‘Squid Game 2’ Review: Capitalism Killed ‘Squid Game’

In an early episode of Squid game 2the series’ working-class hero Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) is invited to a dance club on Halloween night. He weaves his way through revelers dressed as sexy nurses, cops, and skeletons, eventually spotting the masked figure he’s been chasing, dressed in the hot-pink tracksuit of a Squid Game guard. The scene may very well be a nod from creator Hwang Dong-hyuk to ubiquity Play octopus Halloween costumes in 2021, when the holiday fell about six weeks after Netflix’s Korean megahit debuted and quickly became the platform’s most watched series ever. Regardless of Hwang’s intentions, the immediate connection fans are sure to make between this moment and the show’s instant commodification speaks to how drastically the latter phenomenon has changed its meaning.

Play octopus— you know, the blood-spattered thriller about how capitalism pits desperate people against each other in a royale for the entertainment of depraved elites — has been a brand for as long as it’s been a global sensation. Viewers buy Play octopus merch, pay to join Play octopus simulations, and tune in to Play octopus spin-off reality competitions. When you consider that the show is a product of the world’s largest streaming service, this trajectory is as predictable as it is ironic. But now that the long-awaited second of three planned seasons has premiered, it is clear that Play octopus-the industrial complex has undermined Play octopus the work of political art, in a way that is both tangential to Hwang’s storytelling and intrinsic to it.

When we last saw Gi-hun, the guilt-ridden victor had been on his way to the airport to reunite with his young daughter in the US when he saw Squid Game’s recruiter (Gong Yoo) approaching new victims in a subway station and realized that he could don’t just walk away with its 45.6 billion won. So much for a fresh start. In a brief introduction to the Season 2 premiere, Gi-hun leaves the airport, vows to find Squid Game’s mysterious masterminds “no matter what it takes,” and cuts out the tracking device they inevitably implanted under his skin.

Two years later, he is holed up in the dingy Seoul hotel that has become his personal fortress, still obsessed with taking down the monsters that made him rich. To that end, he pays a sketchy search firm millions to scour the transit system for the White Rabbit-esque recruit. Meanwhile, police detective Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-jun) has recovered from an assassination attempt at the hands of his older brother, In-ho (Lee Byung-hun). His Season 1 search for the sibling who had disappeared years earlier led him to Squid Game Island, where In-ho revealed to Jun-ho that he was the deadly playground game tournament’s fiendish Front Man—and then shot Jun- ho after he refused to join In-ho in the annual slaughter of 455 unwitting debtors. A disillusioned traffic cop, Jun-ho is drawn into Gi-hun’s unofficial investigation, which sends Gi-hun to the arena of the Squid Game 2024 as Jun-ho and his motley crew try to follow him and end the game for good. Like shipwrecked by Lostthey have to go back to the island.

It takes too long – two blistering episodes out of just seven this season – to get them there. As it grinds to a halt, the show shows unnecessarily repeats Gi-hun’s broadsides against the bored billionaires for whom Squid Game is a spectator sport and wastes time on characters that don’t end up being particularly important. Once Gi-hun is back in her green tracksuit, we meet the new players who give the season its emotional stake, but the plot feels too much like a rehash of Season 1: play, murder, rage, repeat. (In the sense that Squid game 2 extremely similar to another super popular death game sequel, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.) It’s pure fan service when the giant, creepy robot doll Young-hee returns for another round of Red Light, Green Light. Yes, there are new games, but their candy-colored, nursery rhyme-soundtracked killing fields are not significantly different from the violent spectacles viewers saw last time. Once the games begin, Jun-ho’s search for the island becomes an afterthought. And the finale’s cliffhanger ending is so abrupt that it leaves the disjointed season frustratingly unfinished.

Not that Squid game 2 is a total disappointment. It remains one of the most aesthetically distinctive and compellingly acted shows on TV; Lee Jung-jae’s international success in particular is worth celebrating. It’s nice to see more and better developed female characters this season, from a pregnant player to a self-proclaimed shaman. There’s a Man (Yang Dong-geun) who is surprised to discover that his mother (Kang Ae-sim) has entered the games, hoping to help him pay off his crushing debt. (I couldn’t help but think of the beloved mother-son team from Squid Game: The Challenge.) The first guard we really get to know is a woman (Park Gyu-young), albeit one whose story never lives up to the promise of early episodes. An empathetically portrayed trans woman who also happens to be a military veteran makes a strong case for LGBTQ people in the military (although that statement is somewhat undermined by already controversial choices to cast a cisgender male actor, Park Sung-hoo, in the role).

Thematically, a rule change that has players vote after each match on whether to continue or quit and split the money they’ve earned so far furthers ideas of the tyranny of the majority that the first season only suggested. Watching the uniformed masses lock in their often suicidal choices, one by one, triggers the same anxiety as watching the election results roll in. Yet these sequences, like every single game, drag on too long. By the third round of voting, anxiety gives way to boredom. It takes almost the entire season to break through various kinds of monotony, and when interesting things finally start to happen, you feel like you’ve just spent seven hours watching what amounts to a supersize teaser for Season 3 .

Play octopus the brand, which must deliver content to satisfy customer demand, has been replaced Play octopus the show whose first season made a complete artistic statement. “I had no intention of doing a second season,” creator Hwang recently told Black. But in another bitter irony, he had previously explained that he had only signed on to continue the series because he felt that he had been inadequately compensated for the debut season. “I’m so tired of Play octopus,” Hwang complained in the same Black interview. “I’m so tired of my life doing something, promoting something.” That exhaustion is palpable throughout Season 2.

There is no separation of this excess of narrative from the excess of Play octopus derivatives we have been sold over the past three years. Merch both official ($110 Young-hee necklace, anyone?) and unofficial has spread. Mattel, Crocs, Johnnie Walker and many more jumped on Season 2 brand cooperation wagon. Netflix has invited fans to play non-lethal octopus games The challenge for immersive Squid Game: The Experience pop-ups on three continentsas if the point of the series was that macabre versions of childhood games are fun. King of YouTube MrBeast broke the internet with “$456,000 Octopus Game In Real Life!Then he entered this hit in the Prime Video competition Beast gamewhich premiered just a week before Squid game 2. In an unfortunate case of life imitating art New York Times reported several cast members complain of lack of sleep, inadequate food and even hospitalizations on the set of the off-brand competition.

The populist point of the original Play octopus was that we should resist the commodified and aestheticized violence inherent in a system that enriches a wealthy few while forcing the poor to fight each other for scraps. If anything, bankability of Play octopus the brand – a category that I wanted to include Squid game 2— illustrates how thoroughly we have failed to absorb that lesson. What Play octopus do have drowned out what Play octopus says. And what began as a scathing satire of greed, exploitation and economic polarization has pretty much turned into a cash-cow franchise like any other. It reminds me of something the frontman says to Gi-hun in the new season: “The game won’t end unless the world changes.” Will it ever?