‘A highly welcome return to this hellscape world’

The brutal Korean satire became a worldwide phenomenon when it first aired in 2021. Its return is no less savage – and looks likely to be as big a hit this time around.

Back in September 2021, an unusual Korean TV series that was an allegory for the ills of late capitalism became the surprise global hit of the year. Squid Game lured viewers in – like the contestants in the game at the centre of the show – with candy-coloured sets, masked guards running around in pink jumpsuits and contestants cutely dressed in matching green tracksuits, as they all played traditional Korean childhood games together. Then, the butchering began.

The success of the macabre Korean-language horror series was such a genuine TV phenomenon that it remains Netflix’s most watched show of all time, with currently more than 265 million views. It’s arguably the streamer’s most gory and violent show too, with hundreds of gruesome, point-blank murders.

However, all this violence is necessary, creator and director Hwang Dong-hyuk would argue, as Squid Game is his brutal satire on the wealth divide and class disparity in South Korea. As he and Netflix found out, the themes behind the dystopian horror are universal, and the grotesque story was a smash hit across the world. A follow-up season (and a third) were promptly commissioned, and now, three years on, series two will send a shiver down spines in the holiday season, with its not-so-festive release the day after Christmas Day.

Series one centred around Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), a gambling addict who joins 455 other destitute people who agree to play a series of games in the hope of winning some money. But they find themselves trapped on an island playing games like marbles – in front of an audience of a mysterious masked cabal – with a deadly twist: if they fail to win, they are murdered by the guards.

This would be a straight-up slasher story; were it not for the moral conundrum it asked of the players. The prize fund goes up 100 million Korean won ($70,000/£55,000) every time somebody is killed, meaning that the players could win up to 45.6 billion won ($31m/£25m) if they are the last one standing; a tempting proposition to the desperate assembled group, who are also free to leave the games – but only if the majority chooses to do so.

The ending of series one saw Gi-hun “win” – if there is any triumph in escaping death but watching more than 400 people slaughtered around you – and vowing to find out who was really behind the games. (Some spoilers ahead)

The first time we see him in the new season, it’s a cold, hard open that instantly harks back to the high levels of gorecore of the first series. He’s naked in a public bathroom and bloodily gouging out tracking chips that have been implanted in his flesh. When a young boy enters the room, Gi-hun says nonchalantly: “I’m sorry…could you give me five minutes?” The chuckle raised on this perfect comic timing from Jung-jae welcomingly cuts the tension – this second series is undoubtedly funnier than the last – and sets up the rest of the episode which for the most part leans into the humour of Gi-hun recruiting the mob-squad of his former loan sharks.

But the audience is lulled into a false sense of security with these comedic gang of goons hired by Gi-hun to scour the subway stations of Seoul. They’re trying to find the recruiter, the man in the suit who plays the paper envelope dakji game and recruits players for Squid Game, and when they do, the bloodshed begins again. You’ll never be able to play Rock, Paper, Scissors in the same light again.

The later episodes find Gi-hun pulled back into a brand-new round of Squid Game. This time, though, he’s there to expose the leader of the games, the mysterious Front Man (Lee Byung-hun, in full chilling form), who viewers will recognise from the first series – a privilege not afforded to Gi-hun, who is unable to make the connection when he pops up undercover elsewhere.

With all the past contestants being killed off, director Hwang has the luxury of having an almost blank slate for characters for the second series, and he’s zoned in on some gripping back stories of this new motley crew. There’s a mother and her gambling-addict son, both startled to find the other is in there; vulnerable young women, ex-Marines, a crypto influencer and a menacing, pill-popping rapper (in a nice easter egg to Korean music fans, played with gusto by rapper Choi Seung-hyun, otherwise known as T.O.P.) who has lost all his money after buying crypto-currency recommended by the aforementioned influencer.

This time around, however, there’s also the origin story of a desperate woman, No-eul (the quietly intense Park Gyu-young) who escaped North Korea but who was forced to leave her baby: the reveal that she’s one of the guards adds an extra layer of clever intrigue to this menacing fable.

What’s interesting in this series is that Gi-hun, going back into the game to warn the contestants of their impending death, is treated like Cassandra: either they don’t believe what he’s saying, or they don’t want to. In the era of fake news, the contestants can convince themselves of anything that’s in their interests to be true: that Gi-hun is a “lunatic” or that he’s a plant.

This divide in opinion only intensifies when the contestants are forced to vote on whether to continue the game, and are split into the teams “X” (who vote to leave the game) and “O” (who want to play on), and in a well-observed microcosm of our own splintered society – online, in politics and in culture wars – this spills over into hate-filled violence. A four-minute sequence of a horrifying strobe-lit brawl is perhaps the most savage scene you’ll see on TV all year (alongside some other organ-harvesting shots that’ll need to be watched with hands over eyes); but highlights how the people are manipulated by those in power to turn on each other, rather than fighting the root of the evil together.

In press notes for the new series, director Hwang said: “Through the players in the game, I wanted to ask, isn’t this what our society looks like now? Aren’t these people exactly who we are? Things that were bizarre and unrealistic a decade ago have sadly become very realistic now.” Squid Game has no solutions for the fictional bleak and sadistic world it presents, nor for the real world it reflects; only a reminder that the house always wins at the expense of the players.

There’s no doubt that Squid Game series two is likely to be as big as the first. The games are just as surreal and perverse, the killings just as prolific, the shoot-outs plentiful. It also confirms it’s the role of a lifetime for Lee Jung-jae, whose expressive face conveys the horrors of what he’s witnessing; the sole voice of reason in an insane world. He won an Emmy for best male actor for the drama in 2022; surely more will be on their way for the show at the next ceremony.

While it’s a little long – at seven episodes, it’s two episodes shorter than the last series, but some of the repetitive voting and gun-fight scenes can drag – and the reveal of a double-crossing character felt obvious from the start, it’s a highly welcome return to this hellscape world. The series ends abruptly; with both a cliffhanger and a flash of a mid-credits scene that sets things up for a third series, due out in 2025. It’s a tortuous, frustrating end for viewers, but hey, isn’t that the name of the game?

Squid Game series 2 is released on Netflix on 26 December.