‘Squid Game’ Season 2 spoiled by its latest twist: Full season review

In the middle Squid game Mingle Game season 2, the contestants stand on a rotating platform as an unstable children’s song plays. “Like a circle, around,” the children sing. “Let’s go around the circles and dance.”

A song can be a perfect way to start one Squid gamemany killer children’s games, but it also proves to be a very accurate description of the viewing experience of Season 2. Despite all the hype — three years with it – the return of Netflix’s biggest series, Squid game Season 2 is frustratingly repetitive, characterized not by Season 1’s dramatic do-or-die stakes, but rather by repetitive, borderline uninspired storytelling.

That repetition problem hangs over the entire season, but nowhere more so than the return of the Squid gameThe voting mechanic, which plays a big role in this season (which is very damaging to the show).

What Squid game Season 2’s voting mechanic, and why isn’t it working?

In season 1 of Squid gamewhen players hear the horrors of Red Light, Green Light, they are given a choice. If most of them vote to end the games, they can all go home. They did (by one vote). But when players re-enter the real world and are once again faced with the full weight of their debt, many choose to return to gaming for a small chance of winning life-saving cash. .

When Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae, The Acolyte) returns to the games for Season 2, experiencing a post-Red Light, Green Light vote again. Only this time, things are different. Now, players get to choose to finish the games in between every challenge. If they choose to go, they get to split the current prize pot, which increases with every death.

This change to the game’s voting mechanics is an interesting twist. It tests whether players are willing to live and walk with a relatively small (but significant) amount of money, or if they risk their lives and those of the people around them in order to get more money next time. all around. “One game,” they told themselves, remembering the gambling addictions that drove them into debt.

More voting also fuels the tension between those who wish to leave and those who wish to remain. In the end, it serves as a message from Front Man (Lee Byung-hun) to Gi-hun: Despite Gi-hun’s bravado efforts, there will always be people who will choose to play at the expense of others. This is why the Front Man and other people who run these games view the players as “grudges,” even though they ignore the injustice of the capitalist system that put them there in the first place.

With all this nuance in mind, repeated polling works in theory. But in practice, it falls flat. There are three voting scenes in Season 2, and each draws more than the last. After all, there are only so many ways you can get people lining up to click a button and get interested. That’s not the case anymore all of them vote, people must apologize or explain themselves. These scenes feel very similar RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars contestants justifying whose lipstick they’re pulling may have you wondering if you’ve tuned into a reality show Squid Game: Challenge in turn.

Squid game it tries to play with its formula with “shocking” fluctuations in who votes for what. It’s an easy way to chart where people stand in games, but it’s hard to focus on the personal arcs of people who choose to go or stay when the outcome is so obvious. Meat of Squid game the games themselves, so we know that going to each vote that there is no way that will pass. By design, the show has to stay in this hellish playground.

Indeed, repeated voting gives us the illusion of difference, as it gives players like Gi-hun the illusion of escape. What could have been an engaging game mechanic has become a nightmare browser in an already frustrating season. So when the third vote results in a tie, I’m less surprised at what will happen next and more nervous at the promise that another one voting sequence. (At least the series avoids a fourth round due to Gi-hun’s final rebellion.)

Squid game Season 2 is exactly like its voting machine: dull and repetitive.

Choi Seung-hyun in “Squid Game.”
Credit: No Ju-han / Netflix

Squid gameThe overemphasis on voting is one symptom of Season 2’s biggest problem: Retreading Season 1 episode scores with deep-seated twists.

Let’s start with the obvious. Again, gamer 001 is a crop from the people who control the games. This time, none other than Front Man Hwang In-ho, who came to the games to watch Gi-hun, and ended up being one of his closest friends. He better break his spirit when he finds out who he really is! It’s just a problem, Gi-hun this is not the case learn who 001 really is this season, so that we lose the sense of brutal catharsis we got from the portrayal of Oh Il-nam (O Yeong-su) from Season 1.

(That detail is just one of many unsatisfying arcs Squid game leaves hanging at the end of Season 2. No wonder, when creator Hwang Dong-hyuk told Entertainment Weekly that he originally envisioned Seasons 2 and 3 as one story.)

Elsewhere, Squid game looks to add a new perspective on the character of Kang No-eul (Park Gyu-young), a North Korean defector – like Season 1’s Kang Sae-byeok (Jung Ho-yeon) – who has become a soldier in the series. What could be an enlightening look at what pushes someone to take on that role quickly becomes a mish-mash of the organ harvesting plot from Season 1, considering No-eul’s inner conflict when she sees someone she knows on the outside. games.

Even the games themselves become a stick. The six-legged Pentathlon is a mishmash of so many sports, that watching it becomes a slogan. Mingle lasts a long time and is welcome after a few rounds. It sounds like you’re watching Squid game he hit himself on the ground. Add the lengthy subplot of Detective Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon) wandering, lost, on a boat, and that becomes doubly true. We go round and round, we dance in circles, there’s not much to show for it.

Squid game Season 2 is a step down – but that’s not its only fault.

Park Gyu-young in “Squid Game.”
Credit: No Ju-han / Netflix

When Squid game Season 1’s first hit, it felt like a new take on the “game of death” genre. It spoke directly to concerns about debt and inequality arising from life under defunct capitalism. Again, elements of the children’s game were given a strong aesthetic twist, complete with pastel playgrounds and the iconic shape masks now worn by soldiers.

Since then, however, the concept of Squid game you are made to die. Despite Netflix’s ill-advised sound-off, YouTuber MrBeast recreated his channel’s games in 2021, then tore it up again for himself. Animal Games Game show. Meanwhile, Netflix has continued to release many compelling products, mobile games, and real-life experiences. Squid game The craziness and long waits between seasons have heightened expectations, but also diluted what once felt special. Season 2 picks up again Squid gameeven ending with a typical shot that’s miles removed from the claustrophobic, almost intimate poles of Season 1.

With all the efforts to dial something back from Season 1, be it the voting mechanic or the Front Man role, Squid game Season 2 weakens its mystique and appeal. It’s proof that too much of a good thing can’t be the impetus for a show, and that sometimes, a good series doesn’t need a second season.

Squid game Season 2 is now streaming on Netflix.