This article contains massive spoilers for The Squid Game Season 2.

The concept behind the "squid game" is simple: 456 players who are currently struggling to survive in financial ruin gather in a competition where they play popular schoolyard games from childhood to death, and the last one standing walks away with 45.6 billion won. or approximately $32 million depending on the current exchange rate. Once players agree to play, they emerge victorious or leave in a body bag. Morbid and dystopian, sure, but certainly not hard to wrap your head around. While a lot aspects of The Squid Game Season 1 have been carried over to the second season, show creator Hwang Dong-hyuk has added a few new wrinkles to the games, not unlike the malevolent President Snow in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.

After Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-ae) won the games last season, the overwhelming guilt he felt after surviving while 455 others radicalized him to end the games for good inspired him to re-enter and take things from within . However, he very quickly realizes that this year's games work a little differently - after each game, players can now vote to split the money and run or keep playing in the hope that the bodies pile up and the golden piggy bank a little fuller.

It was one thing when everyone was for themselves, it's another when half the room has the option to leave and publicly voted to put your life at risk. This seemingly democratic addition to the game helps deepen the social commentary of the original series; the elite have always pitted the poor against each other, but now when the players vote on whether to continue playing or not, factions will form and they will focus their anger directly against each other instead of remembering who the real enemy is.

The Squid Game is not the first (nor will it be the last) story to focus on players who volunteer or are forced to play horrible gamesbut the expansion of the voting element brings the story closer to home than season 1 - especially for Americans who will tune in after the most recent presidential election. The contestants on these title games literally vote like their lives depended on it, but everyone who votes is pushed to the edge. This is a group of horrified, traumatized, exhausted, borderline hungry people with debt over their heads. Those who want to leave admit that no dollar amount is worth their lives, but that cannot be said for everyone.

Some are motivated by greed, others by feeling like they've already made it this far and shouldn't walk away with a bigger paycheck, many are spoiled by the evil of gaming, but some are just plain scared. As easy as it is to demonize players who vote against their best interests, to treat them all as nothing more than greedy, bloodthirsty monsters is wildly inaccurate. The real villains here are the people who put them in these positions in the first place. Watching the voting unfold after each match is terrifying, not only because we witness the common nature of a microcosm of humanity disintegrate before our eyes, but because we can even sympathize with those willing to vote in a way that puts them in the direct path of material damage, still clinging to the hope that maybe this vote will be the one that brings them closer to a successful life. If only it were that easy.

Season 2 of The Squid Game is now streaming on Netflix.