The agony of indulging in the ‘Squid Game’ again

When the South Korean drama Play octopus hit Netflix in 2021, the show became a bona fide cultural phenomenon. The story of debt-ridden people competing to the death for a massive cash prize was unlike anything else on television, juxtaposing candy-colored children’s games with horrifying hyper-violence. Play octopus soon turned into forest green tracksuits a trendy Halloween costume. It helped to type the word dalgona— the sugary treat used in one of the contests — in the pop culture lexicon. That was it parodied on Saturday Night Live. For several weeks after I saw, I could not come the murder doll’s song during the first competition, Red Light, Green Light, out of my head.

The second season, now streaming, begins where the first ended: with the game’s latest winner, Seong Gi-hun (played by Lee Jung-jae), choosing not to board the plane out of South Korea that would have reunited him with his family. Instead, he threatens Hwang In-ho (Lee Byung-hun), the tournament’s supervisor known as “the front man,” over the phone. As he hails a taxi, Gi-hun warns In-ho that he will find him and stop the games – but In-ho is unfazed. “You will regret your decision,” he replies coldly.

I started regretting my own as I got through season 2. Gi-hun’s revenge is mostly the opposite of exciting. The show’s boring opening hours depict him as a recluse who has hired a collection of incompetent men to find the games’ slap-happy recruiter (Gong Yoo). They monitor every subway station in Seoul in hopes of encountering him, but none of Gi-hun’s employees know exactly what their target looks like. Gi-hun is also not a reliable boss; he is too paranoid to visit the stations himself. Even teaming up with Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon), the police detective who discovered the frontman was his own brother last season, to track down the island where the competition took place makes for a monotonous search. Without the sadistic games going on, the show lacks momentum.

Read: In Netflix’s Play octopusDebt is a double-edged sword

And then – and this is only a spoiler if you haven’t seen one trailer– Gi-she ends up back in that tracksuit and relives her worst nightmare. It’s a clever trick: Season 2 withholds the deadly events just long enough for viewers to yearn for their return, making them wonder if they’re actually on the main character’s side. As a result, when the games begin, they make for an even more hectic watch than before. Season 1 framed the tournament as a straightforward allegory for the punishing trap of economic hardship, making even the greediest characters somewhat sympathetic. Season 2 is not so totalist; it further blurs the lines between the series’ victims and perpetrators. The series shows a meaner, more critical streak towards the cash-strapped contestants this time around. It highlights how, as much as the capitalist system can push people to do rash things for money, the players themselves work to uphold such values. More thorny questions arise: Is it possible to overcome cruelty, greed and selfishness? And if not, do the players really deserve to live?

For Gi-hun, the answer to both questions is a resounding “yes” — but the show seems to enjoy countering his perspective whenever it can. Even before this season’s competition begins, Play octopus claims that individuals will chase financial gain above all else with an interminable scene where the games’ recruiters mock homeless people for choosing lottery tickets over food. Gi-hun re-enters the competition in an attempt to dismantle it from within and save his fellow players, but the show immediately underscores the futility of his attempts with a fresh, brutal round of Red Light, Green Light. In-ho also plays with Gi-hun’s belief in the goodness of humanity by ordering players to vote on whether to end the carnage at the end of each trial; if they do, they walk away with far less money than they could have had they continued, because each death improves their chances of landing the jackpot. These deliberations play out over and over again, and they’re not particularly fun to observe: Gi-hun sees each choice as an opportunity to convince players that together they can defy the temptation of both the prize money and the game creators. Every time he fails.

Still, the show’s latest string of attempts allows for a return to form. Each contest is more devilish and exciting than the ones Gi-hun had experienced in her first round. The violence is more exaggerated, the visuals more absurd. And unlike Season 1’s hopscotch-like glass bridge and cookie-cutter challenge, which relied mostly on a person’s individual luck, Season 2’s choices rely more on interpersonal skills from the get-go, requiring players to form alliances and rivalries on the fly. As such, the contests themselves help expand the new characters beyond their original archetypal traits: the pregnant player proves to be an asset. The wallflower bullied by the obnoxious rapper has a tough side. One of the ubiquitous pink-suited soldiers could even care about the competition. IN Play octopuspeople tend to reveal who they really are when they are most desperate.

Read: What happens when real people play Play octopus?

In-ho seems to hope that by playing the games again, Gi-hun will discover a surprising side of herself—and that it will break his spirit. The series shines most when the two share scenes because they are diametrically opposed in their worldviews: In-ho is convinced that humans are inherently heartless, while Gi-hun insists that they can choose to be good.

However, when the season finale ended on another cliff-hanger, I wondered if the story had moved on at all. Play octopus was meant to be a limited series; the first season’s ambiguous ending simply emphasized Gi-hun’s Pyrrhic victory. These new episodes only emphasize the folly of his bravery, forcing him – and a lot of other players I’ve come to root for – to undergo fresh excruciating tests. The bleakness of the show has always been quite agonizing to absorb, even though I couldn’t help but keep watching. But in Season 2, the darkness doesn’t just come from the violence. It comes from the show’s indulgent indulgence in proving its own protagonist wrong.