Squid Game writers “wrestled” between two possible endings

There are two types of people in the world at the moment: those who are watching Squid Game and those waiting for season 2 (which is officially happening). Or at least it feels that way sometimes. The season finale of the show was pretty open-ended, but it wasn’t always that way.

The Korean survival drama is Netflix’s biggest release of all time. It follows a group of cash-strapped people who agree to play a series of twisted children’s games  — from Red Light, Green Light to Tug of War — with the winner receiving a huge cash prize. The catch is that those that fail are instantly killed.

In the final moments of the show, newly-rich Squid Game winner Seong Gi-Hun (Lee Jung-jae) makes a strange decision that changes everything. He appears to be boarding a plane to reunite with his daughter, but instead has a sudden change of mind and walks ominously back into the airport. Perhaps he’s after revenge?

How Squid Game could have ended

“We actually wrestled between two different scenarios for the ending,” creator Hwang Dong-hyuk told Entertainment Weekly. “There was one, the other alternate ending, where Gi-hun would get on the plane and leave. And then there was, of course, the one where he would turn back and walk towards the camera.”

Eventually, they settled on the cliffhanger ending, which now sounds like a stroke of genius with a new batch of episodes in development. “We constantly asked ourselves, ‘Is it really right for Gi-hun to make the decision to leave and go see his family, to pursue his own happiness?” Hwang said. “Is that the right way for us to really propose the question or the message that we wanted to convey through the series?’ We came to the conclusion that the question that we wanted to propose cannot be done if he left on the plane.”

"The question that we want to answer – why has the world come to what it is now? – can only be answered or can only be proposed if Gi-hun turned back and walked towards the camera. So that’s how we ended up with that ending in the finale."

Given the ridiculous amount of hype and global attention the debut season of Squid Game has received, there’s a lot of pressure on Dong-hyuk to deliver a worthy successor. He’s up for the challenge. “I do have the basic storyline in my head. I am in the process currently of brainstorming the details,” he teased. “Gi-hun will come back, and he will do something for the world.”

Season 1 of Squid Game is currently streaming on Netflix.

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