Squid Game proved to audiences that watching people doing anything, even playing Red Light Green Light, is thrilling if there are snipers involved. But when Netflix tried to replicate the same with Squid Game: The Challenge, it was hard to keep the suspension of disbelief when random people were pretending to keel over after losing a game of gigantic Battleship. But a recent Netflix series proves you don’t have to murder people (or even pretend to) in order to make a thrilling game show. You just need to complicate the games themselves.
Now, that show is back with a new season that finds even more ways to up the ante and deliver a reality competition series that often feels more like a conspiracy thriller than a game show full of celebrities.
The Devil’s Plan is a Korean reality series that gathers a group of super-smart celebrities, from influencers, to K-Pop idols, to poker players, to play a series of strategy and puzzle games to earn puzzle pieces and, eventually, a big prize pot. However, these aren’t your typical Survivor-esque challenges. They’re often complicated twists on strategy games like Mafia/Werewolf or poker, and require careful management of alliances and betrayals.
But these games are only half the action. Afterwards, the players with the least amount of pieces are sent to “prison,” a living space where they must live off bread and milk and participate in an elimination challenge that will result in one of them going home. But both the main living quarters and prison hide something: a secret match.
In the second season, The Devil’s Plan is adding a new twist: the hidden match is now all-or-nothing, meaning contestants either walk out successful or go immediately home. Facing off against it are a cast including a former Go player, a board gaming YouTuber, a former member of Loona, and The Umbrella Academy’s Justin Min.
Devil’s Plan is so popular that it veers from Netflix’s normal binge-model release schedule. Its 12 episodes release four at a time, meaning the entire series will be available to stream on Tuesday, May 20. But with episode lengths often reaching up to 90 minutes, you might not be caught up by then.
That length is very purposeful: The Devil’s Plan’s secret strength is its editing. Sometimes, you’ll see a game and not realize what’s happening until afterwards, when you’ll finally see what players were conspiring in secret. Each of these ultra-long episodes is meticulously planned, so there are shocking cliffhangers and title sequence drops, even if they come a half-hour into the action.
The Devil’s Plan is the thinking man’s Squid Game, often involving complex math and lateral thinking (the Pythagorean Theorem plays a big role in a recent episode). But even if you can’t completely keep up, it’s worth a watch if only to watch super smart people be super smart.
