A Masterful Sequel

'Squid Game 2': Seong Is Trying To Dismantle It From Within

- Hein Kaiser

Usually it's not worth holding your breath for sequels. Or second seasons that follow a genius debut on screen. But despite mixed reviews of Squid Game 2, the show serves up a luscious feast and at the end of the seven episodes, there's a small note that critics of the show clearly did not read.

Audiences waited almost two and a half years for the follow-up to Squid Game, the Korean television phenomena that had everyone baking Dalgona cookies and dressing up like the square, circle and triangle masked soldiers over Halloween.

White Van's slip-on sneakers were impossible to purchase for a while, because a retail stampede followed the first installment of the show. Everyone wanted a piece of its action.

Squid Game followed a standard storytelling recipe, but the secret was in the method. It was so un-Hollywood that an emerging post-Covid world fell in love, hook, line and sinker.

The second installment of Squid Game revisits protagonist and winner of 45.6 billion won (about R578 million), Seong Gi-hun. He is in semi-hiding in a dilapidated old hotel called the Pink Hotel.