Squid Game reviews: Season two 'sensational' or 'a letdown'?

Season 2 of Squid Game has received reviews arsenic mixed arsenic a Christmas enactment box, with TV critics calling it everything from "sensational" to "a letdown".

The Guardian said that aft a beauteous dilatory start, the returning bid yet turned into "TV that volition marque you uncomfortably bloodthirsty indeed".

While the Telegraph described it arsenic a "layered and nuanced communicative of revenge and redemption".

Netflix's astir fashionable archetypal amusement returned to our screens connected Boxing Day with protagonist Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) - aka Player 456 - backmost for more, 3 years aft his triumph successful the lethal bid of children's games.

The archetypal play of the South Korean play followed a radical of 456 people, hopeless and successful debt, warring to the decease for a immense currency prize.

This clip around, the erstwhile victor is joined by hundreds of caller competitors who helium tries to usher to safety.

The caller episodes find the main quality "hellbent connected seeking revenge connected the super-rich puppet-masters who engineered its deadly spectacle", according to the Guardian's Rebecca Nicholson, who awarded 3 stars.

But the aboriginal episodes "feel similar delaying tactics", she added, "and considering that this is Squid Game, it is each alternatively ordinary".

"When we get into the existent games, the smash-hit K-drama finds its feet," she noted. "But it spends acold excessively galore episodes dragging its heels highly painfully."

Series three, which has already been commissioned for 2025, "must bash better", she concluded.

"For each of its unevenness, peculiarly arsenic it is warming up to the due action, determination is 1 large twist that truly works, though whether it is chiseled capable from what happens successful the archetypal bid is unclear," wrote Nicholson.

"And erstwhile you deliberation you cognize wherever it is going, it turns distant from its trajectory, upping the ante and uncovering its feet. What a shame it takes truthful agelong to get determination though."

The archetypal series, which the Times' Tim Glanfield notes was viewed arsenic a "dystopian commentary connected the ills of late-stage capitalism", became Netflix's biggest ever bid motorboat - streamed by 111 cardinal users successful its archetypal 28 days.

Glanfield offered 4 stars for play two, saying: "The cardinal to the occurrence of this sensational instrumentality is the cautious and thoughtful pacing, combined with hints of airy wrong the gruesome shade.

"Although the evident temptation is to propulsion the spectator consecutive backmost into the arena of horror, with 456 caller breathless players being manipulated and mutilated successful ever-more originative ways (don't worry, there's plentifulness of that to come), the archetypal fewer episodes confidently research beingness connected the outside."

He added: "This is simply a communicative of revenge and redemption: much layered, much nuanced and much analyzable than the archetypal series."

The Telegraph's Ed Power gave play 2 lone 3 stars however, comparing it to the "equivalent of a hard 2nd medium from an overnight popular star".

"It has tons of what you loved astir the archetypal Squid Game, from 2021, but has small involvement successful surpassing, overmuch little subverting, its predecessor".

Another bid was not ever connected the cards. At 1 constituent manager Hwang Dong-hyuk swore against making another, fixed the accent of the archetypal had seen him suffer rather a fewer teeth.

Like the characters successful the show, it seems helium is chiefly successful play 2 for the money.

"Even though the archetypal bid was specified a immense planetary success, honestly I didn't marque much," he told the BBC. "So doing the 2nd bid volition assistance compensate maine for the occurrence of the archetypal 1 too."

"And I didn't afloat decorativeness the story," helium adds.

His acheronian commentary connected wealthiness inequality touched a nervus with audiences astir the globe.

But having killed disconnected astir each character, Hwang had to commencement from scratch, with a caller formed and acceptable of games, and this clip precocious assemblage expectations.

The Independent's Annabel Nugent said she thinks the manager got it bang connected with his approach, awarding the caller bid 4 stars.

"Squid Game play 2 is obscurity adjacent arsenic shocking arsenic the archetypal – but isn't that the point?" she wrote.

"It is intolerable to replicate the daze of the archetypal season, and writer Hwang Dong Hyuk does good not to try."

Among the caller characters, Nugent noted is "No Eul, a North Korean defector forced to permission her babe behind", "Gyeong Seok, a theme-park caricaturist who needs wealth to wage for his daughter's crab treatment" and "Myung Gi, a erstwhile YouTube prima and crypto bro who mislaid his wealth successful a scam".

As good arsenic "a young large miss who hides her increasing belly beneath her baggy tracksuit" and "a transgender ex-military serviceman hoping for a new, much accepting beingness successful Thailand".

"Where the archetypal bid relied connected daze for horror, each decease landing similar a brisk whack to the backmost of your head, play 2 derives panic from what we cognize arsenic returning audiences, positioning Gi Hun erstwhile again arsenic our surrogate," wrote Nugent.

"He besides knows what comes adjacent and yet adjacent with that cognition is powerless to halt it."

She added: "Stripping distant the daze and peeling backmost the enigma that anchored play 1 is simply a risk, but 1 that allows Hwang to laic bare his show's stridently anti-capitalist message."

The Hollywood Reporter's Daniel Feinberg called play 2 "a thorough letdown".

"It's not a cardinal level connected which Squid Game is broken, but play 2 simply doesn't work."