Drama
Squid Game
Netflix might not have banked on Squid Game being its most popular show ever. But it sure knew it wanted it bloody.
By the time most people get to college, they’re no longer too worried about spelling. They’ve probably taken lots of spelling tests already. And if none of ’em helped, well, there’s always spellcheck, right?
But Jack Morton is learning that good ol’ Belgrave U. is a little different—especially if you get into its most famous (?) secret society. Yes, that’s right: In the Hermetic Order of the Blue Rose, good, um, spelling is what it’s all about. In fact, it just might mean the difference between staying alive and being devoured by werewolves.
It’s not as though Jack knew about said werewolves beforehand. He wanted to get into the Order to, in part, avenge his mother’s tragic suicide. See, Jack’s biological pops, billionaire Edward Coventry (get it? Coven-try?) has some ties to this school’s Skull and Bones-like order—a small society that some of larger society’s movers and shakers allegedly belonged to. Jack and his Grandpa Pete blame Edward for the woman’s suicide, and they have plans for Edward, if they can get close to him. And the Order of the Blue Rose seems like the best soil for their plans to blossom.
But in this formal clique, skulls and bones have more … practical applications. Turns out, its members are all witches.
They play with dark magic in the university’s darkest corners. And let’s face it: Most of ’em weren’t all that nice to begin with. Some seem OK: Jack’s love interest, Alyssa, seems nice enough, witchcraft aside. But most of these folks are preening, stuck-up snobs who probably rooted for the Death Eaters in the Harry Potter movies.
But the Order of the Blue Rose isn’t the only supersecret supernatural society on campus. The Knights of Saint Christopher—a sorta sacred company of werewolves—has done its best to check the witchy ambitions of the Order for, oh, a long time now. (Interesting bit of trivia: St. Christopher is sometimes depicted with the head of a dog, especially in the Eastern Orthodox Church.) Never mind that they sometimes make critical decisions via games of beer pong.
Yes, Netflix’s The Order is pretty ridiculous. Any time you have an incoming college student desperately trying to get into a super-duper secret society by asking everybody about it, you know you’re going to have some problems. It’s just the sort of overbaked, underthought, supernatural teen romantic dramedy you’d expect to find on Freeform (Shadowhunters) or MTV (Teen Wolf) or, especially, the CW (The Vampire Diaries, The Originals, Charmed, etc., etc.).
Well, if you cut out all the swearing, that is.
Yeah, the rose isn’t the only thing blue around Belgrave. The language is, too: Netflix flung the door open to f- and s-words aplenty for The Order and slapped the thing with a TV-MA rating, the television equivalent of an R rating for movies. That’s an interesting choice, given that the show is clearly meant for teens. Most “mature” viewers I know would have a hard time seeing the screen clearly, what with all the eye-rolling.
The show can be bloody and gory, as well. Sacred order or not, the werewolves snack on witches often, and they like ’em raw. The witches, meanwhile, utilize various body parts to engage in witchy activities. Nothing like using an eyeball, plucked clean free of a corpse, to divine the victim’s last few moments. (Who knew that eyes had their own backup drives?)
Netflix prides itself on having a little bit of programming for everyone. And if we’re being particularly generous, The Order certainly qualifies. I mean, a certain segment of Netflix’s subscribers likes pure, unambiguous trash, right?
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at [email protected], or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out.)
Jack gets into Belgrave and receives a mysterious blue rose—a sign that he’s being courted by the school’s most secretive secret society. But when his fellow pledges start getting murdered, and he spies a group of members using a murder victim’s disembodied eyeball for a bit of necromaniacal magic, Jack realizes he’s in deeper than he imagined.
The eyeball—with its ocular tendril still attached—basically acts like a projector, showing the last moments of the victim’s life. Once it’s done its thing, the eyeball burns up of its own volition, as the person holding it brushes off her hands in disgust. Other magical tricks include someone lapping up his own blood and then blowing down a tombstone, as well as another person blowing on the petals of a blue rose—causing a Belgrave rejection letter to change into one of acceptance. Elsewhere, other notes magically spirit into peoples’ pockets.
Jack and another guy get attacked by a werewolf. Jack knocks the other dude down and out with a shovel (accidentally saving his life), and the werewolf doesn’t do anything to Jack either (though it does slobber all over him). Two others aren’t so lucky: One, with horrific claw marks on her neck, expires in front of Jack’s eyes. Another dies offscreen. Still another Order pledge suffers a nasty injury from some sort of caged critter. (We see the beast’s blood-coated teeth as well as some blood around its cage.) Later, the same guy gets knocked unconscious with some strange powder—powder that seems to have pocked or scarred the victim’s face. Jack has to put up with a whole bunch of jerks, and he fights with one of them, forcing the guy to the ground.
Jack and a young woman named Alyssa seem to flirt a bit, and someone asks them both why they don’t just sleep together already. As part of his welcome packet at Belgrave U., Jack is given a rape whistle and a “How Not to Rape” pamphlet, along with a map that tells him the location of the dorm’s “male, female and nonbinary bathroom options.” Jack is asked if he’s interested in guys. Jack drinks beer, even though he just graduated from high school. “You’re over 21, right?” says an upperclassmen who buys him a brew. “Kidding. I don’t give a s—.” Other students drink beer, too, while the school’s chancellor seems to favor whiskey.
Someone pricks his finger (painfully) as part of a ceremony, dripping blood into a glass of water and inviting initiates to drink it. (He insists that his Hep C has been all cleared up.) An ethics professor talks to Jack about the classic ethical case study of going into the past and killing Hitler when he’s a baby. George W. Bush and Oprah are lumped in with Mussolini as two of the most notorious people to have allegedly belonged to the Order of the Blue Flower. As part of his apparent initiation process, Jack must obtain cocaine and a gun (both of which are never seen), as well as to dig up his mother’s corpse.
Characters say the f-word about 15 times. The s-word is used about a dozen times, and we also hear “a–,” “h—”, “p-ss,” “d–k” and “crap.” God’s name is misused twice.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
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