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When the first season of Squid Game: The Challenge came out, I thought it was the best reality competition show I’d seen in years outside of The Traitors. But in just two short years, the Netflix gameshow has fallen from the best to the worst.
The recipe for why is actually very simple – in 2023, we were enthralled by the idea that Netflix’s biggest K-drama could be replicated with everyday people and exceptionally detailed gameplay following in the footsteps of what we saw in each episode of Squid Game season 1.
Almost none of that is represented in Squid Game: The Challenge season 2. The original show’s games are still well replicated, but they’re mundane compared to the big classics we saw in season 1. New twists and turns mostly fall flat, and our cast is too weak to be memorable or build an invisible rapport with the audience.
And if that all isn’t bad enough, where on earth is Red Light, Green Light?
All of the reality TV sparkle has gone in Squid Game: The Challenge season 2
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Squid Game: The Challenge season 2 has taken a risk by getting rid of the show’s most famous games (think Red Light, Green Light and Dalgona) and replacing them with brand-new gameplay. Half of our cast of 456 players are immediately eliminated by the new game Count, which is merely comprised of two teams counting 456 seconds before pressing a button.
It makes for the most anti-climactic premiere episode of TV I’ve seen this year, and I’m absolutely baffled for why Netflix would choose to use a counting game over the brutal run-and-stop elimination we’re all looking forward to. Annoyingly, it’s not coming any later in the series either.
Games such as Mingle in episode 4 win back some level of tension, but it might be too little, too late. In the first four episodes alone, we only see two and a half games played out, with dorm challenges or recordings of the contestants filling our screens in the meantime. Normally, if there is a strong cast and genuinely shrewd surprises, this wouldn’t be a problem.
However, we’re presented with labored and anti-climactic developments between cast members we can’t remember from one minute to the next.
Let’s address the changes first. There are a variety of new dorm challenges introduced to try and stoke up drama between players – the most successful of these being a secret boiler room where players are sent to enact eliminations or receive coins to use in a snack-filled vending machine. We also see players presented with a chance to swap meals for “scratchers” or pass around Russian dolls, both of with lead to potential disadvantages in the next game.
Despite the fact that none of these make the level of impact that Netflix is hoping for, it all feels too pre-meditated – and that’s the same problem we see with the casting. In short, it’s all gone a bit too X Factor, putting the pedal to the emotional medal so hard that nothing feels genuine. Everything we’re seeing feels overly contrived, and Netflix is trying far too hard to keep our attention.
Where season 1 introduced players we could connect with (think mother-son duo Leanne and Trey), Netflix is clearly trying to fit the same character profiles, but with less success. As soon as I can remember that somebody exists, they’re killed off, and that’s always been the downside of a gameshow with such a big cast. The finalists don’t become clear until the last moment, but this time there’s nobody in the interim to tide us over.
What does this mean for Squid Game: The Challenge season 3?
In short, this all isn’t amazing news for the already-renewed Squid Game: The Challenge season 3. It feels as though season 2 is following the original series slump that came at the same point (at least, in my opinion), which wasn’t completely clawed back by the time season 3 dropped six months later.
But it’s not all hopeless. Game stalwarts like Marbles returns, offering up the most emotional turning point we’ve seen across all iterations of the game, and the production design is still beyond astounding. We know season 3 will likely replicate the jump rope horror from the first season of Squid Game, and that’s got the opportunity to be the jewel in Netflix’s reality TV crown.
In the meantime, I’d rather rewatch the original series than get ready for the rest of Squid Game: The Challenge season 2 in the coming weeks.
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