‘Squid Game’ Season 2 is a dystopian reflection of capitalism’s dark side

The second season of Squid Game, Netflix’s most-watched show of all time, has been eagerly awaited by many. The first season featured players participating in a series of deadly children’s games to win prize money.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed1sGgHUo88

The new season, which is also on track to set another Netflix record, takes a deeper look at the economic context and constraints surrounding the surrealistic games. More than a third of the season takes place outside the actual game setting, highlighting the dystopian life circumstances that drive participants to enter the deadly competition in the first place.

Read more: A brutal K-drama critiquing late-stage capitalism

In many ways, Squid Game Season 2 is a very South Korean story. The country has one of the highest levels of household debt in the world, much of which has been incurred through a failing social security system.

Most notably, a nominally public health-care system offloads considerable burdens on those who require special treatments or operations. Gambling, too, has emerged as a pressing social and economic problem among young Koreans.

Beyond that, Season 2 highlights one specific feature of a capitalist system built on zero-sum competition: people are drawn into it because of the promise of fairy tale wins for a few, despite it resulting in devastating losses for the many.

The illusion of choice

In contrast to other contemporary critiques of capitalism that tend to highlight the players behind the scenes, Squid Game unearths the reasons why the general public plays along with the system in the first place. It’s a depiction of a very real individual financial abyss.

Squid Game doesn’t shy away from the motive of greed, a sentiment famously encapsulated in the 1987 film Wall Street. However, the show frames this greed against a broader canvas of personal bankruptcy, unpaid healthcare bills and gambling losses in the form of failed crypto investments.

Squid Game’s perspective on contemporary capitalism, and why it’s supported by billions of people around the world, is striking. Crumbling public services, privatized insecurity and unattended health issues are not mere side-effects of neo-liberal economic policies — they are designed to push people into the system.

Almost all the players in the game see it as the only option left for them. No one enters the game willingly; they are all thrust into it involuntarily out of necessity.

It is a role in this game that provides the hope of steering clear of the potential abyss against which a declining middle class in many capitalist economies has survived. Like the players of Squid Game buy into the game as their only means of survival, we, too, buy into the capitalist system because we don’t have another choice.

Read more: ‘Squid Game’ and the other vast gambles we take in life

In a global context, the show highlights how extreme poverty and lack of public infrastructure force vast parts of the population in so-called developing countries to participate in exploitative — and often lethal — labour conditions.

Business professor Bobby Banerjee has explored the latter aspect under the label of “necrocapitalism,” while professors Carl Cederström and Peter Fleming have explored the experiences of first-world white-collar workers in their book Dead Men Working.

The promise of more

The repeating votes and battles over the continuation of the game highlight why so many people continue to participate in the broader capitalist system: the promise of more.

Recently, we have seen some junior investment bankers literally working themselves to death. Private gain as the “defining trait of capitalist society” is a well-researched phenomenon. Squid Game plays on the almost comical ability people have to believe in their own capacity to survive and be the chosen winner.

The cruelty and violence of the game itself fuels players’ almost transcendental convictions that they are destined to be the sole victor of the games. These desires, however, clash with the core humanity of the players.

Read more: From Tarantino to Squid Game, why do so many people enjoy violence?

Camaraderie develops as the players work together, and family ties, past friendships, shared experiences, compassion and spirituality all have a clear presence in the show. But in the end, they are overshadowed by the rigid logic of the overarching game.

The most scandalous recent example for such behaviour is American financier Bernie Madoff who ruthlessly defrauded family and kinship in the Jewish community for his personal gain.

‘Temporarily embarrassed millionaires’

Some critics bemoaned that Season 2 is too focused on the lives of the players, with the actual games not beginning until episode four.

However, this shift arguably makes the relationship between the players’ real lives and the games much more explicit. In turn, it makes the show’s critique of capitalism even more pronounced.

The venue at the experiential launch event for Squid Game S2 at Kraftwerk on December 12, 2024 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Sebastian Reuter/Getty Images for Netflix)

While the high-stakes games are undoubtedly the series’ main draw, the popularity of the series still has a lot to do with its intrinsic message, which becomes much more pronounced in the second season. People can identify with the characters risking their survival for the promise of heroically winning another lease on life against all odds.

Read more: The poetics of ‘play’, gender and politics in ‘Squid Game’

As American writer John Steinbeck once put it, many middle- and working-class Americans see themselves as “temporarily embarrassed capitalists.” This mindset encapsulates the relentless participation in a capitalist system that offers only the faint possibility of success.

This dynamic is illustrated in Squid Game Season 2, which explores how individuals rationalize their participation in a game that otherwise runs counter to their most basic human impulses.

The lyrics to Bertold Brecht’s satirical song March of the Calves come to mind: “Following the drum / The calves trot / The skin for the drum / They deliver themselves.” It’s a sobering metaphor for the way the promise of success often blinds us to the personal sacrifice we may pay to achieve it. DM 

This story was first published in The Conversation. Dirk Matten is a Professor of Sustainability and Hewlett-Packard Chair in Corporate Social Responsibility at the Schulich School of Business, York University, Canada.