Reviews for the second season of Squid Game are as mixed as a Christmas selection box, with TV critics calling it everything from “sensational” to “disappointing.”

The Guardian said that after a fairly slow start, the recurring series eventually morphed into “television that will indeed leave you uncomfortably bloodthirsty.”

While the Telegraph described it as a “multi-layered and nuanced story of revenge and redemption.”

Netflix’s most popular original series returned to our screens on Boxing Day, three years after its win in the deadly children’s drama series.

*This article contains spoilers*

In the first season of the South Korean drama, a group of 456 desperate and indebted people fought to the death for a huge cash prize.

This time the previous winner is joined by hundreds of new competitors who he is trying to bring to safety.

In the new episodes, the main character is “hell-bent on taking revenge on the super-rich puppeteers who staged the deadly spectacle,” it is said The Guardian’s Rebecca Nicholson, who gave it three stars.

But the early episodes “feel like a delaying tactic,” she added, “and considering it’s Squid Game, it’s all pretty standard.”

“When we get to the actual games, the hit K-drama finds its way,” she noted. “But it spends far too many episodes dragging out extremely painfully.”

The third series, already commissioned for 2025, “must do better,” she concluded.

“Despite all the bumps in the road, especially during the build-up to the actual plot, there is one big twist that really works, although it is unclear whether it is significantly different enough from what happens in the first series,” Nicholson wrote.

“And when you think you know where it’s going, it turns away from its trajectory, ups the ante and finds its feet again. It’s a shame it’s taking so long to get there.”

The first series, which the Times’ Tim Glanfield described as a “dystopian commentary on the evils of late capitalism,” became Netflix’s biggest series launch ever – streamed by 111 million users in its first 28 days.

The Times critic gave the second season four starssaid: “The key to the success of this sensational return is the careful and considered pacing, combined with a hint of light within the spooky hue.”

“Although the obvious temptation is to throw the viewer right back into the arena of horror, with 456 new breathless players being manipulated and mutilated in increasingly creative ways (don’t worry, there are plenty of those left) in the first few episodes confidently explore life out there.

He added: “This is a story of revenge and redemption: more layered, nuanced and complex than the original series.”

The Telegraph’s Ed Power gave the second season only three stars However, compare it to the “equivalent of a difficult second album from a late-night pop star.”

“It has a lot of what you loved about the first Squid Game of 2021, but has little interest in surpassing or even subverting its predecessor.”

Another series was not always possible. At one point, director Hwang Dong-hyuk vowed not to make another film because he had lost some teeth due to the stress of the first film.

Like the characters in the series, he seems to be mostly in it for the money in the second season.

“Even though the first series was such a huge global success, I honestly didn’t do much.” he told the BBC. “So working on the second series will also help me compensate for the success of the first.”

“And I didn’t finish reading the story,” he adds.

His dark commentary on wealth inequality struck a chord with audiences around the world.

But after killing off almost all the characters, Hwang had to start from scratch, with a new cast and a new series of games and this time with high audience expectations.

The Independent’s Annabel Nugent said she thought the director got everything right with his approach: Awarding the new series four stars.

“Squid Game Season 2 isn’t nearly as shocking as the first – but isn’t that the point?” she wrote.

“It’s impossible to repeat the shock of the first season, and writer Hwang Dong Hyuk would be wise not to try.”

According to Nugent, the new characters include “No Eul, a North Korean defector who is forced to leave her baby behind,” “Gyeong Seok, a theme park cartoonist who needs money to pay for his daughter’s cancer treatment,” and “Myung Gi , a former YouTube star and crypto bro who lost his money to a scam.”

As well as “a young pregnant girl hiding her growing belly under her baggy tracksuit” and “a transgender former military officer hoping for a new, more accepting life in Thailand.”

“While the first season relied on shock rather than horror, with each death landing like a violent blow to the back of the head, the second season draws terror from what we know as a returning audience and once again positions Gi Hun as our surrogate Nugent wrote.

“He also knows what’s coming next, and even with that knowledge he’s powerless to stop it.”

She added: “Removing the shock and exposing the mystery that underpinned the first season is a risk, but one that allows Hwang to reveal his show’s stridently anti-capitalist message.”

Daniel Feinberg of The Hollywood Reporter called the second season “a thorough disappointment.”

“It’s not fundamental that Squid Game is broken, but season two just doesn’t work.”