While I wouldn't count myself as a fan of the series, I thought back then that why it succeeded in making waves worldwide could be attributed to a number of factors:
- the unusual concept of the drama of weaving seemingly simple childhood games into life-and-death situations and testing the limits of humanity
- its underlying social themes about inequality in terms of power, status and money presented through this "mini society" created within the confines of the game
- artistic presentation through its vibrant colours and scale of its sets
- the violence while gory, added a necessary gripping element and visual impact to the story
- interesting characters with their unique standout traits.
Coupled with the fact that nobody initially expected what was going to come, these sort of helped to fuel the high satisfaction viewers felt.
The problem now was, how are the sequels going to match up or exceed the success of Season 1? Especially since the sequels are going to be in two seasons?
No doubt that I expected that Season 2 was going to be the connector or transit point to the real finale in Season 3, to have things end on such a cliffhanger and be possibly kept waiting till the end of 2025 (hopefully not!) for the conclusion is not a nice feeling. As such, it wasn't surprising to see the mixed reviews on Season 2 because people expected more but didn't get what they wanted especially after waiting for so long. And to be honest, the games this time were not so exciting and novel than those in Season 1. In fact, a lot of the time was spent on character development and filling in the blanks on their background stories so it was inevitable that there was less room for games or more event-driven scenes. Although I liked seeing the deeper character development which made sense in understanding the characters' actions and motivations, something has to be sacrificed for the sake of this so it could be a conscious gamble to devote time on this for Season 2 and pave the groundwork for Season 3.
In terms of the characters playing the game this time, there were some similarities with those in Season 1 albeit with some tweaks in settings. Some of them were not fully fleshed out though so they might only become more interesting in the next season. Lee Byung-hun's appearance this time seems to have overshadowed Lee Jung-jae in more ways than one so it remains to be seen how the two will battle it out in the finale. However, I think it was Gong Yoo's character which had the most impact among everyone despite the limited airtime he had. Too bad that he's probably not going to be back in Season 3.
While I wouldn't say that Season 2 was totally disappointing, it did fail to meet some expectations. Whether this will be washed away in Season 3 remains to be seen but there's a lot of loose ends to be tied so I'm a bit concerned if everything will be wrapped up properly by then. And frankly speaking, if the wait for Season 3 takes way too long, it might make it more difficult for the series to regain lost ground in terms of momentum, viewer satisfaction and popularity. I just hope that it won't take another year before we can be done with this series.
