The popular Korean Netflix show “Squid Game” premiered its second season on Dec. 26, 2024.
The first season was a huge success, ranked number one in Netflix’s most-watched non-English shows, and constantly featured on Netflix’s home page. The premise of the show was bound to be entertaining, but the portrayal of each character, relationships, and emotion was the most captivating.
Its premise is a battle of life and death, high risk and high reward; portraying human emotions as at any moment they could lose their most valuable asset – life itself – as they compete for one grand reward, a chance at a better life, and millions of dollars.
The show took popular children’s games from Korea like Dalgona, the most popular out of the games. Contestants had to cut out a shape from a hard, sugar cookie without cracking its shape. This was a staple in the show and one of the most memorable of the challenging games each character faced.
Every person in the games went through each challenge with one goal, to win the prize money and their own life. The challenges combined innocent, childish games that generally bring good memories, and combines it with serious tones like life or death.
Season two focuses on the main character, Seong Gi-hun, also known as player 456, who has entered the game and is determined to put an end to it by taking down the frontman, Hwang In-ho.
Little does he know the frontman is acting to be one of the players; player 001. The frontman becomes friendly with our main character to gain his trust throughout the season.
By the end of each game, players have the option to continue playing or to leave the game, splitting the prize money among each other.
This voting causes the group of players to split between those who want to continue playing the games and those who want to leave. The different opinions of these groups lead to a violent attack, causing players to lose their lives.
Seong Gi-hun decides this is the time to put an end to the games and gathers a group of people to take matters into their own hands. This ultimately fails, when player 001 (the frontman) decides to stop Seong Gi-hun, ending the rebellion.
He eliminates Seong Gi-hun’s friend and forces him to watch as his friend takes his last breath. Though this season ended on a cliffhanger, Netflix has announced season 3 coming June 27.
According to Forbes, Squid Games has become overwhelmingly popular since its first appearance on Netflix and since then, and it continues to blow up on social media. Many trends are being made, and content is being created referencing the show. With the second season ending in a cliffhanger, season three is on the way; giving fans more of what they want.
