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Squid Game 2 spoilers ahead.
There was moment at the end of the second episode of Squid Game season two that literally made me gasp out loud — the moment when Kang No-eul, played by Park Gyu-young, boarded a van and stepped into, not a green and white contestant track suit as I had expected, but rather, a pink and black solder uniform. It was the chilling moment I realised that the character who I thought was going to be our righteous heroine, the character who had already become season's emotional centre, was, in fact, going to be our villain.
The first season of Squid Game was rife with such shocking moments — moments that managed to turn everything we thought we knew about the moral order of the world on its head. The second instalment of Netflix's South Korean thriller series has, understandably, come with fewer outright shocks. After all, fans already know the basic premise: 456 financially desperate people willingly agree to partake a deadly series of children's games. A loss means death, but emerging as the ultimate victor means a prize of 456 billion won (around £26 million).
While the first season offered a damning critique of capitalism and classism, the second season delves further into the murky territory that blends the boundary between right and wrong — and it implicates the viewer in those ethical grey areas while it's at it.
What makes a person commit heinous acts? What drives a person to kill another? Can brutality ever be justified? And can we, or rather should we, as the viewer, ever sympathise with characters who do these bad things?
When we first meet her, she is working at a theme park as a masked character — a masked pink bunny to be precise — get it? She's already a pink soldier. The clue was there all along.
Nevertheless, that clue went straight over my head. Instead, I was gripped by her tragic tale. A former North Korean soldier, No-eul defected to South Korea by killing her Commanding Officer and the team of soldiers that pursued her to the border. In her defection, she lost her young daughter. Now, she is funnelling every penny she makes into what seems to be a hopeless search for her. In between shifts at the theme park, she lives in her car. She self-harms. She numbs her pain with alcohol and pills.
The only thing that seems to wake her from her deadened state is a bond she forms with a young girl whose father also works at the park. The girl, it turns out, is suffering from a rare cancer. When the girl collapses and is rushed to hospital, No-eul secretly returns her knit hat in a silent, thankless good deed.
But when No-eul zips up her pink jumpsuit and dons the triangle mask, suddenly, we are confronted with the question: was everything we thought to be a sign of good in her really a sign of bad?
The moral ambiguities continue once she's in the game. As a soldier, No-eul is merciless — or is her merciless merely a misguided attempt at honour and mercy?
After all, it is she who ensures that the contestants are dead before they can be taken to have their organs harvested. A small mercy — but that is how No-eul sees her role. “When you first came to me, you said my job here would be helping those who feel hopeless by putting them out of their misery. I trusted you,” she tells a manager. “That's what I came here to do.”
We spoke to Park over zoom about the gripping second season of Squid Game, what it's like to play the show’s most complicated, compelling anti-hero and what we can expect next from her character.
We're as excited as we are terrified.
Congratulations on the show! I've loved binging season two. One of my favourite things about this season is that it shows us several different ways motherhood can drive people to extremes. Can you talk about how your character's experience of being a mother has made her who she is?
I guess you could call it motherly love when it comes to what drives her. But the way I interpreted it was, she is someone who has lived having lost something that was the most important thing to her, to the degree where it became a part of who she is. And when you live a life like that, what kind of emotions do you go through? What do you experience? What kind of energy do you carry, and what becomes a driver in everything you do?
That's what I was focused on. And I think No-eul is a character through whom you can see just how strong and how extreme a person can become based on all of that.
Do you find it empowering to play such a strong, morally complicated female character?
I think it's not even just about being a female character, but as anyone in the industry, as an actor, it is always really meaningful to play a character whose main drive is based on their own set of principles and beliefs and ethics. I think it's really important to explore that when you approach a character. So, this is definitely a character that has inspired me greatly. And going forward, I think I'm going to continue to be inspired by her.
You spoke about No-eul's personal ethical code. What intrigues you about the murky ethics of the show?
There are definitely many stories that explore that theme and I believe it's a theme that we have to continue to want to explore [as actors and creators] — these are the stories that we have to continue to want to tell. But I think with Squid Game, it goes even beyond that, where it allows you to ask certain questions that you never even thought about asking yourself.
I hope that as viewers, people will continue to ask themselves about the choices that they make in their daily lives. What kind of gains are we pursuing? How do we present ourselves within that conflict? What are the choices that we make? What are some choices that we wish we hadn't made? And how do we build our personal principles along the way in that process? I think these are questions that we have to continue to ask ourselves.
How do you unwind and decompress from such an intense show?
I’m the type of actor who likes to maintain the character's overall energy all the way throughout the filming days, and so rather than wanting to just completely be rid of the character after a shoot day, or completely decompress, I think I was focusing more on the energy of the character. And also, because I'm just a huge home body, I don't leave my home! So, after a shoot day, I would just lay in bed and kind of relieve all of the stress that way.
How do you think viewers will respond to No-eul's journey in the upcoming season?
She's an amazing person. I think that's what the viewers might end up seeing.
Squid Game season 2 is available to stream on Netflix.
There's not long to wait…
