Review of Squid Game / 오징어 게임 Season 2

For those of you who have never set foot virtually into this space, welcome! This is my blog, which serves as an online diary and digital archive of everything I’ve watched, read, and experienced in the past few years.

Recently, it has become a source of income for me, and a crux as I faced unexpected unemployment after an opportunity I was told I had fell through. Feel free to click around if you liked this post.

This is another one of those blog posts where I’m revisiting movies I watched a while ago. I have a huge backlog of blog posts to get through these days, hence the need to space out these posts. It’s a lot of work! But today I’ve binged watched the entire second season of Squid Game in one go, so this is a more relevant post.

As I just mentioned, I watched all of Squid Game season two in one day. I don’t recommend doing this, but I was dying to know what this season entailed after waiting for it for so long. I also loved the casting for this season, as some of my favorite Korean drama and movie actors were brought into the fold.

I did a review of the first season when it came out, and man it was such a trip going back to that after watching this season. Back then I had just started my blog, so it was a completely different format than what I use nowadays. I prefer this format.

I don’t want to ramble too much in the introduction, as I know you’re here for the review and summary, so let’s get right into it!

Three years after the games, Seong Gi-hun returns to try and stop the next round of games.

Right from where we left off in the first season, Seong Gi-hun decides to not leave South Korea and instead lives under the radar. The Front Man and his crew did plant a tracker on him, but Gi-hun traumatizes a small kid when he realizes it’s behind his ear and he digs it out with a blade in a public bathroom.

The first episode of this season establishes that, and the fact that the Front Man’s brother, Jun-ho, is still alive. In season one the Front Man shot him and let him fall off of a cliff, but now Jun-ho is looking for the island, despite all of his colleagues and family thinking he’s nuts. Three years pass. Enter: Gong Yoo as the salesman.

A lot of people are looking for the salesman, and episode one gives us some backstory on him. Gong Yoo plays him as a psychopath, and it fits with the general theme of this episode. He plays some twisted games of his own and has some moves to take down the gangsters tracking him, but I was sad to see this character go.

With Jun-ho and the gangster whose boss was just killed, Gi-hun decides to find out more on the games. They establish a team, rip out one of his teeth and plant a tracker, then go hunting for the Front Man and his goonies. At a club they find some of them, and Gi-hun finds himself in the games yet again.

While he can warn everyone on what’s to come, if they listen is another story. There are some interesting characters to look out for, and if you’re a dedicated drama and movie fan, you’re going to recognize a lot of these people. Im Si-wan makes an appearance as 333, a cryptocurrency shill who screwed a lot of people over.

His (former, I presume) girlfriend is also in the games, and she’s pregnant. He doesn’t believe it’s his kid at first, but it’s definitely his kid. T.O.P. makes an acting reappearance as the unhinged Thanos, a guy popping drugs and a failed rapper. He’s a bit of a psychopath in his own right, and there’s a bit of a thread going on with him.

There’s also Kang Ha-neul, who I did not recognize first at all, portraying an ex-Marine that buddies up with the squad. One of Gi-hun’s good friends from three years ago is also in the games, and Gi-hun is kind of devastated to see him there and also down on his luck. This is never a good place for a reunion.

We meet a mother and son, a woman with shamanistic tendencies and a grudge later on, a trans woman (played by Park Sung-hoon, which is an interesting choice in itself), and a girl who really just wants to go home. The stakes are obviously high throughout each new game in this season, but I feel like a bit of the urgency was lost going forward in the show.

There are some twists in this season, but it’s set up to clearly lead into a season three. This season ends on a mild cliffhanger that has you shaking your head and wishing that you could just get to the next episode, but then you find out the next season isn’t out yet.

There’s also quite a bit of filler involved with Jun-ho and his seamen, but something obvious to me is that his situation and captain are a little fishy.

Overall Thoughts

One of the more interesting parts of this season, to me, is Park Sung-hoon’s character: Hyun-ju, the trans woman. This is an interesting form of representation in mainstream Korean cinema and entertainment because there is little LGBTQ+ representation in general in television.

There are even few openly gay and lesbian actors, let alone trans. While it would have been ideal to have a trans actor, there just aren’t many of them around in this context.

Anyways, I think this is a solid season, but it would have been better if we didn’t have season one to compare to. I think in a way because we’re used to the games at this point switching it up somewhat helped, but then I felt like I was a bit disconnected from that aspect in some ways.

The democracy and people willingly voting for this was an interesting factor as well, and really highlighted how far people are willing to go and be selfish in the name of money. It’s also still a solid commentary about the Korean (and global) problems about money, especially considering Korean culture it very communal and thinking about other people before yourself.

The standout actor was Gong Yoo. That first episode he went to town, and he went to town in a way we rarely see from his filmography in general. Thanos as a character was also interesting, but he felt like an archetype I did not care for at a certain point. I could also very much see why they chose TOP of all people for this role, it fits his aesthetic.

Go watch this if you haven’t already! I’m dropping this review the day of release, so if you’re reading this in the future: hi! I hope you enjoyed the review, and again, if you’re liking it, click around the site.

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