Recently I have been watching the second season of Squid Game; and it was rather intense! Created by Hwang Dong-hyuk, and starring Lee Jung-jae, Lee Byung-hun, and Lee Seo-hwan; Squid Game is a dystopian survival thriller series from South Korea, with the second season contiuing the story from where the first season ended. Having survived the previous set of game, player 456, tries to take down the game makers, by hiring some soldiers, whilst also going back to the island, to try and take it all down from the inside. I absolutely loved the first season of Squid Game, to me it’s as close to perfection as it’s possible for a TV series to achieve. So I, like many had high hopes for a second series. The second series however is very different to the first, but it’s choice of direction is rather clever, and does play to the show’s strengths.
Squid Game is weird, it’s so very different to other shows out there, and it’s packed full of surprises. If the second season was just a copy of the first, then it would potentially get stale, very quickly. So, choosing to go down a different path, really helps to keep it fresh, whilst also on point. So it does things like highlight the struggles of new characters, both from the side of the contestants, to even the game makers themselves. It also shows off a level of madness on the outside world, with major characters doing wild and questionable things (like stamping on food in front of homeless people).
But the second season does struggle a bit from time to time. Firstly, it has fewer episodes than the first, so it just feels like there’s more to see and tell, but chooses to hide those bits, which leads to an annoyingly open ended conclusion, of a very high adrenaline infused final episode (which was gripping to say the least). The other issue though, is that each episode feels like watching a film. It’s like each episode ends in a way that makes you want to watch more, but you also feel like you need to take a break, and as such it’s a bit hard to keep up a routine to watch the whole series. So altogether, the second season doesn’t have the panache the first season had. But that doesn’t mean that it’s bad. It was very enjoyable! And it was so nice to return to this world, meet new characters, and explore more of these crazy games, as well as get a nice shot of adrenaline (something other current shows just don’t deliver often enough). But you get a sense, that there could be more to this, this can’t be everything this season has to offer…surely? But sadly…it is (for now anyway)!
It’s not totally disappointing, like say the second season of WestWorld (or perhaps even post season 1 Heroes?). That was just borring, this at least stayed on point, and even though it took me nearly four months to watch it, at least I wanted to keep watching Squid Game. I eventually stopped watching WestWorld half way through season 3, one and a half seasons too late!
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