Every now and then, Netflix needs to justify its existence and our subscriptions to it by featuring top-notch exclusive content. They manage to do this every year with 2 or 3 great award season films, but nothing has made the streamer more essential than the Korean television drama, Squid Game, which debuted season 2 (of 3) this Boxing Day.
Are there people who haven’t seen Squid Game? Are there people who do not adore Squid Game? In case I need to convince you, I will just say that this show immediately became by #10 TV show of all time after its premiere! I usually don’t consider adding a series until it has finished, but Squid Game—in the tradition of Lost—was clearly superb on first exposure. The concept, social commentary, aesthetic, writing, and acting are of the highest quality. This show blew into our homes with a killer first season which was made instantly iconic by the slick design. A jewel among pearls, the first season’s sixth episode—”Gganbu”—is my second favorite television episode (after Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s unbeatable “Once More With Feeling”).
While the ways in which the show creates suspense from schoolyard games is incredible, its true strength is its facility with character. Season 2 once again gives us an array of original and complex characters. This time around, since we know more or less how and why the game is run, the scripts spend more time examining the wide range of relationships between players (yep, we’re back in the games).
Squid Game 2 must be viewed within the context of an ultimate trilogy. The creators have announced that next year’s season 3 will be the end of the show. That makes this middle chapter inherently less satisfying than the discovery of season 1 or the payoff of season 3. A lot of the formal tropes from the first season reappear with interesting twists, but the mix of characters is fresh.
Since I already made the connection to Lost, I’ll go on to say that Squid Game 2 falls prey to the same lowered excitement during the scenes in which a boat looks for the island. Those are needed chapters, but they can’t compete with the character development of the on-island story. (Hints are shown that this, too, may be “Not Penny’s Boat” in the end.)
Taken within the context of a future concluding season, I have to say that Squid Game has unexpectedly done it again, creating an absorbing television show that is easily better than most of the stuff on American TV. It mixes the familiar and the new in the right ratio, as the story progresses logically from Battle Royale to Battle Royale II (but with better results).
You, too, can sit down to start it and get up seven hours later having greedily sucked down the whole thing. I’m sad that this season had 7 episodes as opposed to the original’s 9, but I am actively trusting the showrunners. We won’t know the full truth about how this season is until a year from now, when the games are over for good.