Bloody brilliant Squid Game season two takes risks that pay off
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It is impossible to replicate the shock of the first season, and writer Hwang Dong Hyuk does well not to try. When Squid Game hit our screens back in 2021, it did so without fanfare or ado – a blood-soaked bolt from the blue that set a new benchmark for TV. Within weeks of its release on Netflix, it became the platform’s most-viewed title in 90 countries. Seemingly everyone everywhere was obsessed with this Korean-language TV show about a deadly game that pits financially struggling people against one another for a shot at ungodly wealth.
![[The series is back after a three-year wait]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/12/23/14/Squidgame_Unit_205_N005189.jpg)
This second series, though, is being released under very different circumstances. Not only have three years passed – an eternity in TV time – but the conveyor belt of themed installations, spin-offs and merchandise has stirred up some Squid Game fatigue. Only last year did Netflix itself release a game show based on the fictional tournament, lifting its candy-coloured palette and monochromatic jumpsuits, but leaving behind the whole real-life murder part.
So, can Squid Game capture lightning in a bottle for a second time? Well, yes and no. It is impossible to replicate the shock of that first outing, and Hwang Dong Hyuk does well not to try. Instead, his script finds the horror in witnessing the brutality again, through the eyes of Lee Jung Jae who returns in his Emmy-winning lead role. As reluctant hero Seong Gi Hun, he is easy to root for – all weary-eyed empathy and straight-arrow justice.
It’s been two years since Gi Hun won, and during that time he has devoted his life (and his winnings, kept in piles of cash on a dirty mattress) to taking down the games and the silver-masked Front Man who runs them: an ominous figure we now know to be the brother of Hwang Jun Ho, the detective shot in the chest last season who, it turns out, is not dead and who teams up with Gi Hun early on in this series.
