‘Squid Game’ Season 2: My Biggest Question
Season 3 is probably leading to this anyway.
Like its previous season, Netflix’s South Korean sensation Squid Game hits a highly binge-able home run with its seven newest episodes.
The show picks up three years later since Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) won the “Squid Game” — and he’s been out for revenge since. This drive, in fact, leads him to eventually compete in the game once again in an attempt to stop it for good.
Squid Game’s biggest strength in its first season was in how much it was able to lean in on the traumatizing, characters-in-the-dark premise. Neither the contestants nor the audience knew what was about to happen next, and the whole Squid Game world unfolded only through gradual bits and pieces.
To a point, there’s still a healthy element of surprise in Squid Game season 2 thanks to a new cast of characters and set of survival games. However, it wisely avoids being too repetitive about its rules, knowing to say only enough to show how naïve this new batch of contestants is to the Squid Game world. For example, despite Gi-hun’s best efforts, the first “Red Light-Green Light” game manages to have a slew of casualties.
As the season continues, Gi-hun and the contestants manage a rebellion attempt that’s stopped by the undercover Front Man Hwang In-ho (Lee Byung-hun). By ending on a major cliffhanger, Squid Game will continue the events in season 3 and likely show the operation stopping for good.
Season 2 plants clues on what questions season 3 could answer, but my biggest curiosity is something that Squid Game leaves greatly up to interpretation.
My Biggest Question: How Squid Game Actually Stays So Hidden
It’s such a simple question that I think the show hints at answering, but the events unfolding in season 2 proves just how much of an absolute iceberg this information is.
Looking at the surface of this question, the Squid Game operation clearly takes pains to be untraceable to the general public. Even searching for the Recruiter (Gong Yoo) is a nearly impossible task, despite how identifiable his actions are.
There’s also apparently a high level of coercion keeping the Squid Game’s staff tight-lipped, namely shown with the storyline of Soldier 011, Kang No-eul (Park Gyu-young). Whether it be rewards or punishment, it seems like everyone feels obligated to keep Squid Game alive. This includes winners like Hwang In-ho, who became a higher-up in the game operations.
In comes Gi-hun, however, who uses his winnings to do everything possible to stop the game. Thus I’m led to think what the dozens of previous winners did or didn’t do to keep the operations secret.
We could assume that Squid Game’s powers that be are putting Gi-hun through the ordeal once again as a means of recruiting him — in which case, one would think that this would be how winners are made to stay silent. This would be a haunting idea, as it implies that no one ever actually leaves or wins the game. Either you shut up and move on — hinted often by Gi-hun being advised to have “gotten on that plane” (from the season 1 finale) to follow his family — or you join the operations altogether.
Still, Gi-hun is recruited to a second Squid Game after spending years building an operation of his own trying to take it down. How is it that this game has continued in secrecy despite going on for decades? It takes its winners — skilled, smart, gutsy people — and seems to essentially release them into the real world with their earnings after putting them through severe trauma.
Beyond there being the risk of direct efforts by winners to stop the game or get the police involved — efforts that at least would have been attempted at some capacity in Squid Game’s early years — there’s still the idea of winners seeking therapy or professional help of some sort. While different cultures have varying views on mental health care, I would think that something as clearly sophisticated as Squid Game would think about what to do when winners speak to anyone about the game. Counselors, relatives, friends…even an NDA can only do so much to prevent things from leaking.
But those told about Squid Game didn’t believe it — they said it sounded too bizarre to be true!
Sure. That’s been expressed many times in season 2.
Still, people are taken from their lives for days at a time. Mothers, fathers, daughters, significant others…most of whom do not come back. Furthermore, because of Squid Game’s elusive nature, people agreeing to participate in it don’t know what they’re getting into. They couldn’t tell their loved ones about going away to a hidden island for a period of time (which is to assume that they’d want to be honest about what they’re agreeing to at all).
If hundreds of adults a year go missing consistently within a particular time frame, and someone in that missing persons pool always comes back, surely any information provided about their circumstances would be taken seriously by someone. Even if only a fraction of Squid Game’s winners talked about their experiences, those experiences could be compared to previous cases, thus giving validity to their claims.
The best explanation to this is the game’s ties to highly powerful people. There’s a kind of Epstein’s Island feel to Squid Game, which season 1 explored more in-depth with the VIPs. Billionaires, politicians, influential global forces, and the like seem to be involved in this large-scale system in which Squid Game is only a piece. Perhaps there were winners like Gi-hun in the past whose efforts were stopped by these powerful forces intervening. Squid Game feels very cult-like, and cults certainly have been successful in keeping their members silent.
Still, the question intrigues me. It’s too much of a Band-Aid solution to assume that all winners — really, anyone involved in Squid Game — are made silent by a mixture of the honor system and the psychological element of feeling trapped by the game.
Whatever the answer is, I’m excited to see what Squid Game season 3 answers.
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