Squid Game season 2 is a bonafide hit for Netflix. This week the streamer announced that the second season of its dystopian Korean drama has had the highest opening week viewership of all time on the platform, and there's little doubt that number is going to keep climbing. Creator Hwang Dong-hyuk's series about a group of desperate people risking their lives to compete for a life-changing amount of money, all for the entertainment of a bunch of shadowy billionaires, is clearly resonating with people. Given the state of the world, I can't imagine why.
This season of Squid Game was a very different beast than the first, with previous Squid Game winner Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) returning to the games in hopes of bringing them down from the inside. By the end of the season, his hopes at rebellion have failed in spectacular. bloody fashion. The season ends on a massive cliffhanger, with Gi-hun's best friend murdered before his eyes. The Squid Game hasn't finished, and a bunch of contestants are still alive. Presumably, there's more to come.
Fortunately, we won't have to wait long. Squid Game seasons 2 and 3 were filmed back-to-back, and Netflix has already confirmed the show's third and final season will release in 2025. Now, thanks to a promotional video, we may know the exact date. According to Forbes, Netflix Korea briefly released a video hyping up season 3, which included a release date of June 27, 2025. That's roughly six months from the release of season 2, which means we won't be waiting long at all to see how the story ends for Gi-hun and the rest of the Squid Game contestants!
The reason that Squid Game season 3 is coming out in such short order is because originally, creator Hwang Dong-hyuk envisioned seasons 2 and 3 as one big season of television, then had to split it when it became too long.
"No other particular reason than that I originally envisioned it as a single series, so both seasons two and three as a single series when I was writing it," Hwang told Cinemablend. "But then, as I wrote the story along, it became to be too many episodes and too long of a story because you see Gi-hun's journey where he returns to the game, but also he goes through a revolt, and that is actually the climax of that storyline, where he tries to create an uprising, but then that all goes to failure. And I also saw that aspect of it as yet another game as well, and so I thought that we would divide it into two seasons to have that – Gi-hun's revolt going into a failure, him ending up losing his best friend, that itself being yet another important climatic event in the first half of the season, so into season two."
Hwang also expanded on why this traumatic moment was the right place to leave off Squid Game season 2 — and what it means for Gi-hun in the third season ahead. "And to put a stop there, I thought that would just be the right adequate moment to rest and have it continue on in the further season because after Gi-hun experiences that event, based on the failure, as well as that immense sense of guilt, you're going to get yet another character arc from Gi-hun. So I thought it would be better to divide that for another season."
How well that split works, we won't know for sure until season 3 airs in 2025. But for now, I know I'm hooked enough that I'll be eagerly counting down the days for the next few months until Squid Game season 3 drops, probably in June.
In the meantime, Squid Game season 2 is available to stream on Netflix.
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