Squid Game: The Challenge is not a second season of the scripted Korean thriller. It is a reality competition that borrows the drama’s games and visual world—and turns them into a slick, suspenseful contest for real people. Wenlei Ma’s 2023 review finds it compelling television, but ethically uneasy: the spectacle risks making the source story’s critique of economic cruelty feel like an invitation to enjoy it.
What is Squid Game: The Challenge?
The first season, reviewed by Wenlei Ma for PerthNow on 21 November 2023, is a 10-episode reality competition, not a continuation of the scripted drama. It brings 456 contestants into a contest for a US$4.56 million prize. Here, elimination is represented by exploding ink packs; the lethal violence of the fictional series is not real.
That distinction matters. The competition borrows the drama’s recognizable games and imagery, but contestants are real people making choices under pressure rather than characters in a scripted thriller. ABC Radio National made the same distinction in its interview with Ma, who described the show as “super compelling” viewing and, overall, “a deeply dehumanising watch.”
Why the competition is so watchable
Familiar games, heightened stakes
The familiar game designs provide an immediate hook: viewers understand the basic challenge, then watch contestants decide how to handle it. Saturated sets and polished production give the games a vivid, heightened look. The result is a competition that is easy to follow and quick to build tension.
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Editing turns each round into suspense
Fast pacing and dramatic editing keep attention on who might be eliminated, who will cooperate, and who might betray someone else. The expanding prize pool sharpens those questions. Ma reports that each eliminated player adds US$10,000 to the pool, making departure part of the contest’s financial logic as well as its suspense.
That combination—recognizable games, a huge prize, and uncertainty about the contestants’ next choices—makes the series propulsive. The same devices that keep the competition moving, however, also create its moral discomfort.
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Does the show deepen or dilute the original’s critique?
The scripted Squid Game uses a brutal contest to criticize debt, inequality, and the way people can be treated as disposable. The Challenge takes that premise and stages a real competition in which people pursue a large cash prize. The ethical tension is not that the eliminations are fictional deaths: they are not. It is that the show’s incentives and presentation can make betrayal and self-interest look like sensible routes to success.
Ma’s review argues that this can clash with the original’s social critique. One example she quotes is contestant Bryton (#432): “For me, every person is just money”. In context, the line captures the chilling logic the format can bring to the surface. It is evidence of how the competition is framed in Ma’s account, not proof that every contestant thinks or acts that way.
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Viewers can read the spectacle as an exposure of competitive cruelty—or feel that the show converts that cruelty into entertainment. That contradiction is central to Ma’s judgment: the series can be gripping as reality television while making its participants seem subordinate to the game and the prize.
What about reports of unsafe conditions and unfair play?
Ma’s review recounts reports that contestants held poses for up to 30 minutes in freezing conditions, along with allegations involving ambulance and medic calls and accusations of clock manipulation. Those accounts were attributed to other publications and sources; they are allegations, not settled findings established by the material cited here. Ma also reports that Netflix denied serious injuries and unfair play. The evidence does not independently establish what happened on set, so neither the allegations nor the denial should be treated as a conclusive account.
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Season 2 context
The review concerns the first season, not later episodes. Netflix’s official guide, published 18 November 2025, says Season 2 started on 4 November 2025. It lists 456 contestants, a US$4.56 million prize, eight games, and filming in the UK. Those later-season details provide franchise context; they do not change Ma’s assessment of the 2023 first season.
Who is likely to enjoy it?
Viewers looking for brisk competition, striking sets, and suspense over contestants’ decisions may find The Challenge hard to stop watching. Those drawn to the original drama primarily for its criticism of economic desperation may find the reality format uncomfortable: its contest can stage the very self-interest the story once condemned, then package it as a thrilling spectacle.
Quick Recap
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