7.9

Despite Pacing Issues, Squid Game Is Still Ready To Play In Season Two

By Elijah Gonzalez  |  December 26, 2024 | 3:00am
Photo courtesy of Netflix
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Despite Pacing Issues, Squid Game Is Still Ready To Play In Season Two
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Squid Game was an overnight sensation that no one saw coming, but in retrospect, its massive popularity makes perfect sense: of course a story about economic inequality and fiscal exploitation would do gangbusters. However heightened, it spoke to deeply felt frustrations that resonated with viewers worldwide: as South Korean director Bong Joon Ho put it regarding his own film Parasite, “We all live in the same country, it’s called capitalism.” Beyond this, it certainly didn’t hurt Squid Game‘s appeal that its message was packaged within a propulsive death game structure that kept audiences on the edge of their seats as its characters risked their lives for a few dollars more. Even if its ideas sailed over your head, like whichever business execs at Netflix greenlit the Squid Game-themed reality TV show which entirely missed or ignored what the series was saying, there was still much to enjoy.

Now, more than three years later, showrunner and director Hwang Dong-hyuk’s Squid Game is finally back with a second season that’s just as barbed and justifiably angry as the first. But while this follow-up maintains its sharp political commentary and adds some compelling new lines of thought, its poorer pacing, unsatisfying cliffhanger ending, and occasional overfamiliarity hold it back from its predecessor. The series is still visceral and often engaging, but it’s not as tightly written, falling into commonplace TV woes as it struggles to get to the point. Thankfully, though, there’s still enough here thematically to largely make up for these shortcomings.

The story picks up with Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) carrying out his plan to end the Squid Game for good. He’s spent two years burning through blood money to track down the game’s enigmatic ringleaders, but even after all this time, he’s got nothing to show for it. However, after meeting up with Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon), the police officer looking for his missing brother last season, the two end up with a lead that brings Gi-hun back into the belly of the beast. After Plan A goes awry, he once again enters the games, this time intending to bring it all down.

From the jump, this season faced a tricky storytelling dilemma: do you repeat the games all over again and risk overfamiliarity, or attempt to do something new that could potentially lose the essence of what came before? The latest season tries to split the difference with mixed results. Specifically, it attempts to develop storylines outside these deadly trials, but they’re often the least interesting stretches of this season. Besides a few tense moments early on, these scenes mostly spin their wheels. And although things become more interesting after Gi-hun takes up the mantle of Player 456 again as he’s surrounded by ethical dilemmas and buckets of bloodshed, this premise admittedly feels a bit less novel this time around. These games eventually go to fresh places that recreate some of the first season’s cold dread as we witness new depraved challenges, but it’s still not quite as thrilling.

However, perhaps the biggest issue with this latest run is that its pacing is frequently lethargic, extending circumstances that could have been conveyed in four or five episodes into a seven-episode season. While this gives the cast space to develop, many storylines come across as extraneous in the process. And then, despite taking its time, the final episode rushes through a paradigm shift that should have come sooner, culminating in a non-ending that makes this feel like the first half of a season instead of a self-contained arc.

However, while these significant flaws may make it tempting to write off this latest run, underneath these gaffes, this show remains incisive, thoughtful, and rightfully pissed off at the status quo. It continues to expose the evils of a system that treats human beings like trash, depicting systemic cruelty while leaving room for unexpected moments of humanity and solidarity. And beyond these familiar ideas, this latest season has a timely focus on how capitalism overlaps with flawed democratic processes.

Last time, the Squid Game’s participants got an opportunity to vote as a group on whether they wanted the games to end after the first round or continue so they could earn more money with each death—a majority decision would decide everyone’s shared fate. Here, they’re given even more opportunities to escape as they vote at the end of each round. Of course, the votes always occur after thousands of bills theatrically pour into a giant piggy bank as it lights up like a casino, visualizing how the payout has increased from additional players biting it. It’s probably fair to say this sways the process more than a little.

This time around, after casting their ballot to go or stay, each voter is given an X or an O velcro patch for their uniform, which denotes the “side” they’re on. Before long, battle lines are drawn as the Xs and Os turn against one another. It all works as a stand-in for how the democratic process often devolves into factionalism and divisiveness, as families and friend groups fall on either side of this divide—or, in the case of Korea, how it was divided in two by outside forces.

And more specifically, we see how this process can be weaponized by those with power so that a majority ends up voting against their own interests. Those who run the game know how to make this deadly rat race seem “fair” and “reasonable” even though it will likely mean their doom. It’s unfortunately timely that this season came out right after South Korea’s democratically elected president, the misogynistic right-wing dirtbag Yoon Suk Yeol, attempted to instill martial law and overthrow the government because the opposition party wasn’t doing what he wanted. While some time ago, it may have been hard to buy how over 50% of the game’s participants vote for something that may kill them over and over, recent events have made this much easier to accept. More specifically, we see how carefully stoked polarization leaves little hope for the players to rise up against the real threat: those running the games.

These high-level themes connect because of how they overlap with this cast of characters, who are a well-considered mixture of likable companions and fun-to-hate scumbags. Once again, Lee Jung-jae’s performance as Gi-hun grounds the action, showcasing both his survivor’s guilt and resolve to end this cycle of suffering as he’s thrust back into these familiar circumstances. Before long, Gi-hun runs into his old friend Jung-bae (Lee Seo-hwan) and meets new allies, including an overeager ex-Marine Dae-ho (Kang Ha-neul), a mother and son pairing, a pregnant woman named Kim Jun-hee (Jo Yu-ri), and more. Just like last season, the show dives into these participants’ sympathetically presented backstories, explaining the reasons why they’re here as it sets the stage for their potential tragic deaths.

For instance, we meet Gyeong-seok (Lee Jin-wook), a man trying to earn money to save his sick daughter, and Hyun-ju (Park Sung-hoon), a trans woman who enters the games so she can get the money she needs to leave South Korea and its transphobic culture behind. Others have fallen into debt, like the crypto bro Lee Myung-gi (Yim Si-wan), whose bad financial advice left him and many other participants in severe debt. And then, of course, there are a few unhinged competitors, too, like the rapper Thanos (Choi Seung-hyun), whose unpredictability helps ratchet up the tension. Although events that befell last season’s competitors were more traumatic, it’s somewhat hard to compare because this season ends before all of their fates are decided.

While this latest run of Squid Game feels like it would have been better served if it was cut down and combined with the upcoming third and final season, the series is still full of incisive commentary, well-founded rage, and fleeting moments of camaraderie. Its pacing may leave much to be desired, but at least its central rebellious spirit is alive and well. That said, it would be nice if it still had both.

Elijah Gonzalez is an assistant Games and TV Editor for Paste Magazine. In addition to playing and watching the latest on the small screen, he also loves film, creating large lists of media he’ll probably never actually get to, and dreaming of the day he finally gets through all the Like a Dragon games. You can follow him on Twitter @eli_gonzalez11 and on Bluesky @elijahgonzalez.bsky.social.

For all the latest TV news, reviews, lists and features, follow @Paste_TV.

 
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