The second season of Squid Game came out the other day on Netflix, and while it was thrilling to see a whole new crop of contestants compete in deadly games for a grand prize, there's a sense that the second season was a bit of a let-down from the first. Or at least that's what I thought: I enjoyed the new episodes, but there were fewer of them than last time, the stakes didn't seem as high since not as many characters died, we didn't see any of the VIPs — the super-rich people who pay to watch the Squid Games, arguably the reason they persist — and the story basically ends smack dab in the middle of itself. Pretty much everything is left unresolved by the end of the seventh episode.
Speaking with Variety, Squid Game creator, writer and director Hwang Dong-hyuk explained how he approached the second season; the show will end with a third and final season sometime next year. "When I first wrote the story of Seasons 2 and 3 it was one long story arc," he said. "And I was originally planning to write this story across a span of about eight to nine episodes, but once I finished the story, it came to over 10 episodes, which I thought was too long to contain in a single season. And so I wanted to have an adequate point where I could give closure as a second season and then move on with the third."
That point came when Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), the winner of the Squid Games in the first season, went back to try and stop the games from the inside. His attempts climax when he whips the remaining contestants into a rebellion against the guards who are running things. "And when you look at Gi-hun’s story, all of his attempts that he puts in to stop the game: the first one being getting these mercenaries and trying to plant a tracking device, that goes to fail; the second attempt of trying to persuade people to vote so that they can leave the game, that goes to fail as well; and then the third and last attempt of bringing people together and causing the rebellion, it also all goes to fail," explained Hwang.
"So all of his failures lead to this heavy, heavy crisis of having to lose his very best friend, Jung-bae, at the hands of The Front Man. And when you think about Gi-hun’s journey, I thought that that was an adequate moment to put a stop and give him a little bit of closure along that long story arc. And then from that moment on, in the third season, having that sense of huge guilt and sense of failure weighing heavily on him — how is Gi-hun going to carry on his mission? That’s the story that’ll further unfold."
Expect Squid Game season 3 in the "summer or fall" of 2025
So it sounds like the original plan was to tell this second and final chapter of the Squid Game story in one go, but it got split up into two seasons of TV along the way.
That makes sense, but I really hope season 3 hits the ground running and brings in some of the elements I was missing from season 2, like the VIPs. "You will get to see the VIPs in the third season," Hwang Dong-hyuk promised USA Today. "They're coming. They're on the way. Their chopper is flying over the island now."
It also helps that we won't have to wait nearly as long for new episodes as we did last time; Netflix hasn't revealed an official release date for Squid Game season 3 yet, but Hwang doesn't think we'll have to wait long. "I believe we will be announcing the launch date for Season 3 soon," he said. "I probably expect that to launch around summer or fall next year."
I can live with that, especially if the third season kicks the story into high gear. "With each episode it’s going to get better," Hwang said. "With each season it’s going to get better and a more expanded story, more intense story, and definitely more entertaining. So just be sure to watch it until the very end!"
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