On bathe you with Squid Game for weeks, and it's far from over! With the long-awaited release of season 2, it's even the beginning. After a media hype cleverly organized by Netflix, it is finally time to find out what this new batch of episodes of the South Korean series is worth, number 1 in audiences in the streamer's history (330 million views in total). !). Three years we've been waiting for it, and the preview of episode 1 at the Grand Rex, at which Le Point Pop attended, made our mouths water. It’s finally time to enjoy this squid game!
Little reminder: this famous game consists of bringing together 456 players on an isolated island to participate in children's games. But the nuance is that the losers are systematically shot, while the last survivor leaves with more than 45 billion won (around 30 million euros). In season 1, the viewer followed Seong Gi-hun (played by the excellent Lee Jung-jae), an irresponsible family man, addicted to gambling and riddled with debt, until his victory, mainly due to luck.
In the first minutes of this second season, we find the protagonist exactly where we left him at the end of the first, at the airport, ready to change his life. But at the last moment, he decides to retrace his steps and fight against the institution that made his life hell, while making him rich.
Shall we take the same ones and start again?
Three years after his victory, Gi-hun is a billionaire, but unhappy. He only touches the money earned for his investigation, in order to find the organizers of the Squid Game and put a definitive end to it. But this one is stalling. When he finally gets his hands on important information, Gi-hun tries everything and takes a big risk: he decides to compete in the game again, to destroy the organization from the inside. Obviously, everything is not going to go as planned…
The major challenge of this new season is to manage to renew itself without repeating itself. The game in which the protagonist participates is the same as in season 1, and the pitfall of repetition is a trap into which it would have been easy to fall. Discovery is no longer required, and we can easily imagine Hwang Dong-hyeok, the director and screenwriter of the series, racking his brains to find new issues to write. Especially since he revealed in several interviews that he agreed to get back into it under pressure from Netflix and its success. The decision to return to the game nevertheless seems a bit forced, as if the series had no point without him. For our part, we continue to think that an entire away season, where the Squid Game remains secondary, could have been a brilliant idea.
In certain aspects, repetition is inevitable. Even if entry into the game only occurs in episode 3 (out of 7), and the motivations are no longer the same, the viewer finds himself in (very) familiar territory: same setting, same obligatory passages (the discovery tests, the first deaths, the strategies, the famous clause number 3 which allows you to vote for stopping the tests, etc.). But, unlike cinema where the scenario is the driving force, in series, it is the characters. And Gi-hun is nothing like he was at the start of the series. Its evolution alone justifies viewing, as its destiny ultimately matters to us.
Winning return for Netflix's record-breaking series
Despite everything, this season 2 is undoubtedly better than the first, and we are the first to be surprised. The first three episodes are packed with tension, and, let's not be afraid of words, episode 3, which sees Gi-hun enter the game, is a small masterpiece. Few Netflix series have reached this level of precision and excellence. Subsequently, the pace stalls a little in episodes 4 to 6, where the story repeats itself, and where the subject, always eminently political, does not vary much from what we have already seen. It is still a satire on individualism, capitalism, and the power of money over the masses. Fortunately, the Squid Game events are no longer the same as in the first season.
To Discover
Kangaroo of the day
Answer
The secondary characters are even more wacky and varied. Jumbled together, we find among the other players a mother and her son, a shaman, a YouTuber specializing in cryptocurrencies, a drugged and irresponsible rapper… Some players know each other, even Gi-hun finds an old friend. It seems a bit forced, but it works. This allows you to create new dynamics between the characters. This time, we even follow one of the referees, a North Korean immigrant who fled the dictatorship.
More nervous and cruel, this new version of the game is much better. We almost feel bad for having fun, until the big finale, which we obviously won't reveal to you. All we can tell you is that you will be eager to jump into season 3! But don't worry, this time, you won't have to wait three long years to discover the third (and final!) season of Squid Game. This is already in production and should arrive on our screens sometime in 2025.
