Like it happens with the follow-up for any successful show, I entered the Squid Game 2 with a fair bit of trepidation. What worked in the first season was the shock value of the setting that posits the innocence of childhood games, sophisticated Western classical music with a kind of savagery few would be able to stomach. Where unsuspecting debt-ridden civilians are lured onto an island to play a series of games – for which they stand to win an obscene amount of money, or pay for it with their life. A cruel, but clinical simulation of our lives in a hyper-capitalist society, the appeal of Squid Game lay in how it studied human nature – especially the ones with limited means, who are driven to take desperate measures. How far would you go to survive/get paid? As the first season showed: to any length.

The arrival of Squid Game in 2021 was met with overwhelming resonance and relevance. In a world ravaged by the pandemic which had shifted power structures, altered priorities for both individuals and institutions and given birth to an existential crisis which compelled many of us to question purpose and privilege, the South Korean series — that Netflix dropped with very little fanfare — may have spoken, much like the Oscar biggie Parasite, about the class chasm in that country as well as fast-growing debt and the perils of the rise of capitalism in the South Korean economy, but it found itself touching a chord with audiences across the world.

After its premiere in 2021, it was easy to see why Squid Game became the most popular show in the world. Writer-director Hwang Dong-hyuk’s universal story of greed and betrayal, which exposed humanity’s basest behaviour, struck a chord globally. Audiences took to the characters created in this universe and mourned as we lost several fan favourites who were treated as pawns in the deadly contest based on nostalgic children’s games. The show returns after three years and a time jump, as the last winner Seong Gi-hun decides to infiltrate the games to take it down. Lee Jung-jae’s Gi-hun is a much-changed man this season as he’s on a mission to dismantle the games. Plagued with guilt about his survival after his friends didn’t make it, he wants to save others from succumbing to the same fate. But his plan faces plenty of hurdles that he doesn’t anticipate. The Front Man (Lee Byung-hun), the overseer of the game, has a bigger role than last season, and police officer Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon) also returns to find his way back to find out more about the mysterious organisation that runs the games.