TV Talk: Netflix gifts subscribers with ‘Squid Game 2’

Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers a viewing tip for the coming week.

What better way to celebrate the holidays than a return to the bloody, violent arena for Netflix’s “Squid Game 2,” streaming Thursday?

The second season of the streaming service’s surprise 2021 global hit finds season one’s winner, Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), Player 456, on a mission to expose the game, leading him back into the arena as he attempts to destroy it from within and unmask those responsible for creating the brutal challenges.

On the outside, survivor Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-jun) has returned to his life as a cop but he’s trying to find the island and his brother, the Front Man (Lee Byung-hun), who abandoned Jun-ho for dead in season one.

“Squid Game 2” introduces new players, including a pregnant woman, a failed crypto-bro, a trans character with an unexpected past and an obnoxious purple-haired rapper who calls himself Thanos. They’re pitted against one another and in teams for a series of old and new competitions where the winners advance, and the losers die.

Unlike season one, season two ends without any closure for the characters in the game they’re playing; the show was already renewed for a third and final season.

In a virtual press conference last month, series creator/writer/director Hwang Dong-hyuk said he did not have a detailed plan for season two when he completed season one, but he had some ideas of where the story could go.

“Season one ends with Gi-hun turning away from (his) flight and getting that call and saying, ‘I’m gonna find you guys,’ ” Dong-hyuk said through an interpreter. “So I did have this very rough idea in my head where I thought, if we were ever to do a season two, it would be about Gi-hun’s journey trying to track down the recruiter and get to the Front Man and wanting to go back to the game in order to put an end to it all.”

Dong-hyuk said since season one premiered, we’ve seen “worsened wealth gaps, issues with refugees around the world, with climate change, and of course, with these tragic wars happening around the world. It’s leading to even more deaths that should not have taken place.

“And the younger generation these days, they no longer want to create wealth or become wealthy through labor, but they are looking to make a quick buck or hit the jackpot by investing in things like crypto currency,” he continued. “This is not something that’s just happening in Korea, but all around the world. These real-world events have definitely influenced some of my creativity.”

In season two, players divide into two camps: Those who want to continue playing the game (the Os) and those who want out (the Xs). Dong-hyuk had this idea of division in mind when plotting the season two story.

“There are so many things that divide us today, whether it’s race, religion, language, the haves and the have-nots, the generational divisions,” he said. “We look at the political division, the left against the right, the conservatives against the progressives. Things like this lead to such a division where it almost seems like there’s this line that absolutely cannot be crossed. … It leads us to think that everyone who is on the other side who does not think as you do or choose the things that you do are an enemy that cannot ever be forgiven.”

In “Squid Game” as players go through a vote after each round and have to vote either O to continue or X to exit, it leads players to the black-and-white thinking, “I’m an angel; you’re absolute evil,” Dong-hyuk explained.

“Throughout season two, I was focusing on that issue of, is there truly hope for us?” he said. “Is there a future in a world where we are dividing everyone into sides and becoming hostile to one another? If we continue down this path, I truly believe that we will soon (need) to build walls in every corner of the world. And these things that you only see in creative works where you build walls so that the have-nots cannot cross over and disturb the lives of the haves, I believe that that day is soon coming. And I created season two thinking that I do not wanna live in a society like that.”

Jung-jae saw season two as an opportunity to give viewers more of what they liked about his character in season one.

“One of the things that the audiences really loved about Gi-hun was his goodness of heart,” Jung-jae said through an interpreter. “The way he is so willing to help others. He may not be the strongest person in the room or the smartest person in the room, but with what little he can contribute, he wants to use that to help others.”

If Gi-hun represents the goodness of humanity, the VIPs who run Squid Game showcase humanity at its most selfish.

“They’re the ones that have created the system, want to maintain the system and those that benefit the most from the system,” Dong-hyuk said. “Whether that’s about wealth or political influence, I created the VIPs wanting them to represent people who want the current system to be maintained. In season two, Gi-hun tries to find the masterminds behind all of this, and that’s why he goes back into the game.

“The story that I wanted to tell through seasons two and three (is) not about how these guys are the bad guys and Gi-hun can stop them or not,” Dong-hyuk continued. “It was more about wanting to ask the question, do we — and by we, I mean most of us who are on the weaker side — have the willpower and strength to try to make the world a better place? … And can we truly let go of our greed, our desires, in order to create a better world together?”

Dong-hyuk cautions that history suggests the world has never changed due to the people who are in power repenting.

“I do not think that we can ever expect that to ever happen,” he said. “And the vast majority, which are the ones that are under that control or under that dominance, which is us, it’s always up to those ordinary people, everyday Joe, you and I, to try to make a change and hope for a better future together.”