Of
Giulia Taviani
On December 26th the second season of Squid Game arrives on Netflix between old and new characters: here's who the protagonists will be
Returns Squid Game. Three years after the first season, which totaled 1.65 billion hours of viewing in less than a month, the second chapter of the 2021 revelation series with a bit of horror, a bit of thriller, but a lot of splatter features, is outgoing on Netflix. The date to mark is that of December 26th.
Where were we?
Conceived as a series critical of consumerism and class inequality in South Korea, Squid Game tells the story of some people – precisely 456 players – with serious economic difficulties, who agree to participate in a game whose prize money amounts to over 30 million euros. Each level resembles a childhood game, the title itself refers to a Korean children's game.
What they don't know, however, is that if you win the round you survive, if you lose you die. Each dead player helps increase the prize pool by ₩100 million. Protagonist and winner of the first season is Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-joon), player no. 456divorced father buried in debt due to gambling.
A year after the victory, Gi-hun discovers that the mastermind behind all this is the elderly Oh Il-nam, player n° 001, with whom he had the opportunity to bond within the game. Suffering from cancer, he created Squid Game because he was bored and full of money to spend.
Now rich too, Gi-hun decides to leave for America to join his daughter, when he finds new people recruited by Squid Game on the street.
What to expect from the second season?
Three years later, Gi-hun is ready to return to the game. His only goal is to take revenge on the Front Man and put an end to Squid Game. He will enter with him Jun-hothe police officer who infiltrated the game during the first season by pretending to be a guard searching for his missing brother.
Who are the new characters?
Returning will therefore be Seong Gi-hun, played by Lee Jung-jae, agent Hwang Jun-ho, played by Wi Ha-joon, and frontman Lee Byung-hun, played by Hwang In-Ho.
Among the new ones however, there are some interesting profiles:
No-eulplayed by Park Gyu-young (already the protagonist of K-dramas such as Sweet Home and The Devil Judge), is a former North Korean soldier and defector who has arrived in South Korea to find her son. Also in the first season there was a North Korean defector who entered the game with the aim of raising enough money to help her parents cross the border.
Myung-gi (Im Si-wan, member of the K-pop band ZE:A) is a very famous YouTuber in South Korea. However, due to a cryptocurrency scam, he lost all his fortune, and with him many of his followers.
However, some of those ruined players are still in the game. Among these there is Thanosstarring Choi Seung-hyun (member of the K-pop band Big Bang). A former rapper now in ruins, he seems to be – as can be seen from the trailer – the villain of this season, leader of a group made up of other young players such as Nam-gyuformer nightclub worker played by Roh Jae-won, and I-ondefined as “a shy and cowardly twenty-year-old” and played by Lee David (already in the horror film Svaha). She will fall in love with him Semi (Won Ji-an), “bold, beautiful, and smart.”
Speaking of love situations, in the game – whose characters this year seem to have many more bonds with each other – there is also Jun-hee (Jo Yu-ri), Myung-gi's ex-girlfriend, also without money due to the scam promoted by her partner at the time, and who doesn't know how to be in the game.
Other characters include:
Dae Ho (Kang Ha-neul), a former marine described as a “likeable trickster, but with a fragile side that he hides behind his bold personality”.
He is also a former soldier Hyun-jua transgender woman who plays Squid Game to get money to cover surgeries. Park Sung-hoon, very popular in South Korea thanks to his participation in the k-drama, was called to play her The Glory. However, this decision has attracted much criticism. In fact, we asked ourselves why hire an actor rather than a transgender actress. Or at least a cisgender woman instead of a masked man. But according to some, asking a trans woman to step into the spotlight in a very conservative country in terms of rights would have been “not very reasonable”.
Gyeong-seok (Lee Jin-uk, already in the series Sweet Home), on the other hand, is a family man who needs money to pay for the medical treatment of his daughter, who has been diagnosed with cancer. Also Gem-ja (Kang Ae-shim, from the movie Concrete Utopia), is inside the game to help his son Yong-sik – also a participant, played by Yong Dong-geun – who lost everything he had in gambling. She participates out of love, he participates out of guilt towards his mother. Neither knows of the other's participation.
We'll see later too Jung-bae (Lee Sao-hwan), an old acquaintance of the protagonist, who appeared briefly in the first season, also without money due to gambling, the main cause of bankruptcy. And finally, Seon-nyeoactress Chae Kook-hee from the film Memoir of a Murdereran over-the-top shaman who dispenses curses and predictions on the other contestants.
December 26, 2024
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
