Netflix: “Squid Game 2”
Gee, I’d hate to be one of the characters in Season 2 of the Korean Netflix series “Squid Game.”
There’s a chance you may get mowed down by machine guns. Or stabbed in the throat with a fork. Or, if you’re a woman, raped by a guard in a pink suit wearing a black mask.
Seems the time’s never been more appropriate for a dark, twisted series like “Squid Game”—one that’s so inconceivably popular that in the first three days of its release in December 2024, it had 68 million views worldwide.
For those who’ve never seen this show, here’s the dystopian premise: certain South Koreans have accumulated such massive debt, they decide, after playing an innocent-seeming game in the Seoul metro, to board a ferry boat and travel to a small island. There, they undertake a “Survivor” set of challenges, based on games played by Korean children. They soon learn that losing has deadly consequences.
After each game, a certain amount of Korean money is added into a gigantic glass piggy bank, based on the number of people who lost and were then killed. The survivors are asked to vote to either keep playing, or to quit the games, divide up the money and leave the island. Unfortunately, the majority votes to keep playing, simply because of the ever-increasing pot of money and the chance to outlast everyone else and take home the jackpot.
Season 1 saw a man named Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) win the grand prize. In last season’s finale, he refuses the chance to board a plane to America and leave with the money, as his only wish is to return to the island and kill the Front Man (Lee Byung-hun), the mastermind behind the games.
In Season 2, the writers’ objective is to provide the contestants with some dimension and “humanity.” Certain characters stand out, including Hyun-Ju (Park Sung-Hoon) as the tough transgender ex-soldier, and Jang Geum Ja and Kang Ae Shim as the sweet, humble mother-and-son team. There’s also T.O.P, the popular South Korean rapper, singer, songwriter, and actor who plays the purple-haired bad boy Thanatos, the debtor you love to hate.
The show is particularly effective at showing man’s inhumanity to man—how people will sink to the lowest depths when faced with a situation where money is involved. Yes greed is very ugly.
For viewers of “The Matrix” or “Hunger Games,” who are inured to the kind of violence portrayed here, this show may be nothing new. But “Squid Game 2,” a series that’s currently ranked number 1 in 92 countries, will be returning for a third season in late 2026. Written and produced by Hwang Dong-hyuk.
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