The games work, everything else doesn’t

After three years, Netflix’s most successful show of all time has returned in the form of Squid Game Season 2. It seemed impossible that the follow-up season would capture the viral magic of the original, and while the viewership remains to be seen, it turns out. out of that yes, this is a pretty solid season, albeit perhaps less so than the original, which isn’t much of a surprise.

Squid Game season 2 excels in some ways and not in others, fattened up with what feels like filler content, which isn’t great for a season that’s only seven episodes long. Most of it feels like nothing more than pure set-up for the third and final season, and when you get to the end you realize that this is more or less just one long season split in half. Spoilers follows in this review.

Seong Gi-hun has spent her billions tracking down the games’ face-slapping recruiter to try and lead him back to those who run the games, the “Frontman” in the black mask. Similarly, Hwang Jun-ho does the same, sailing around trying to find the island to reunite with his brother (who is actually the front man).

The two team up, and the plan eventually becomes that Gi-hun will be abducted and return to the island embedded with a tracker, and a mercenary team he hired, run by Jun-ho, will follow him to invade the island. Not surprisingly, things don’t go according to plan. His tracker is removed and Gi-hun is thrown back into the games, where we all knew this was coming.

While the season starts off a bit slow, when it gets back to the games, you could argue that aspects of this part of the season work better than even the original. Season 2 does a really good job of setting up a large cast of characters, each with their own motivations and personalities, in a way that Season 1 didn’t do quite as well. Such memorable characters include an old woman and her loser son, a rapper who keeps taking drugs and partying through the games, a trans woman looking for money for surgery and moving out of Korea, and a woman who literally is about to give birth with her deadbeat boyfriend. , separately, in the games.

The most significant addition is the arrival of In-ho, who we know is secretly the frontman himself, but Gi-hun never finds out all season. At the end of the season, I still wasn’t quite sure why the front man would insert himself into these games, and it seems to mirror the Season 1 storyline with the terminally ill old man doing the exact same thing. Here, during an eventual player uprising, In-ho betrays some fellow players and puts the mask back on, but again, I still don’t really understand the purpose of this, since he could easily have died at any point before this, or could in that at least not having survived without giving himself away. Is it just for thrills or was there an actual reason here? If so, we won’t find out in the final.

An interesting dynamic is also introduced here that wasn’t present in Season 1, the ability for players to vote to leave the matches after each round, resulting in some dramatic sequences and eventually wild moments like sides killing each other for to secure their numbers. Continuing the games may ultimately feel like a foregone conclusion, but it’s a neat mechanic that has freshened things up a bit, beyond the new games (and they’re all new, except for the initial Red Light, Green Light).

All that is not the games in season 2 don’t work well at all. This includes the aimless story of Jun-ho and the mercenary team sailing around trying to find the game island now that Gi-hun’s tracer died. This only gets interesting at the very last second when it’s revealed that the boat’s captain appears to be a Squid Game-hired traitor, but even then it felt like a waste of 10 minutes per episode. episode.

Similarly, the season started with a cool idea that showed the story of a North Korean defector behind one of the guard masks, instead of focusing only on the players. The guard, No-eul, finds herself at odds with other guards, including the new manager, when she stands in the way of an organ-harvesting side gig who’d rather be hurt, but not dead players so they can extract valuable pieces from them. She keeps killing the wounded before they can be taken, resulting in threats on her life. Then it just stops.. While I’m sure there’s more planned for her next season, it was bizarre to see this last epic “players versus guards” finals battle unfold and she had no part whatsoever in it. Another plotline that again felt like a waste of 5-10 minutes per episode. episode. And these add up.

While it’s good that the A plot is solid in Season 2 here, having completely useless B and C plots brings the season down and makes it feel overstuffed despite only being seven episodes. I don’t think it’s a bad thing that the show returned, as this certainly doesn’t feel like a disastrous follow-up. It’s certainly good enough and I’m excited to see how it all ends. But yes, much of the initial magic has faded.

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