Netflix’s new-week slate leans into spectacle, science, and history with a trio of buzzy arrivals: the return of Squid Game: The Challenge, a ketamine-therapy documentary In Waves and War, and prestige limited series Death by Lightning. Together, they anchor a loaded lineup that balances competition TV, frontline mental health reporting, and gripping political drama.
Squid Game: The Challenge levels up
The real-world spin on Netflix’s global juggernaut is back and scaling up the games, the set pieces, and the mind games. Like its debut run, Season 2 corrals hundreds of contestants—456 is the magic number—to compete in elaborate, childhood game–inspired trials for a potential $4.56 million payout.
You can bet on more pressure-cooker dorm life, sly alliances, and rule twists designed to reward psychological savvy as much as physical grit. There’s a reason Netflix keeps investing here. The original Squid Game remains the service’s most-watched series launch, with roughly 1.65 billion viewing hours in its first 28 days, per Netflix’s public Top 10 data. The Challenge’s first season translated that cultural momentum into sustained global Top 10 placement, and a reliable social media conversation driver, all critical signals for the streamer that wants appointment viewing in unscripted formats.
What to watch for in The Challenge
- Bigger team mechanics early on
- New elimination scenarios that punish indecision
- Production design that leans harder into the iconography fans know—without repeating last season’s playbook
The meta question remains whether the show can keep critiquing material desperation even as it industrializes it; that tension is part of the draw.
In Waves and War puts ketamine under the microscope
Directors Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk follow Afghanistan veteran Marcus Capone on a deeply personal search for relief from post-traumatic stress. Capone’s story threads through a broader look at psychedelic-adjacent therapies as clinicians weigh promise against risk and families navigate care that’s often outside traditional pathways.
Context matters here: the FDA approved esketamine, a ketamine-derived nasal spray, for treatment-resistant depression in 2019, and the Department of Veterans Affairs has since expanded access under strict protocols. Peer-reviewed studies in journals like JAMA Psychiatry and the American Journal of Psychiatry have documented rapid-onset antidepressant effects—sometimes within hours—while also flagging side effects such as dissociation and blood-pressure spikes, and question marks about durability over weeks and months. The film aims to humanize those data points.
It captures the logistical and ethical maze around emerging treatments, touches on veteran-led advocacy—Capone co-founded a nonprofit supporting access to alternative therapies—and illustrates why many patients pursue supervised ketamine therapy after standard treatments fail. Expect candid conversations, not advocacy disguised as documentary.
Death by Lightning revisits a forgotten flashpoint
Starring Matthew Macfadyen as President James Garfield, Michael Shannon as assassin Charles J. Guiteau, Betty Gilpin as First Lady Lucretia Garfield, and directed by Matt Ross, Death by Lightning dramatizes one of the weirdest stories in American politics.
The series replays the hectic train station firing scene and the excruciatingly tragic episode that steered the medical profession through lessons and the bare-knuckle politics of that era. The past is insane: Garfield survived the initial volley but died from an infection exacerbated by poor antiseptic application. Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated a metal detector design to the president’s campfire. The disaster spurred civil service transformation, with the Pendleton Act eradicating the appointment system, with officials instead hired based on experience and expertise. The show blends personality-driven stories and lectures to give a lesson in citizenship as a political story.
Also new, worth your queue
Netflix also updates its library with a wide range of favorites, including comfort shows and festival hits.
The lineup contains:
- Crime romance Broadchurch, seasons one to three
- ’70s newsroom humor Minx, seasons one and two
- The brand-new The Vince Staples Show
Extended movie nights include:
- The hit Back to the Future trilogy
- Paddington 2
- Crazy Rich Asians
- The LEGO Movie 2
- Tenet
- Will Smith’s latest Wonka
- Shrek installments
- Despicable Me installments
What to watch first
Looking for watercooler currency? Begin with Squid Game: The Challenge, episodic drops that inevitably lead to spoiler-filled chatter. Seek out In Waves and War as if they were live take-backs, combining with ongoing reports from medical societies to make the facts of the case. Death by Lightning is then delivered as though the careers were a singular act that sent ripples through American governance.
Strategy tip: Those who follow the quickest ways to triage the weekly flood, the New & Popular row, and the Top 10 hub will show rankings as they reach Netflix’s My List. And with a lineup this varied, you can swing through a high-stakes elimination game to a probing health doc to a meticulously crafted historical drama without skipping a beat.
