Summary
Squid Gameentered itssecond season with sky-high expectations. The first season wasa runaway successfor itsmix of dark humor, trenchant commentary, and surprisingly brutal violence. With all the hype, creator Hwang Dong-hyuk had a seemingly impossible task with his return: to give audiences all the elements that made the first season such a sensation, without falling into repetition.
The answer, it seems, was to split the difference. Season two ofSquid Gamebrings the brightly-colored brutality while telling a story that focuses less on the games and more on the characters trying to survive them. And rather than end the season with a big twist like in season one, Hwang instead flips the element of surprise on its head, giving the audience information that the characters lack. In essence, Hwang inverts one of the first season’s biggest twists.
Spoilers ahead forSquid Gameseasons one and two.
Season One’s Big Twist
In the final episode ofSquid Gameseason one, a year afterprotagonist Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae)wins the big prize by being the last one standing, he receives an invitation to a seemingly empty office complex. There, he finds Oh Il-nam (O Yeong-su), the kindly old man hebefriended during the gamesand who he believed was killed. As it turns out, Il-nam wasn’t just any contestant — he was the man behind the whole thing. Lying on his deathbed, Il-nam tells Gi-hun that he created the games to entertain the bored, wealthy elites like himself, and took part mostly out of youthful nostalgia.
Looking down over the snowy Seoul streets, the two play one more game. Il-nam wagers that nobody will stop to help a homeless man lying on the street below before the clock strikes midnight. A helpful citizen proves him wrong, but Il-nam dies moments later, and it’s unclear whether he knew the truth or not before he passed.
This was a pretty massive twist at the end of the first season, playing with the audience by revealing the true nature of a character they had come to care for and sympathize with. It also put viewers on shaky footing for the games going forward. If the creator could participate undetected, who knows what other tricks the games might have up their sleeve?
How Season Two Flips Season One’s Twist
In season two, this question is answered for the audience, but not for the characters. After Gi-hun’s quest to end the games by capturing the Front Man fails, he makes a last-ditch decision to rejoin the games in order to take them down from the inside. At first, there’s no reason to think anyone from the games will try to stop him. That is, until theend of episode three, “001.”
After the first game costs nearly a hundred lives, the players vote whether or not to continue playing. Going in reverse order, the final contestant to vote is contestant 001, who casts the deciding vote to continue the games. The camera zooms in on his back, until he turns around to reveal he’s none other than the Front Man himself, Hwang In-ho (Lee Byung-hun). Having never seen him without his mask, Gi-hun doesn’t recognize him. In-ho manages to gain Gi-hun’s trust and friendship, even siding with him to try and end the games in subsequent votes.
For the rest of the series, Hwang is able to steadily ramp up the dramatic irony, where the audience has crucial information that the characters don’t. Rather than reveal the existence of a mole player with a twist at the end of the season, season two reveals it to the audience early, while the characters are completely unaware. This has the effect of adding even more tension to the story. The viewer is forced to constantly question In-ho’s motives and speculate on what he might be trying to do to manipulate Gi-hun and prevent his quest to bring down the games.
This isn’t to say that one storytelling choice is better than the other; rather that the two simply create different effects on the overall season. By saving the reveal of Il-nam’s identity to the very end, the finale of season one makes the viewer call into question every previous interaction with the character, and maybe even go back to see if there were hints they missed along the way. At the start of season two, revealing In-ho to the audience but not the characters creates a more immediate effect, where the viewer can see the manipulation unfold in real time.
Dramatic irony is one of the oldest tools in the drama playbook, going back to the days of Greek tragedies likeOedipus Rexand beyond. It’s also a shrewd choice on Hwang’s part, a way to makeSquid Gameseason two a distinct but complementary experience to season one. The seasonends on quite the cliffhanger, and viewers will have plenty to think about before season three brings them back to the gamesfor the final time.
