The second season of Squid Game is out now. Like the first, we meet a collection of colorful characters who are deep in debt enough to participate in the Squid Games. Whoever reaches the end of the games gets a huge cash prize, but if at any point you lose, you die.
The contestants, who number over 400, are divided over whether they want to leave the games with the money they have or keep going in the hopes of getting a bigger prize, even if it means most of them will die. One of the people who most ardently wants to keep going is a rapper named Thanos, played by real-life rapper Choi Seung-hyun, also known as T.O.P. Pretty early on, Thanos establishes himself as a proper psycho; he deliberately gets people killed during a game of Red Light, Green Light, he's a bully, and he hops himself up on some mysterious club drugs to get himself through the games.
The drug bit is interesting, because Choi Seung-hyun himself was busted for using marijuana back in 2017 and subsequently went to jail for 10 months. "As you may know, the actor Seung-hyun, about nine years ago got involved in a marijuana scandal in Korea and wasn't able to do any projects for the past nine years in Korea," Squid Game creator Hwang Dong-hyuk told PEOPLE. "And so this is a comeback after quite a long hiatus, and particularly because he portrays a character that's a rapper and also someone who is on drugs."
"I feel that it took him a lot of guts, in a way, to portray a character, especially someone who shares a lot of similarities that are quite negative to him as a person too. So I think it took him a lot of courage to take on that role."
If you're reading this in the United States, you may think the idea of someone going to jail for almost a year and subsequently being black-balled from their industry over marijuana is nuts; I can literally leave my house right now, walk several blocks, and buy weed from a dispensary, and it's all 100% legal. That said, the loosening of legal restrictions on pot only happened in the U.S. over the past couple of decades; before that, punishments for possession and use of weed were much harsher. Now, even those states that still ban weed probably aren't going to make a big deal of it.
But obviously, things are different in South Korea. Reading Choi's statement from around the time of the scandal is wild: “First of all, I would like to extend my sincere apology to many of you for causing huge disappointment and disturbance,” he wrote, per The Korea Herald. “I feel so embarrassed that I can’t show myself in front of you to apologize."
"I have no excuses and deserve any kind of punishment. I feel very regretful and fearful for having left an irreparable scar in everyone’s hearts, including our members, my agency, friends and family. I will reflect on my wrongdoing over and over again. Once more, I apologize for not being able to apologize to everyone personally."
I feel like things may pick up for Choi Seung-hyun after Squid Game season 2, since he was incredibly entertaining. I wanted his character to die very badly, but that was the point. Whether Thanos was breaking out his broken English or dancing while everyone else was terrified to death during the Mingle game, he was extremely memorable, which counts for a lot.
Squid Game will return for a third and final season on Netflix sometime next year. Will Thanos be back? If you want spoilers, there's a post for that:
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