Squid Game: Season Two

With so much speculation nearly two years after the release of Squid Game’s first season in September 2021, Netflix has finally offered some details on the series’ 2024 follow-up. The trailer—technically, labelled a cast announcement, rather than a teaser trailer proper—nevertheless does offer an audiovisual preview with at least some footage of the season to come.

The trailer (as we’ll call it) begins with the song of the doll from the “Red Light Green Light” game of the first season’s opener. It then heads off into fairly generic, library music fare. Nonetheless, the persistent synth beat does its job of sustaining interest as the title cards make confirmation of returning characters, such as Lee Byung-Hun’s enigmatic villain, Front Man. Only three returning characters are confirmed before we’re switched over to new cast choices (“new players”, as the series is about a morbid game show gone too far). The music pauses here, flickering in and out in a rapid synch with the visuals cutting in and out as well.

Of course, this serves to build anticipation before the reveal at 0:34, first with a closeup ,and then with the new player’s back to the camera. At this point, the aural focus is squarely on sound effects and the like, with only a dull, soft synth and a gentle ticking sound holding any kind of musical ground. Of course, at 0:41 we hear a synched percussion hit when the character on screen hits the green “play” button. At 0:42 we hear a deeper “tock” sound (if you will) before reverting to ticking. As we’ve covered time and again in recent trailer editing style, the ticking motif is a straightforward yet effective way of maintaining some continuity of music throughout the trailer. It also offers attention space, deferring one’s attention towards what is happening visually.

The music fills in again at 0:47 as we’re giving the first new casting choice’s name (Yim Si-Wan), pushing the rhythm into double time, and three more players are also introduced. As we see a character leave an empty spotlight podium, we hear the doll’s song again. The casting announcement then ends with a brief reprise of the Squid Game theme—tangentially, somewhat reminiscent of the Twilight Zone in its melodic contour—this time slowed down by half and under the mage of the crowd-pleasing “game master,” Gon Yoo, whose return has been dramatically withheld to this point. It’s just enough to sustain the interest of the audioviewer until a proper trailer can arrive; just as most of the footage contains nondescript shots of the new and returning characters, most of the music seems derived from library tracks. However, the rearranged, stripped down theme offers the promise of something more substantial as we approach the new season’s filming and eventual release.

Squid Game: Season Two is currently projected to arrive on Netflix in 2024.

— Curtis Perry