Squid Game 2 Review – Bigger and Meaner
Netflix’s Squid Game season 2 has returned and it’s bigger and bolder than the last season.
The season takes place years after the past Squid Game with Lee Jung-jae as Seong Gi-hun returning to finish the game once and for all, the game that brought him so much grief and trauma. This time though he’s armed with billions and the drive to stop more people from dying. But can he do so when he’s up against a more ruthless successor in the form of The Frontman played by Lee Byung-hun (Storm Shadow from the GI Joe film franchise).
The season introduces some new games and a ton of interesting characters from former Kpop star TOP playing the character Thanos to more controversial ones like
But there are a few characters that pretty much follow the tropes like
If anything the second season has more action sequences compared to the first season with a full blown fire fight by the season finale. The stakes are also a lot higher and I did enjoy
It’s also got twice the amount of anguish compared to the first season. Our boy Gi-Hun has gone through a lot and it continues to weigh down heavily on him. And as the episodes pile up so does the pain that the guy goes through with. Lee Jung-jae delivers strong emotions here that I really appreciate compared to The Acolyte. Yes I went there.
It’s also a treat to watch Byung Hun Lee who is such an underrated actor if I’m being honest. I did watch him in “Iris” and he was a perfect Storm Shadow in the GI Joe film franchise. But he seriously is a great actor for Squid Game 2 playing as The Frontman and Player 001.
There were a nice bunch of symmetry between In Ho and Gi-Hun too with the former being Player 001 and Player 456. The Alpha and the Omega, the good and the bad. We also get some great clashes in ideology between the two characters. The betrayal at the end was painful to
Squid Game 2 puts ideologies on the backseat and instead puts us head first into the actual world where Gi-Hun lives in. It’s still a nice reflection on society though as well as the greed in people’s hearts even as early as the first episode with The Recruiter (Gong Yoo) letting people choose between a lotto ticket and some bread.
Speaking of Gong Yoo, the handsome daddy from Train to Busan also made quite a splash at the start of the season. It also made sense that he and Gi-Hun meet once more to bookend their fateful meeting.
TOP as Thanos was also such a treat to watch despite him being the biggest asshole in the series, beating even last season’s surprise baddie Sang Woo. I don’t know what they was on but he was thoroughly entertaining especially if you do a second watch for the season. It’s clear that hes gone through something that altered how he sees things and it affected how he went through the games.
Props also the music that they used here whether it’s “Con Te Partiro” by Andrea Bocelli to “Fly Me to the Moon” to the now popular Red Light Green Light theme and the Squid Game theme and now we also have this banger.
There’s also some great camera work here in this series such as that Russian Roulette scene between Gi-Hun and the Recruiter with those weird close ups. Or those weird angles during the games.
Squid Game season 2 also mastered the art of plot twists. Number 011 aka Kang No-eul’s plot for example, set up in episode 2 like she’s a player for the next game but it turns out she’s a soldier for the game. Or that big reveal of In Ho joining the game and interfering and sabotaging Gi-Hun whenever possible.