Squid Game Season 2 is everything that’s wrong with TV streaming

You’ve likely made an assumption based on my rather abrupt headline that I didn’t enjoy Squid Game’s second season. You’d be wrong to do so. Once again, series creator Hwang Dong-hyuk is to be applauded, weaving a thrilling and complex tale that holds up a stark mirror to society. Squid Game offers a fascinating examination into our obsession with power. You cannot blame the contestants for taking part in the games - of which, of course, they do not understand the magnitude of ahead of signing up. These are people that have found themselves within dire financial circumstances. That’s nothing to be ashamed of when it comes to chasing stability and a comfortable means of living.

It is not the yearning of money from the contestants that Squid Game is concerned with. It’s far more interested in shining a light on those who seek the power to dictate the livelihoods of these people both within and outside of the games (I’m thinking of The Salesman and that scratch card scene when it comes to the latter point). The Front Man, with the complicity of his employees, and the game’s benefactors are cruelly using the illusion of simplicity - namely, childhood games - to toy with the lives of those who are impecunious, crafting a cruel environment where despite the stark odds, they believe they may stand a chance.

Let’s not forget that the games are designed to cater to those who are ruthless, cruel, and cunning. Those in charge are not simply playing around with lives and livelihoods. They’re encouraging good people to give-in to the worst traits of humanity, all in the name of survival. Why? For a thrill? To feel like a god? Well, yes to both of the above. Il-nam, season one’s Player 001 and creator of the games, admitted as much last time around. You need only look at The Front Man, In-ho, who also happens to be this year’s Player 001 in a bid to ‘enlighten’ Gi-hun about the purpose of the games, to see just how corrupting they can be.

This is a man who won the 2015 edition. He should be enjoying his newfound financial stability but instead has found himself warped by what the games did to him. Unlike Gi-hun who seeks to put a stop to the games once and for all, In-ho is simply hellbent on continuing the power hungry manipulation of the contestants’ lives, thinking he’s some kind of saviour for doing so. This dichotomy between Gi-hun and In-ho, both prior winners, is one of the aspects that made season two so special. Gi-hun is doing everything in his power to stop the games while In-ho is quietly using feigned loyalty and deception to gain the upperhand, continually chasing power.

Squid Game’s second season sees Gi-hun return to the infamous games.

It was a thrill to watch this cat-and-mouse game, until it came to an abrupt end. You see, my problem isn’t with Squid Game’s storyline. It appears that in that department, Hwang Dong-hyuk can do no wrong. What angers me about Squid Game’s second season, and points to a wider issue within the streaming TV industry, is that this is simply half a season, separated from its natural conclusion. You can tell me that ‘season three’ is due to drop next year, a much shorter wait than the three years that fell between seasons one and two, but that won’t deter me from calling this what it is: Season 2, Part 1.

I’m not the first to bemoan streaming services for what they’ve done to the season-to-season rollout of TV shows, if they even get past the first season, that is. We’re all familiar with how cutthroat streaming cancellations can be, but that’s another issue entirely. The trend of making us wait several years for just a handful of episodes is an abysmal one. Cast your mind back to when Game of Thrones dominated the industry. Those early seasons were released yearly, something that hugely benefited the series. A season would be followed by several months of fan theorising before the hype machine started up again as trailers began to drop for the subsequent season. Stretch that out to several years and there can be a waning of interest.

There is evidence contrary to that which is, fair to say, unfortunate for us viewers. Squid Game fans have been waiting three years for a second season with that second season now having received the most views in a premiere week ever for a TV show on Netflix - evidence that’s only going to make the streamer more confident that it can subject us to long waits with little consequence. That’s one topic to debate though. I’d argue that what’s happened with the segmenting of Squid Game’s second season is far, far worse.

As I mentioned, Squid Game season two is one half of a whole - and the evidence to support that is plentiful. It’s perfectly fine to leave a season on a cliffhanger. That’s not a new phenomenon, but it’s standard practice to conclude the vast majority of a season’s storylines. The cliffhanger should simply be a small tease of what’s to come. Squid Game’s second season, however, doesn’t fit that bill at all. Withholding a confrontation between Gi-hun and The Front Man is something I can accept, but the fact that the season’s games are only halfway done? That leaves a more unsatisfactory taste in one’s mouth.

Netflix

And then, of course, there’s the season’s subplots which were ‘abandoned’ several episodes before the so-called second season drew to a close. We deserted Jun-ho and his quest to find the games, just as we also stopped following No-eul’s experiences as one of the games’ ‘Triangle’ soldiers. I use inverted commas as I say abandoned because clearly both storylines will continue in the upcoming third season but their temporary abandonment, specifically as both storylines barely featured in the second season’s later episodes, feels, well, just wrong.

In No-eul’s case, we don’t even know the significance of why we’re following her tale. At least with Jun-ho we have the established motivation of the character both seeking to find his brother whilst also searching for Gi-hun. No-eul remains an enigma and to cut off a story before you’ve even really set up its relevance? Well, that feels like an odd choice.

Or perhaps it wasn’t a choice at all, because Hwang Dong-hyuk clearly designed Squid Game’s second and third seasons as one fluid story. There’s no natural break in the narrative, with the games remaining unfinished. Heck, the fact that ‘season two’ and ‘three’ were filmed in one go is evidence enough that this is one segmented tale, which leads me to believe that Netflix was perhaps the force that stepped in to demand the splitting of this next part of the saga into two separate seasons. I simply cannot understand why else it would be done. There’s nothing about season two that suggests it was ever designed to be a standalone season.

Had Netflix made us wait a month or two for the next batch of episodes, I’d have been okay with that. I’m actually a fan of the streaming service’s recent move to split new seasons into Part 1 and Part 2 spaced several weeks apart. It allows for theorising and hype, echoing the network TV rollouts of yesteryear, plus it ensures the experience of watching isn’t over in a single day. If Squid Game’s second season had been labelled as Part 1 with Part 2 landing in, say, February or March, I wouldn’t have questioned anything. I certainly wouldn’t have suspected interference. But a potentially year-long wait for what’s being dubbed a third season? That simply doesn’t feel like the original plan to me.

Netflix

I’m not sure we’re ever going to make streaming services’ speed up their production schedules so we’re going to have to get used to two-to-three year waits, but we can’t let a creator's original vision be messed with if it’s all ready to go. It’s clear that Squid Game was only ever designed to be set across two seasons, even if that second season needed to be split into two parts spaced a short while apart. Forcing a so-called ‘third season’ has been done so at the detriment of the flow of the series’ stellar story. That doesn’t benefit the viewer. It doesn’t benefit the creator. It’s a cheap grab at ensuring user subscription longevity, and it’s not a good look for Netflix.