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Television Review | Netflix
Squid Game: Season Two (2024) — thrilling start succumbs to repetitive playtime
Seong Gi-hun returns to the deadly survival game to find those responsible and end the torment.
Hwang Dong-hyuk wrote and directed every episode of Squid Game / 오징어 게임 (2021), the South Korean survival thriller series that became a worldwide sensation on Netflix. It still holds the record as the streamer’s most-watched series and won six Primetime Emmy’s and a Golden Globe, but Dong-hyuk received little financial reward for creating the world’s most successful TV drama. He even lost teeth over the stress involved in making just those nine episodes.
It’s ironic that Dong-hyuk was drawn back to Squid Game, once again putting his health on the line in the pursuit of a bigger payday from his Netflix overlords. That’s exactly the sort of psychological conundrums players of Squid Game have to face on the show, and with Netflix even commissioning a reality gameshow version of Squid Game (a show that warns against the dangers of capitalism), it sometimes feels like Dong-hyuk’s message is being…