The new season of ‘Squid Game’ undermines the triumphs of the first

This article includes spoilers for Season 1 of SquidGame and some mild spoilers for Season 2. Dystopian satires are tough to sustain, especi...

This article includes spoilers for Season 1 of "Squid Game” and some mild spoilers for Season 2. - - - Dystopian satires are tough to sustain, especially when they’re powered by twists. That might explain "Squid Game’s” peculiar sophomore season, which dropped Thursday and ends so abruptly I initially assumed Netflix had simply withheld the finale from critics. It hadn’t; I’d received all seven episodes.

This sequel to the gorgeous, stylized 2021 megahit - in which Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), a compulsive gambler, gets recruited to an annual gladiatorial "game” in which desperate debtors risk their lives playing children’s games to win a jackpot - feels stylistically continuous but thematically flaccid.

Having neglected to develop a number of storylines enough to generate much momentum, suspense or philosophical complexity, the series simply breaks off, and does so at a moment that feels less like a cliff-hanger than a commercial break.

The new season opens precisely where the last one ended, some years after Gi-hun has won the contest. Once he realizes the Game’s twinkly recruiter in the suit (Gong Yoo) is still tempting desperate people to play, inviting them to the competition, Gi-hun abandons his plan to visit his daughter and resolves to hunt down the Game’s creators.

Gi-hun goes off the grid, settling into a motel where he tries to evade detection and relocate the salesman. He even hires the loan shark who once threatened to harvest his organs to lead the search.