It would have been easy to take the successful high-concept premise of “Squid Game” — hard-luck contestants compete to the death in a sadistically kiddie-themed battle royale — and simply replicate it for Season 2. After all, the show’s first seasonsigebet, which appeared on Netflix to little initial fanfare in 2021, was embraced as a shrewd fable of late-stage capitalism and drew a reported 330 million viewers worldwide, becoming the streaming service’s most-watched title of all time.
The Quad alliance has existed for more than a decade, but Mr. Biden was the first president to convene a meeting among the leaders of the nations as a foursome. As the four posed for a photo on Saturday, Mr. Biden was asked whether the alliance would last beyond November. “Way beyond November,” he said.
The problem appeared to affect voters who were issued driver’s licenses before 1996, eight years before Arizona enacted a law in 2004 that required voters to provide proof of citizenship to be able to participate in state elections.
But the second season of the show, which premiered on the day after Christmas, introduces an intriguing plot element that cannily taps into the current political moment. Critical reviews for the new season have been mixed, but the new installment of “Squid Game” might be the best pop-cultural examination yet of the social dynamics that have led to a series of rightward shifts around the globe — from the election of Yoon Suk Yeol, South Korea’s hard-line conservative president, in 2022 to a second victory for Donald Trump here at home. If the first season was about how capitalism forces people into impossible choices (such as braving a murderous game show in hopes of improving a desperate lot), then the second season is all about the toll of tribalism: how the push to pit ourselves against one another in a winner-take-all political battle leads to destruction and despair for all.
To understand the show’s second-season evolution, it helps to recall a highlight from Season 1: the second episode, titled “Hell,” in which traumatized survivors of the game’s first challenge were given the opportunity to vote on whether they’d like to continue the game. Given that the game’s first challenge led to dozens of casualties among the contestants, a viewer might assume the contestants would unanimously vote for escape. But when confronted with the persistent hopelessness of their plights in the outside world, the contestants opt universally, by the end of the episode, to re-enter the game — believing that its perilous contests offer them the best chance for changing their fortunes. The game is cruel, but the world is crueler. And so they vote to play.
rolling slotsIn Season 2, this winner-take-all dilemma becomes not just a one-off vote but an event after every round. Surviving players must decide, by majority vote, whether to end the game for everyone or continue in hopes of collecting the largest possible jackpot. And there’s another twist: Prematurely ending the game no longer results in everyone going home empty-handed but rather in everyone splitting the winnings evenly. It’s a classic game-show dilemma — quit now and take the money you’ve won, or press on in hopes of a bigger fortune — but in the hands of the “Squid Game” creator it becomes a malevolent social experiment.
The contestants quickly cluster into two opposing factions: The red “X” team, which wants to get out and avoid further bloodshed, and the blue “O” team, which is eager to press forward despite the risks. The show isn’t subtle about its political allegory. The voting scenes are staged to feel like political rallies, with X and O camped out on their own sides of the aisle. In a later episode, a wave of populist fervor seizes the group, buoyed by desperation, greed and survivorship bias. “We’ve made it this far, so let’s do this one more time!” a contestant urges the slow to convert. What ensues should come with a trigger warning for any American who was dismayed on Nov. 5, as the ensuing electoral landslide for the blue team is accompanied by chants of “Four more years!” — sorry, “One more game!” — that sweep the players’ dormitory.
Ultimately, the contestants realize that a more expedient way to gain an edge is to eliminate the opposition, rather than convert it — and as the corps fully devolves into tribalism, they take up arms and attack one another. That’s the eventual message of the show’s second season: Tribalism is a conflagration that consumes itself.
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