In the depths of an awful bout of the flu, I recently found myself bingeing the second season of Netflix’s Squid Game. This being a Korean drama about a carnivalesque series of deadly games, my partner joked that, in my sickly state, I must have been drawn to watching people having an even worse time than I was.
In case you missed the initial phenomenon, here’s the rub: the first season, released in 2021, opened with vulnerable, indebted Seoulites being approached by a mysterious suited man who offers to play a Korean children’s game called Ddakji with them for a small cash prize. Once they’re hooked, he then hands them a mysterious business card with the implicit promise of more games and a much bigger prize.
Taken to a remote island, the players soon realise, however, that the consequences of losing these games are far deadlier. If they make it through to the end, they will win 45.6 billion Korean won—about £25 million. If not, they are literally “eliminated”.
Players are given one chance to collectively leave, which they initially take up. But after returning to their lives—and their financial troubles—most voluntarily re-enter the games. It was a damning indictment of modern capitalism—the players were more scared of the outside world than the sadistic games inside the island’s madcap lair, run by a shadowy cabal of rich “clients” who seemed titillated by the carnage.
The show took off while many viewers around the world were in and out of Covid lockdowns. The themes of the fragility of human lives and the power of institutions to restructure them evidently struck a chord with the public—and with the media, who couldn’t get enough of the show’s dark symbolism.
But after its release on 26th December, the show’s second season hasn’t generated nearly as much hype, and the critics have been divided.
There are some understandable reasons for this. Many of us simply aren’t watching as much Netflix as we were in lockdown. The show’s shocking novelty factor has also worn off; after a while, the gory death scenes don’t pack quite the same punch. And there is understandable cynicism around Netflix’s aggressive marketing of this season. One could hardly escape the copious billboards, bus ads, special edition Johnny Walker whisky and endless “brand activations” (read: actors dressed as the show’s pink guards paid to walk around public spaces across multiple continents). Then there was 2023’s tasteless Squid Game: The Challenge, a British reality show spinoff that denudes the show of its social critique for a gimmicky embrace of its children’s games.
There is perhaps a welcome irony in such manufactured hype achieving less cultural relevance than the first season’s more lowkey release. Hopefully streaming executives get the message (though I’m not holding my breath).
Nonetheless, I think the flaccid response to Squid Game season two is unfortunate, as it remains ambitious, prescient and well—ahem—executed. Most impressively, the show has evolved in ways that reflect an emerging cultural shift.
Where the first season was a simple, horrific metaphor for the cruelty of cutthroat economics, the second season is concerned with the difficulty of mobilising people to help create a better system. This time, participants get to vote on whether to keep playing after each round. If a majority vote to leave, they each go home with an equal share of a smaller prize pool. But if they stay—and more people die—they could get a greater share of a larger pool.
Despite the carnage, most players keep choosing to play on. Protagonist Gi-hun’s calls for solidarity—to get others to vote to leave the games and, later, to rise up in armed rebellion to end them for good—are mostly unsuccessful. His fellow players are morally ambiguous: some are persuaded to act humanely in the collective interest, others succumb to fantastical thinking and greed, and others flip flop between the two.
This nuancing of Squid Game’s moral vision is compelling and speaks to real-life challenges, particularly in America at the dawn of a new presidential administration. Many ordinary Americans believe they are, in the words of novelist John Steinbeck, “temporarily embarrassed millionaires” instead of systematically exploited, which makes them less likely to support redistributive and risk-sharing interventions—and, it seems, more likely to idolise rich celebrities such as Donald Trump.
Similar films and TV series in the 2010s and early 2020s, from Hunger Games to Snowpiercer to Parasite (often Korean-made and/or involving sadistic games), explored how individuals are forced into unthinkable choices by broken systems. But while capitalism certainly puts lots of vulnerable people in unenviable positions, there are also plenty of bullies, shysters and chancers who will pick their pockets, or watch on as others do, instead of linking arms. It is these characters who writer and director Hwang Dong-hyuk has in his sights this time around. Game on.
This piece originally appeared in Prospect’s newsletter The Culture. We’ve pulled this one out from behind the paywall, but to receive future editions, subscribe to Prospect today.
