Squid Game season 2 teaser: Now, that's more like it

When Netflix previously released a teaser for the highly anticipated second season of Squid Game, it was largely focused on the show’s admittedly eye-catching vibes and imagery. Sure, we all knew Lee Jung-jae’s character Seong Gi-hun would end up back in the Games somehow—otherwise, there’s no show—but we were left with little in the way of understanding what his return trip to the world of lethal kids competitions would be like.

The same cannot be said for the above trailer, which Netflix released this afternoon, and which gives at least a sense of where the season is going. We see, for instance, that Gi-hun is not only back in a jumpsuit, but once again rocking No. 456; more importantly, he’s clearly trying to leverage the extremely hard-won experience of his first run through the Games in order to save the lives of his fellow participants. (Not especially successfully, after we see the usual panic break out when the returning opening game of “Red Light, Green Light” gets violent.) Interestingly, a lot of focus is put on the bit where contestants can voluntarily vote to end the games, which was a key moment in the first season’s capitalist satire; this new version adds a cute little twist where voters are given patches to identify their choices and split up into groups based on them, suggesting the new season might put a greater focus on factionalism or political discord.

The important thing about the trailer, to our eyes, is that it suggests that series creator Hwang Dong-hyuk has not let massive, unprecedented success go to his head; the emphasis of the teaser is clearly on the show’s caustic take on human nature more than flashier elements like the games themselves. And despite the rampant and grotesque commodification of the series by its streaming parent, there’s every indication that Hwang still knows exactly what story he’s trying to tell with the show’s second season, which arrives on Netflix on December 26.