Season 1 of Hwang Dong-hyuk's anti-capitalist thriller Squid Game sits atop the Netflix throne. The cultural phenomenon debuted in 2021, and still holds the title as the most-watched original program on the streamer. Squid Game is Netflix's cash cow, and they've made it crystal clear that they plan to milk it for all they can get.
The second season opens with lead Seong Gi-Hun (Lee Jung-jae) after his Season 1 win as he hunts down the game recruiter. The first two episodes flip between him and Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon), who survived his first season fall, and is now working as a traffic cop. The two ultimately collide by the end of the season premiere and decide to work together to try to bring down the Front Man.
This season mimics the plot of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire: our protagonist returns to the original death game and attempts to incite a revolution from within, while the finale leaves us with uneasy feelings about the fate of our characters. Attempts to humour make Squid Game Season 2 chock-full of cringe — the entire character of Thanos, Matrix references, crypto bros, etc. Creative new games add nail-biting tension to an otherwise slow-to-start and repetitive season, breathing life back into an uncharacteristically short (due to Netflix stretching the plot for a third season) yet bloated seven episodes.
A new season focus, the X-versus-O voting cliques, provides an on-the-nose metaphor for divide-and-conquer strategies that pin working class voters against one another based on party tribalism instead of unifying to battle against the real oppressive power source. After a brutally bloody evening in the bunks and bathrooms at the hands of the cliques, the pink guards shut down the fight by raiding the bunks, where Gi-Hun takes advantage of the chaos and incites an uprising.
Dong-hyuk's anti-capitalist allegory still has one more season to answer its starkest contradiction: when the green-clad indebted victims of the games incite a revolution against their elite captors, what do they return home to? When this imaginary ruling class is no longer able to force working class people to dance to their deaths for entertainment, do the players return to a real ruling class that treats them all that differently?
After the program's explosion, the world received multiple reality show equivalents — of course, without the whole murder part, for now at least. First, with Netflix's own Squid Game: The Challenge, then with internet personality MrBeast's original YouTube video, "$456,000 Squid Game in Real Life!" and most recently the Prime Video original show Beast Games hosted by, once again, MrBeast.
Each show features working-class players introduced as everyday people with dreams, responsibilities, loved ones and financial burdens, and subsequently dressed in identical clothing, reduced to the numbers on their chests, competing for a large sum of money in ever-evolving degrading and dehumanizing challenges. Both shows are now subject to allegations of mistreatment and violations of labour laws.
Since the introduction of the series, leftist viewers have been debating whether a brand-friendly anti-capitalist fable will provide enough metaphors to stir something within everyday Netflix watchers, or if the profit-driven vehicle inherently prevents any class consciousness from occurring in the first place. For example, when Spencer Hawkins — Player 299 from Squid Game: The Challenge and a cancer survivor — went viral after collapsing from anxiety and nausea after losing the Dalgona cookie game, Netflix itself shared the clip online, referring to Spencer as the Meryl Streep of Squid Game: The Challenge. The DRAMA."
In its second season, all of the supposed sympathies for the proletariat class developed by one of Netflix's most successful shows ring hollow. The bad guys of Dong-hyuk's fable have a clear contempt for the poor, but regardless of the original intentions of the show's creators, and despite the comfort it provided frustrated working class people, Netflix has displayed that they share in this contempt.
Similar to the downward spiral of Black Mirror, Squid Game has cannibalized its original messaging and overstayed its welcome. It's 2025 now — we're broke, sick, tired and would like to get off this ride. Just like the game makers' golden pig head says to Gi-Hun: "If the world doesn't change, the game doesn't end."