Squid Game’s victims never need an autopsy. We all know what killed them. However, the show itself deserves a post-modern. What happened to the once-great Korean thriller? While not terrible, the recently concluded second chapter hasn’t generated as much talk as the first. Part of that concerns the widespread perception that the show didn’t need to continue. According to many fans (and a few critics), Gi-hun’s story was better suited for a miniseries.
Still, we can understand Netflix’s decision to stretch the show beyond its elastic limit. As any sustainable movie and TV business should, the streaming service prioritizes money over fans’ feelings, so Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) had to keep looking for The Front Man instead of reuniting with his family. The numbers vindicated Netflix as Season 2 had 68 million views in a mere three days, exceeding the highest premiere viewership for the streaming giant held by Wednesday (50.1 million views in its premiere week).
Business was good alright, but the quality of the new chapter would have been great too, if a few things had been avoided. One of those is the death of The Recruiter, also known as The Salesman.
Gi-hun Returns to the Games in Season 2, With Deadly Consequences
Season 1 of Squid Game ends with Gi-hun winning the games after a hard-fought contest. With his victory, he becomes a brighter beacon of hope for this despairing society that’s plagued by economic hardships. Surprisingly, he elects to forsake all worldly pleasures and devote himself to the course of justice. Just as he is about to board a flight to Los Angeles where he hopes to reconnect with his daughter, he spots The Recruiter, a cold, manipulative man who targets debt-ridden and emotionally frail people for the games.
Gi-hun sees the man playing ddakji with a potential participant, before offering him a card. Angry, he takes the player’s invitation card, and calls the number on it, demanding to know who is managing the games. The Front Man answers and advises Gi-hun to reconsider what he is thinking and board his flight, but the protagonist ends the call and returns to the terminal.
Related
Netflix Could Have the Perfect ‘Squid Game’ Replacement After a Disappointing Season 2
‘Squid Game’ fans disappointed with Season 2 need to watch Netflix’s ‘Alice in Borderland’ as a substitute.
At the start of Season 2, we see Gi-hun removing his tracker and Hwang Jun-ho surviving the fall from the cliff. Fast forward to two years later and Gi-hun is now living in a frugal state inside a rusty fortified hotel building. Under his employ are Mr. Kim, his former loan shark, as well as a few lackeys tasked with tracking down The Recruiter. Gi-hun believes The Recruiter will lead him to The Front Man, enabling him to kill the man and end the games once and for all.
Gi-hun sure finds The Recruiter, and after a confrontation between the two, Gi-hun comes out alive. After an initial plan to locate The Front Man at a Halloween Party fails, the hero then returns to the games as a player, with Hwang Jun-ho tracking him using a tracker he had implanted on them.
The plan is simple: Jun-ho and his squad will invade the location once Gi-hun arrives. Unfortunately for them, G-hun’s tracker gets removed, leaving them with no idea where the protagonist has been taken. Gi-hun is thus forced to go through hell once again. There, he adopts a strategy of passive obedience, becoming a guide to his fellow participants as he plots to lead them in a violent fight for autonomy.
Season 2 Looked More Promising When The Recruiter Was Alive
In Season 2, The Recruiter only appears in the premiere. Interestingly, this is the season’s highest-rated episode on IMDb. It has also been rated by way more people (15,000), while the rest have about 11,000 ratings or fewer. More people enjoyed it, presumably because it covered unfamiliar territory. Instead of people just getting grabbed and taken to the games, we witnessed a noir-like cat-and-mouse game involving The Recruiter and Gi-hun’s associates.
The Recruiter establishes himself as one of the show’s most despicable characters and as a proper all-around villain during his brief appearance in the second season. Like his colleagues, he is skilled and fiercely loyal, especially in his eerily genuine reverence for The Front Man. Wisely, the show never burdens us with perspectives on his morality. Instead, we watch him work.
Previously, he was just a man who presented desperate people with opportunities. This time, he gets more philosophical and brutal. A scene where he presents homeless people with the option of bread or a lottery ticket is heartbreaking. After most of the people choose tickets and fail to win, he stomps on the loaves of bread, leaving them hungry and devastated. Because villains ought to have no compassion, The Recruiter emerges as an even better character because of this.
Related
The Most Gruesome Part of ‘Squid Game’ Season 2 Was Hard to Watch
As tensions in ‘Squid Game’ rise, it culminates in one of the show’s bloodiest scenes.
Then there is the scene of The Recruiter easily beating up two men that Gi-hun had hired to track him. For a show where the bad guys rely on shooting, it was nice to see a martial artist for once. From there, he captures the men and proceeds to torment them via a game of Russian Roulette. Afterward, comes the confrontation with Gi-hun at his apartment, which stands out as one of the tensest hero-villain moments in TV history.
The show takes the wrong path when The Recruiter agrees to participate in a game of Russian Roulette with Gi-hun. For such a smart person, he should never have allowed himself to be part of a situation that had variables he couldn’t control. He ends up being the unlucky one, which is sad, because the show could have been better with him alive. Ideally, a second season ought to have revolved around The Recruiter’s rivalry with Gi-hun, playing out in the streets of Seoul, with the former’s death only happening in the finale. After that, Gi-hun would go back to the games. This way, viewers would have been treated to something more refreshing.
Gong Yoo also happens to be one of the greatest Korean actors of all time. Letting him go that early was a waste. Internationally known for his lead role in the terrifying zombie movie, A Train to Busan, Yoo has been wowing audiences in his home country for about two decades now.
Favorable social media reactions to Gong Yoo’s performance in the first episode of Season 2, add weight to the argument that The Recruiter should have lasted the entire season. One fan wrote how “acting skills are insane” in the second season, while another agreed, adding, “can we also consider the fact that this is Gong Yoo’s first time playing a psycho villain role??? And this is the material he’s serving???”
There’s no denying that Squid Game is a wonderful show, a creative allegory of a totalitarian society that benefits greatly from psychedelic production design. Its creator, Hwang Dong-hyuk, demonstrates an aptitude for subtle characterization, excessive gore, and broad comedy.
However, the Korean production could be better. Season 2’s narrative failures are undoubtedly tied to the fact that the series creator never envisioned a larger saga. He wanted to tell a complete story that ended with Gi-hun reuniting with his daughter. This would happen after the realization that there is nothing he can do about the people who run the games. He is lucky to have made it out, and gotten some money while at it, so he should focus on his life.
Related
Ingenious ‘Squid Game’ Theory Shows How Netflix Can Continue the Franchise After Season 3
The third season of ‘Squid Game’ might be confirmed to be the last. But that doesn’t mean the franchise can’t continue in a different way.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Dong-hyuk said:
“Honestly when I was creating season one I didn’t plan in any detail that there would be a second season,”
And after Season 2, he confessed to The Independent that he had grown tired of this particular fictional world. Fans should thus not expect anything else after the upcoming third season.
“I’m so exhausted. I’m so tired. In a way, I have to say, I’m so sick of Squid Game. I’m so sick of my life making something, promoting something. So I’m not thinking about my next project right now. I’m just thinking about going to some remote island and having my own free time without any phone calls from Netflix.”
Dong-hyuk’s comments confirm that Season 2’s story didn’t come from the heart. Warm, moving, and wise, the powerful yet subtle first season reflected a gifted auteur operating at the peak of his powers. Season 2? Not so much. He wrote it out of obligation to Netflix, and for someone who was dragging himself to the finish line, he sure did a decent job.
Deceptively basic yet cumulatively devastating, the second season is molded in a manner guaranteed to move many to tears, especially in its poignant season finale. But it’s not enough. Hopefully, the third chapter will be better, serving as a showdown for the ages between Gi-hun and The Front Man.
For now, fans cannot help but wonder what could have been. We sure would have loved to see The Recruiter punch some more people or dropkick them. We’d have loved to see him give more monologues too, like the one he gave about his father.
There was a man who’d lost, and I went over to shoot him, but… Hmm. I recognized his face. Guess who it was. My dad. I was aiming a weapon at my very own father. And he begged me, tears in his eyes, to spare his life. And so do you know what I did? I shot him, bang, right in the middle of his forehead. That’s when I knew. “Ah… I guess I really am cut out for this.”
Unfortunately, we have to settle for what we were given. Gone too soon, but The Recruiter will forever have a place in the “TV Louvre.”
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
