Squid Game. A Spoiler Filled Review By: Madden Still

 

    Recently I, along with millions of other people including some of my fellow classmates have watched the second season of Squid Game. I personally really enjoyed the show and judging by other people's reviews, they did too. Now to fully understand my review we'll have to get into some spoiler territory so click away if you haven't yet watched it. Now that we have the warnings out of the way, we can begin. 

    In the first season of squid game we follow a diverse cast of characters each with different characteristics that make the show fun to watch. Our main character, Gi-Hun is a broke, divorced man with a child that he rarely gets to see. His gambling addiction constantly leads him into trouble and not being able to afford a good present for his daughter's birthday. His strive to be a better father to his daughter leads him to accept a mysterious invitation to something simply known as "The Games". These simple children's games that the 456 contestants play to earn money aren't as simple as they seems. If you lose the game you die and anyone who complete all 6 games wins a large sum of money accumulated with each death. Gi-Hun ends up being the only winner and gains the handsome prize of 456 billion Korean won. When he returns home he finds his elderly mother dead in her bed. This leaves the viewer with a sour feeling knowing that our main character went into the games wanting to win money for his family and comes out being the only survivor and losing his mother. At the end of the show he doesn't get on a plane to see his daughter and instead goes back to try to stop the games once an for all.

    This ending perfectly seaways into Season 2 where Gi-Hun returns to the games with his new knowledge of the games. He acts as a wise guide that tries to help everyone survive and leave the games safe and sound. Season 2 is very eventful despite only having 3 games shown. The first game was the same as season 1being red light green light however the second and third games are completely different. I believe this happened because of the front man. The front man is the head leader of the games who always wears a black mask so nobody has seen his face except the viewer. This was until he went undercover in the game as player 001 to oversee Gi-Hun because he knew that "He played these games before". Squid Game artfully illustrates the character of the front man (001) because despite the viewer knowing that he's evil, we still learn to like this character because of him constantly trying to help Gi-Hun. Now 001's backstory and motives are too elaborate to get into in this blog so I suggest going to watch the show yourself.

    After watching both seasons of squid game I really enjoy the show. Each character while seeming shallow at first has so much backstory that if the show was viewed from different angle, almost any character could be the protagonist. The games and action scenes are so suspenseful to watch because no character has "plot armor". One of my main gripes with other shows is that they're scared to do anything bad to the main character which sometimes ruins the suspense knowing that nothing could go wrong. Squid game doesn't do this in the slightest. They will build up hours and hours of backstory just to kill them off in an instant. I could go on and on about my love for this show and how much foreshadowing it does but the show does a much better job explaining it than I ever could. I suggest you all go watch it if you have time to do so.

Thank you for reading and have a nice day,

Madden