The first season of Squid Game was an unexpected smash hit: who would have thought that a Korean-language action drama about debt-riddled people corralled into playing a series of life-or-death children's games would become the most successful original series in Netflix's history? The sharp writing, thrilling action, winning cast and themes about income inequality spoke to people everywhere.
Naturally, Netflix wanted more, so creator Hwang Dong-hyuk got to work. The second season will drop on December 26, so we'll finally find out what happened to Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) after he won the squid games and walked away with an enormous cash prize...one he couldn't bring himself to enjoy, because he only got it after hundreds of other players had died. Instead, he vowed to find the people behind the games, and bring them down.
A third and final season of Squid Game will follow in 2025, which Lee Jung-jae confirmed during a visit to The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Kimmel. According to Variety, Hwang Dong-hyuk wrote the final two seasons back to back, and all the episodes were filmed in 2023. “It was very interesting for me as an actor to live as Gi-hun for almost a year,” Lee said.
It was doubly interesting because Gi-hun is a very different character this time around. He went into his first squid games as innocent about what was coming as any other player, but those days are over. He's haunted by what he's seen and determined to put a stop to the slaughter, which meant Lee had to give a very different kind of performance. “It’s true that it was more fun to act the Season 1 Gi-hun, because he’s more of a fun character, and he’s very expressive about his emotion,” Lee said. “But in Season 2, I had to check out all the circumstances that the characters were in. I was trying my best to save lives, and I also had to persuade people who weren’t on my side. I was a character who had to embrace the backstories and traumas of all the different players in the game. While it was fun for me to try out this new character, because he’s a more serious and hardened character, it was a challenge for me.”
if you're worried that the next two seasons of Squid Game will become a drag...well, first of all, I don't know what you're expecting out of a show where characters brutally die by the dozens every episode. But in any case, Hwang Dong-hyuk said he and Lee worked together to try and preserve the good-hearted, more carefree side of Gi-hun that fans loved from the first season, even as his mission is much grimmer this time around. "hat was something that he and I discussed a lot about, and also something that I kept in mind from when I was writing the script as well, because even though he is a lot more serious and focused character, I still wanted to give a glimpse into his old self, that familiar, almost childlike self that people love so much,” Hwang said.
Squid Game season 3 is coming in 2025
During his visit to The Tonight Show, Lee Jung-Jae confirmed that the third and final season of Squid Game would air in 2025; if I had to guess when, I'd say around the holidays, just like Squid Game season 2. So we'll only have to wait around a year to see how the story concludes, rather than waiting three to see how it continues.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Hwang Dong-hyuk explained why he wanted to end the show with season 3: "I think that the story I wanted to tell came to a full closure at the end of season 3. The story that I both wanted to tell and that I am capable of telling through Gi-hun, it has been told with season 3." So the show will not be overstaying its welcome, which I think is good.
That said, there have already been attempts to expand the Squid Game universe outisde of Hwang's purview, including with a reality show called Squid Game: The Challenge. "Honestly speaking, I didn't get a chance to watch all of the episodes, but I did pay a visit to one of the sets," Hwang revealed. "I know that the games that we used in season 1, they're not really fit to be played in a reality show, so when I saw the games that were played, I thought they were quite well thought-out in terms of their creativity and their practicality. And I thought a lot of effort went into coming up with games that could be played in a realistic way in the reality show. Both the set design and the way were executed took a lot of effort, and I thought it was quite interesting."
There have also been rumors that director David Fincher (Fight Club, Mindhunter) could be working on an English-language remake of Squid Game. Hwang has heard those reports, although he told Games Radar that "it isn't something that's been shared with me officially, so it's tricky to comment."
"But having said that, as a big fan of David Fincher, you know, I hugely respect a lot of his work. If he actually were to do the spin-off of Squid Game, I personally, as a fan, I am very excited to see what happens. You know, I can't wait to see what he has in store."
I'm not sure how I feel about an English-language remake. If anything, I feel like Squid Game proved that people are willing to enjoy a foreign language show en masse so long as it speaks to them. But we'll see where we are after season 2 drops next week.
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