After a long wait, Squid Game Season 2 has finally landed on Netflix, and it’s already proving to be better than the first for one major reason. I’ll give you a clue: it’s best served cold.
What happens when you take a dash of biting social commentary, a fistful of complex characters, a sprinkling of ferocious gore, and a generous helping of heart-thumping thrills? This is the winning recipe that made Squid Game a global phenomenon.
When the first season dropped, it broke as many barriers as it did streaming records, becoming Netflix’s number-one show in 90 countries across the globe within its first 10 days.
Hwang Dong-hyuk poured his blood, sweat, and teeth into bringing his vision to screen. That wasn’t a typo – the showrunner apparently lost around eight teeth from the stress of production. This raised the question: could he (and his gnashers) really do it again? In short, yes.
Squid Game Season 2 raises the stakes with vengeance
Rather than trying to beat Season 1 with new concepts, Dong-hyuk takes what made the first chapter so great and raises the stakes higher than a player’s heart rate after walking the glass bridge. How? With vengeance.
The last we saw of Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), he was heading to LA with his new, red barnet. Just as he boarded the flight, he rang the Squid Game number and said, “I’m not a horse. I’m a person. That’s why I wanna know who you people are and how you can do these horrible things to people.”
Hwang In-ho, aka Front Man (Lee Byung-hun), told him not to get any “absurd” ideas and to get on the plane for his “own good,” but Gi-hun insisted, “I can’t forgive you for everything you’re doing.” He hung up, turned around, and started walking back – then the credits rolled.
This perfectly sets up Squid Game Season 2, as Gi-hun not only seeks vengeance for the friends he lost but also to put a stop to the twisted games for good.
As the saying goes, revenge is a dish best served cold, and it’s also the perfect recipe for unforgettable storytelling. It taps into the raw human emotions of pain, anger, grief, and the desire for justice, all of which are wrapped up in a poetic sense of tragic inevitability.
Even though the protagonist knows it won’t turn back time or ease their suffering, it doesn’t matter. They’ll stop at nothing to enact justice, as if it’s their destiny; an unspoken rule of the universe.
Just take a look at some of the best movies ever made and you’ll see these themes at the core. Yoo Ji-tae (Lee Woo-jin) spent the best part of two decades enacting his payback plan against Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik) in Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy.
Once his sinister scheme was completed, he shot himself (sorry for the spoiler, but you have had nearly 25 years to watch it). His only living goal was to get revenge, and when all was said and done, there was nothing left but the release of death.
It doesn’t bring comfort, it only annihilates, but it must be fulfilled. This idea also formed the basis for Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill saga, where The Bride’s (Uma Thurman) relentless pursuit of vengeance mirrors this same destructive path.
Alongside the storytelling opportunities this theme provides, revenge spurs some of the coldest fights in cinematic history. If you’ve seen Oldboy, the corridor scene will no doubt come to mind.
It’s when Oh Dae-su single-handedly takes down a whole army of men in single take, creating an authentic, suffocating intensity that so many movies have tried to mimic over the years.
Tarantino channeled his kung fu inspirations into Kill Bill, resulting in The Bride’s vicious, gnarly sword fight against the O-Ren Ishii’s (Lucy Liu) Yakuza assassins, the Crazy 88 – where vengeance is served cold with a side of eyeball gloop.
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But these are just two examples within a smorgasbord of badass revenge movies. From Dead Man’s Shoes and I Saw the Devil to Twin Town and Inglorious Basterds, it’s a tried and tested formula for creating excellent drama when done right.
And boy, does Dong-hyuk get it deliciously spot on.
Gi-hun’s fight isn’t just personal
In Squid Game Season 2, revenge isn’t just personal for Gi-hun – it’s also a battle against systemic exploitation. The sadistic games, as we learned in Season 1, are for the entertainment of those mask-wearing VIPs, but they’re also emblematic of a dystopian class struggle.
This dynamic and Gi-hun’s drive add a David vs Goliath element to the story, and this only raises the stakes further.
As you’ll know, Player 456 makes his way back to the secret island for another round. But even before he does, the opening episodes show how different his life has become since getting out.
He’s no longer the gooberish gambling addict we were first introduced to. He’s on a mission, and that single-minded focus is what makes the second chapter all the more compelling to watch.
I found myself screaming at the screen in frustration as he encounters roadblocks along the way (pro tip: don’t watch right before bed unless you can sleep with cortisol pumping through your bloodstream).
When he steps back into the games, this only intensifies – you’ll root for the underdogs harder than ever, while despising the bad guys all the more.
As for the games themselves, they aren’t just more brutal this time around – they’re also more revealing.
In Season 2, we finally begin to see behind the masks of the enigmatic Pink Soldiers, uncovering who they are and why they’re involved.
This deeper dive into the characters and their motivations elevates Squid Game’s second chapter beyond a simple continuation of the original, with the intensity of Gi-hun’s drive for vengeance at the forefront of this evolution.
Rather than merely reformulating the games for shock value, Dong-hyuk has crafted a complex extension of his already impeccable predecessor.
It’s no wonder it’s taken three years for Squid Game Season 2 to reach our screens. Yes, the dish might be cold, but it tastes better than ever.
Squid Game Season 2 is streaming on Netflix now. You can also check out our roundup of the best TV shows of 2024, and find out what’s going on with Stranger Things Season 5, Wednesday Season 2, and Black Mirror Season 7.
