“Squid Game” Season 2

Hwang Dong-hyuk

Quinn McClurg

Given the series was inspired by director Hwang Dong-hyuk’s own financial difficulties, itthere’s no surprise that season two of “Squid Game” is so stunningly relevant. It seems like there isn’t a better time it could’ve dropped: with every day that passes, billionaires are pulling us further and faster into their own machines and death games—we, too, are desperate for someone to annihilate them from the inside out. 

But I digress—though I felt that it wasn’t too pressingly necessary, I should disclose that I haven’t watched the first season of “Squid Game,” and that I still don’t feel the need to. I had my partner (who insisted I watch it with him) fill in the gaps in my knowledge. So too did they fill me in on the realities of production, with Park Sung-hoon, a cisgender man, playing transgender veteran Hyun-Ju due to the lack of trans actors in South Korea, as well as T.O.P, a former K-pop star disgraced for a marijuana scandal, playing the disgraced rapper and addict Thanos. As always, representation and second chances are the series’ reigning themes, set to the tune of hundreds of poor people dying for a chance at having all their debts forgiven.

If you haven’t seen this season, you know what to expect… initially. Again, the squids are, in fact, gaming, but this time, the winner from the first season has reentered with the goal of saving all the other contestants’ lives. I found this season’s premise to be so exhilarating and politically energizing that there’s *no way* the first could live up to it.

Terror, twists, and counter-twists; tension, trauma, and tragedy, “Squid Game” season two serves as a perfect companion to the times, guaranteeing you’ll either watch it all in one sitting or seize from stress trying.