitive during the games, viewers share his adrenaline rush and celebrate his survival. However, this creates a profound irony: both the protagonist and the viewers understand that his true goal is to fight against the game’s organizers. They also know that his survival means others have died. Once Gi-hun realizes the game is a terrifying conspiracy, using individual triumph as bait and the sacrifice of many to satisfy the perverted desires of those in power, his personal victory becomes insignificant, even immoral.

This stark contradiction between personal victory and moral integrity is most pronounced during the team games. On one hand, the survival of those small groups whose members display unity stirs up motivation and inspires emulation. On the other, other participants are continuously being killed, their blood staining the playing field red. This contrast significantly undermines the show’s entertainment value and gameplay appeal.

What’s even more perplexing is that Squid Game Season 2 barely delves into the inner struggles and pain of the surviving game participants. In Season 1, when a husband survived the marble game by defeating his wife, he was nearly driven to a mental breakdown and ultimately chose suicide. But in Season 2, the participants seem indifferent to others’ deaths, focusing solely on the prize money or hoping to leave the game through voting. The only character who genuinely shows concern for others’ deaths is Cho Hyun-ju (Park Sung-hoon), the season’s best-developed character.

When Gi-hun rallies the participants and ultimately resorts to violent resistance, Squid Game abandons its entertainment value entirely. I believe the series’ director and writer, Hwang Dong-hyuk, shows considerable courage here, as the determined resistance of the oppressed against their oppressors cannot be turned into mere entertainment. However, this also creates a sense of disconnect in Season 2, though perhaps this disconnect was inevitable once a second season was confirmed.

According to Hwang’s BBC interview, he initially had no plans to film a sequel, but “money” changed his mind. “Even though the first series was such a huge global success, honestly I didn’t make much. So doing the second series will help compensate me for the success of the first one too.” Hwang spent 10 years preparing to film Squid Game and even relied on loans to support his family. Netflix paid him a modest upfront amount, leaving him unable to cash in on the whopping £650m it earned the platform. While Hwang also stated, “I didn’t fully finish the story,” it’s clear that financial considerations played a significant role in his decision to reboot Squid Game.

While Season 1 left potential for a sequel, the question is whether a second season was the right approach. The disconnect in Season 2 is also evident in how it simultaneously advances the story while repeating the first installment. When Gi-hun and his companions try to uncover and confront the organizers behind the scenes, the story progresses slowly. Once Gi-hun re-enters the game, it feels like a rehash of Season 1, despite new settings. Ultimately, Season 2 neither advances the story effectively nor recaptures the impact and novelty of its predecessor.

However, there’s an unexpected aspect in Season 2: the repeated voting segments, which weren’t heavily emphasized in Season 1. According to the rules, participants can vote to end the game if a majority agrees. Season 1 explored the possibility of participants leaving but showed them ultimately returning due to the harsh realities of their lives. Meanwhile, the sequel delves into another scenario, where the votes might be evenly split or favor continuing.

Interestingly, 2024 could be called the “Year of Elections,” with billions of people, who make up around half of the world’s population, estimated to have voted in their countries’ elections. Only time can determine how these processes, humanity’s most vital embodiment of democracy, will unfold and influence the world. Regrettably, Squid Game Season 2 pessimistically portrays a possibility: elections are manipulated by behind-the-scenes organizers; different rival groups of supporters, each espousing their own beliefs, turn on one another and trigger a fierce clash instead of addressing systemic issues. The election process becomes a way to divide people into opposing camps, escalating hostility and violence while the true oppressors remain untouched.

If Squid Game serves as a metaphor for a society that promotes relentless individual competition under neoliberalism, then this metaphor of elections and social division aligns perfectly. Once lines are drawn, people perceive defiers as enemies and focus on defeating them, ignoring the insurmountable class oppression that looms over them, turning it into an elephant in the room.

“When making this series, I constantly asked myself, ‘Do we humans have what it takes to steer the world off this downhill path?’ Honestly, I don’t know,” Hwang said.

He has raised a question that strikes at the heart of our collective responsibility. Changing the course of a world spiraling downward under exploitation requires more than passive hope—it demands courage and active resistance from creators, viewers and every individual. Creators like Hwang must dare to craft narratives that confront systemic oppression head-on, reject the hollow allure of commercial success that silences truth for profit and break through the façade of entertainment.

The financial struggles faced by the game’s contestants and by Hwang himself—who was exploited despite creating a global phenomenon—aren’t a repercussion of individual depravation or a malady of the film industry but symptoms of a ruthless capitalist system designed to profit from every drop of creativity and suffering.

The question is no longer whether we can steer the world onto a better path, but whether we have the will to shatter the mechanisms that keep us trapped in this cycle of exploitation. If the capitalist game has no real exit mechanism, aren’t we all betting on our own lives?