‘Squid Game’ Season 2 Review: Thrills, Kills And Fan Service

Watching Squid Game Season 2, you can tell that multiple seasons weren’t a part of the initial plan for the series. Between some fan service-laden subplots and shameless set up for Season 3 (which is due to premiere in 2025), it feels like a highly responsive set of seven episodes. It’s hardly bad television—we get compelling new characters and twisted new games, complete with the show’s iconic, ironic colorful production design—but Season 2 is a middle chapter supporting a stronger beginning and (hopefully) an exciting end.

Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) returns as the show’s primary protagonist, haunted and hardened by his time in the games. It’s been three years since he won, and he’s dedicated his life and his cash winnings to taking down the Front Man (Lee Byung-hun) and those who run the games. Unfortunately, his success has been limited.

Meanwhile, police officer Jun-ho (Wi Ha-jun), the other Season 1 survivor, has given up on official channels to investigate the games and his brother’s involvement in them. He’s been searching the seas for the mysterious island that houses the games, but he hasn’t had any luck either. So when he and Gi-hun’s paths cross again, they agree to team up to take down the games. However, a tense meeting with the Front Man results in Gi-hun going back in alone—meaning he has to play his way out again. This time, though, he’s determined to save as many players as possible and sabotage the games from the inside.

Gi-hun’s fellow players run the gamut of debt and morality, and for better or worse, Season 2 expands its scope of supporting characters and their subplots. For one, there’s Gi-hun’s old friend Jung-bae (Lee Seo-hwan), whose money problems have reached a tipping point. Gi-hun gets to see a version of his past self in Yong-sik (Yang Dong-geun), a hopeless gambler who’s joined by his overbearing mother Geum-ja (Kang Ae-sim) in the games. This year’s edition boasts some (in)famous faces too: crypto influencer Myung-gi (Yim Si-wan), a target of ire for his bad investment advice and modestly successful rapper Thanos (Choi Seung-hyun), who has a few fans on the inside. Season 2 also focuses on Hyun-ju, a trans woman seeking the money to start her new life in a place more welcoming to her. Her character is played by a cisgender male actor (Park Sung-hoon), which may very well generate controversy for American and other international viewers, but the inclusion of her storyline is significant for a Korean production. Plus, the show includes a scene where Hyun-ju is welcome to join other female players in the women’s bathroom, which is a hell of a lot more progressive than some stateside streamers are willing to be.

There are still more players and figures that the show holds space for in its second season, all of varying significance and ultimate payoff. Squid Game puts as many pieces on its chessboard as possible, but it becomes very clear early on that this match won’t be decided in Season 2. It isn’t until the third episode that Gi-hun re-enters the games, for example, with the first two episodes exhaustively setting up his game-busting operation. The Recruiter (Gong Yoo) makes his return in this early portion of the season, receiving a shoehorned backstory that’s seems designed for the sake of fan theories. But Gong Yoo delivers a delightfully unhinged performance, and the Recruiter establishes a salient moral metaphor with one of his games that serves as a thematic crux for the season, so it’s not all fan service.

Things pick up once Gi-hun dons his Player 456 tracksuit again, but the pace is uneven as the show heads towards a season finale that doesn’t offer much resolution. The majority voting rule takes on a bigger role this time around, with the Front Man and co. adding a new clause to the player contract: if players vote to leave the game, they will be able to depart with the prize money that’s already been accumulated, split evenly among those who still live. The vote thus becomes a central part of the show, which gets repetitive. It’s an interesting moral conundrum, gambling your life and ensuring that others die to get a few more dollars in your pocket, but despite this complication the shock decisions and betrayals don’t hit as hard as they did in Season 1.

All to say that Season 2 feels more like a “part one” than its own story, and that’s partially by design. Creator Hwang Dong-hyuk says he “originally envisioned Seasons 2 and 3 as a single story,” but he found that it resulted in too many episodes; he decided to split the story across two seasons instead. As a result, this batch of seven episodes is almost all set up and no payoff—Season 2 is a means to an end that we have yet to see. The actors are still top notch (Lee Byung-hun really impresses as the increasingly conniving Front Man), the games still inspire hope and horror, and the people behind the camera still know how to make this high-concept high wire act as gripping as possible, but it’s just not as satisfying this time.