'Squid Game' Season 2 perfectly mirrors our moment

It would have been easy to take the successful, high-concept premise of “Squid Game” – hard-luck contestants compete to the death in a sadistically kiddie-themed battle royale – and simply replicate it for Season 2.

- REBECCA

After all, the show’s first season, which appeared on Netflix to little initial fanfare in 2021, was embraced as a shrewd fable of late-stage capitalism and drew a reported 330 million viewers worldwide, becoming the streaming service’s most-watched title of all time.

But the second season of the show, which premiered on the day after Christmas, introduces an intriguing plot element that cannily taps into the current political moment. Critical reviews for the new season have been mixed, but the new installment of “Squid Game” might be the best pop-cultural examination yet of the social dynamics that have led to a series of rightward shifts around the globe – from the election of Yoon Suk Yeol, South Korea’s hard-line conservative president, in 2022 to a second victory for Donald Trump here at home. If the first season was about how capitalism forces people into impossible choices (such as braving a murderous game show in hopes of improving a desperate lot), then the second season is all about the toll of tribalism: how the push to pit ourselves against one another in a winner-take-all political battle leads to destruction and despair for all.