When Squid Sport hit our screens again in 2021, it did so with out fanfare or ado – a blood-soaked bolt from the blue that set a brand new benchmark for TV. Inside weeks of its launch on Netflix, it grew to become the platform’s most-viewed title in 90 international locations. Seemingly everybody in every single place was obsessive about this Korean-language TV present a few lethal sport that pits financially struggling folks towards each other for a shot at ungodly wealth.

This second sequence, although, is being launched underneath very completely different circumstances. Not solely have three years handed – an eternity in TV time – however the conveyor belt of themed installations, spin-offs and merchandise has stirred up some Squid Sport fatigue. Solely final 12 months did Netflix itself launch a sport present primarily based on the fictional event, lifting its candy-coloured palette and monochromatic jumpsuits, however abandoning the entire real-life homicide half.

So, can Squid Sport seize lightning in a bottle for a second time? Nicely, sure and no. It’s not possible to copy the shock of that first outing, and Hwang Dong Hyuk does properly to not attempt. As an alternative, his script finds the horror in witnessing the brutality once more, by the eyes of Lee Jung Jae who returns in his Emmy-winning lead position. As reluctant hero Seong Gi Hun, he’s simple to root for – all weary-eyed empathy and straight-arrow justice.

It’s been two years since Gi Hun received, and through that point he has devoted his life (and his winnings, saved in piles of money on a unclean mattress) to taking down the video games and the silver-masked Entrance Man who runs them: an ominous determine we now know to be the brother of Hwang Jun Ho, the detective shot within the chest final season who, it seems, shouldn’t be lifeless and who groups up with Gi Hun early on on this sequence.

It’s not a spoiler to say their mission takes Gi Hun again inside the sector the place he’s met with a brand new and excellent ensemble solid. Amongst them is No Eul, a North Korean defector compelled to go away her child behind; Gyeong Seok, a theme-park caricaturist who wants cash to pay for his daughter’s most cancers remedy; Myung Gi, a former YouTube star and crypto bro who misplaced his cash (and that of his followers) in a rip-off; a braggadocious, blue-haired actuality TV rapper by the title of Thanos; and a younger pregnant woman who hides her rising stomach beneath her dishevelled tracksuit; and a transgender ex-military officer hoping for a brand new, extra accepting life in Thailand. The sob tales listed below are typical however bought by compelling and understated performances.

This second season titrates the profitable formulation of the primary: splitting the plot into two narrative strands. There may be Gi Hun contained in the video games, and there’s Detective Hwang and his staff on the surface looking for them. It’s no doubt inside the sector that essentially the most compelling motion unfolds, as Gi Hun watches in sheer disbelief as folks select cash over life.

The place the primary sequence relied on shock for horror, every loss of life touchdown like a brisk whack to the again of your head, season two derives terror from what we all know as returning audiences, positioning Gi Hun as soon as once more as our surrogate. He additionally is aware of what comes subsequent and but even with that data is powerless to cease it.

Crucially, the sequence broadens its scope – affording viewers a extra extended look behind the sport’s curtain from the angle of a guard (or soldier, as we be taught they’re referred to as). What’s most terrifying of all, Hwang appears to be saying, is how human this complete evil enterprise is. Villains are unmasked, revealed to not be moustache-twirling masterminds however common folks themselves.

Stripping away the shock and peeling again the thriller that anchored season one is a threat, however one that permits Hwang to put naked his present’s stridently anti-capitalist message. By means of the weary eyes of Gi Hun, Squid Sport doubles down on its damning portrait of unfair financial programs, class stratification – and the phantasm of selection. (It’s painfully ironic that Hwang stated he solely returned to make a second sequence as a result of, for all its success, the primary didn’t make him a lot cash.)

There are surprises alongside the best way. The video games are completely different for one factor and twists abound – the small print of which can, with a bit of luck, make it by this weekend unspoiled on (X) Twitter. However principally sequence two doesn’t introduce new mysteries as a lot because it does delve deeper into previous ones – not all the time giving solutions, however bringing us alongside for the journey.

This brings us to the controversial topic of violence of which there’s a lot – both to shirk at or relish in relying in your style for such issues. That is, in spite of everything, the kind of present that takes a sport like Russian roulette and asks, how can we make this extra tense? However whereas this season of Squid Sport efficiently stretches past the confines of the primary, it excels for lots of the identical causes as earlier than, specifically its skill to painting our worst qualities – and to essentially twist the knife when it counts.