Squid Game: The Challenge Is Just as Depressing As You’d Think

Squid Game was one of the most popular Netflix series releases in recent memory, and now the game concept at the center of it all has been morphed into the basis for a new reality game show competition that’s just as every bit as depressing as you’d think from a series based on Squid Game. Hwang Dong-hyuk’s original Squid Game series really took over the world thanks to its bleak outlook. Taking people who had literally nothing to lose and suffering from mountains of debt and having them compete in a death game with a child like packaging, Squid Game lit the imaginations of fans everywhere. 

Squid Game’s main hook was that those in charge of the games themselves were actively ridiculing those contestants losing their lives for the chance at a massive money prize. Squid Game: The Challenge then takes this already, eerily realistic premise and makes it even more real. It’s almost a perfect setting for a reality television game show as not only does Squid Game: The Challenge further enhance that inherent cruelty that reality shows are capable of, but puts its contestants through the bleak Squid Game wringer to deliver some honestly enthralling and intriguing television like no other. 

Why You Should Watch Squid Game: The Challenge

Squid Game: The Challenge is inspired by the original series, but is not beholden to it. While the competition plays out through the same overall core idea of gathering over 400 contestants for the chance of winning a massive prize, there are several twists and turns that even the most dedicated Squid Game fans would not see coming. This is to throw off not only the audience, but the contestants themselves as they are always kept on their toes for what could come next. 

Although it’s (thankfully) far from the death game seen in the original series, Squid Game: The Challenge is no less brutal. In fact, it might even be more so because it’s being played without that threat of death. Instead, the real hook comes from the contestants themselves who each have their own compelling stories. You’ll likely pick someone to root for, and find out the (often) tragic reason the money could change their lives, only for them to be quickly eliminated not long after. 

It’s going to hit hard when some of these contestants are eliminated because these are real people with very real lives to go back to after this. Their tears are real, their panic is real, and ultimately their eliminations hit that much harder. And just like the best reality competitions, the opposite can also be very true as well. Like Squid Game, there are contestants that approach the competition in a very aggressive manner. Some who paint big targets on their back early on, and there’s a bit of celebration to each of their respective eliminations. 

Squid Game: The Challenge is all of the fun of the Squid Game games (with plenty of new and unexpected trials), but without the threat of death. It’s even more heartbreaking, however, as these very real people put themselves through hell for the chance at changing their lives. And for someone sitting on the outside of it all, someone fully immersed in the inherent wickedness of reality shows, watching it all play out makes for some top-tier television. 

Squid Game: The Challenge is now streaming its first five episodes on Netflix.