Did the algorithm make them do it?
How else to explain Netflix’s perverse decision to drop one of its most violent products on the day after Christmas. So much for all that goodwill toward men jazz. Put away the eggnog, on which you might gag while jumping back into the Squid Game, the nihilistic and dazzling South Korean sleeper thriller from 2021 that took the world by storm (and came from out of nowhere, surprising even Netflix).
Success begets excess, especially in the streaming world, which might also account for the fact that the deadly game doesn’t even resume until the third episode in a seven-part sequel. And you won’t be surprised to learn it ends in a gruesome cliffhanger, because a Squid Game 3 is coming sometime in 2025. Why not as an Easter special? Who needs The Ten Commandments when we can savor the ruthless rules of this savage enterprise, where losing a round of a stylized children’s game not only gets you eliminated, but executed (with your body donated to a truly diabolical cause)?
Netflix is downplaying expectations that Squid Game 2 will match or surpass the original’s appeal, but human (or inhuman) nature suggests otherwise. As the unseen mastermind warns the first season’s sole survivor, Gi-hun (Emmy winner Lee Jung-jae), “The game will not end unless the world changes.”
The most intriguing aspect of the sequel is that Gi-hun’s quixotic crusade to stop the game from within, by re-entering the bloody arena as player 456, plays out against a new social experiment. This time around, the mysterious Front Man and his masked troops in their pink jumpsuits give the trapped and cash-strapped players a chance to end the torment after each round. The field becomes almost equally divided into two camps: the X’s, who vote to end the soul-crushing game and spare their unhappy lives, and the O’s, whose greed for the kitty that grows exponentially with each death outweighs their desire for self-preservation.
Reflecting the polarized nature of so much of the real world, this fictional conceit pits the X’s and O’s into direct conflict. Survive the next game, and you still might not survive the next night in the dormitory. They’re all pawns in a labyrinth of tic-tac-woe.
This intrigue compensates somewhat for the been-there, flinched-at-that feeling of the actual game. We’ve walked those Escher-like pastel staircases before, and the shock value has diminished in the long time between seasons. Series creator and Emmy-winning director Hwang Dong-hyuk doesn’t try to top himself, and he once again develops some compelling dynamics among this season’s new crew of sitting ducks. Less successful is a subplot following policeman Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon), who like Ji-hun has a personal motive to stop the game, as he tries to locate its hidden island location. Another subplot involving one of the masked snipers with a rebel streak isn’t fleshed out enough to make much of an impact. And one of the major twists is telegraphed way too early in the proceedings.
Ultimately, I found myself empathizing with one of the players observing a particularly intense round of mayhem, declaring, “I can’t watch. It’s making me anxious.” Anxious for sure, but also more than a little restless. Unlike the Season 2 climax of Netflix’s brilliant The Diplomat, which still gets my heart racing when I think about where it left off, the cliffhanger ending of Squid Game 2 merely conveys the promise of more misery and carnage before it’s resolved. Merry post-Christmas!
Squid Game, Season 2, Streaming Now, Netflix