This review contains spoilers for both seasons of Squid Game.
Let’s start off with the most obvious point of comparison: the events. Inspired by a series of children’s games commonly played in Japan, director Hwang Dong-hyuk places a sinister twist on these innocent playground activities by making players risk their lives in competition for an enormous cash prize.
Season 2 ends half-way through the competition, meaning there are only three games to take a look at – and one of them borrowed from the previous series. Despite having to compensate for this, its hard not to say Season 1 has a far more entertaining set of games. Dalgona and Glass Bridge ramp the tension up to max, while Marbles provides what is easily the most tear-jerking episode in the whole show. And credit has to be given for providing us with the iconic Red Light Green Light.
Starting the second season with the same game worked well for the sake of consistency and nostalgia, but the repetition of it feels uninspired in hindsight. The game itself is virtually identical, and it would have been nice to see it remixed in some way. However, the second season sees the introduction of Carousel – an incredible addition that adds provides so much excitement due to its unpredictability. At times it feels straight out of a horror film. With the lights turning off and players descending into chaos, banging on the doors of rooms to be let in as they are shot from behind.
For this scene and many others, Season 2 excels in the gruesome factor. Losing the games has an added factor of terror now, as a series of guards are intentionally leaving the players alive to harvest their organs after eliminating them. As well as this, every game shows each player being eliminated on camera, as opposed to in games like Tug of War and Glass Bridge in the first season, where players mysteriously fell to unclear fates in dark chasms.
The time spent outside the games is just as important though, and both seasons do some solid world and character building in their earliest moments. Episode 1 establishes protagonist Gi-Hun as a flawed character, made equally unlikeable and sympathetic in his desperate search for cash. It sets up his development across the season well, and cleanly contrasts our introduction to him in Season 2. Whereas Gi-Hun was entirely lost in Season 1, everything he does at the start of the second season is done with clear purpose, moving with unwavering determination that carries him and his friends through the following games.
When it comes to the other competitors, both shows have a solid set of supplementary characters, but it’d be hard to say Season 1’s side cast isn’t stronger. Fans fell in love with characters such as Ali and Sae-byeok, whereas antagonists such as Deok-Su and Sang-woo were entirely unlikeable. Il-nam being revealed as the creator of the games was a genius twist, built up by masterful foreshadowing on the director’s part. As for Season 2, despite the loveability of players like Hyun-ju and the excitement of the frontman competing, villains such as the rapper Thanos feel far less threatening, as the show takes a more comedic approach for the season.
This emphasis on humour works to the show’s strength sometimes, especially since viewers will have been slightly desensitised by the nature of the games after a whole nine episodes of it. Moments of tensions are often undercut by comedy, which works well for maintaining a light-hearted nature. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say the punch that the deaths of characters like Ali in Season 1 didn’t make up the show’s emotional core. Despite knowing there will only be one winner, you almost can’t believe these characters you’ve spent so much time with are dead.
Maybe that’s why Season 2 chose to adopt a slightly more playful mood. Replicating the shock value of Squid Game the second time around would have been a tough task, and despite the team’s attempts to somewhat emulate that, a change of some sort felt needed. For this, the show places a heavier focus on the quieter moments instead, letting us grow and become familiar with side characters in excruciating detail. It moves through half as many games in only two fewer episodes, and so the pacing feels far slower. This works well for the tone the season goes for, but Season 1’s constant movement and pace created such a unique atmosphere, and one that Season 2 was always going to struggle to live up to the height of.
This isn’t to say Season 2 of Squid Game isn’t worth a watch. I absolutely loved it, and can’t wait to see how they wrap things up in the third and final season. I hope that it can live up to the quality of the second season, but imagining the possibility of it surpassing the first feels unrealistic. No matter how epic or climactic the show’s grand finale manages to be, that first time experience of watching the show’s first season can never be replicated, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.