Squid Game returns to Netflix for a second season on December 26, and we’ve got the inside scoop on everything you can expect from the hit series.
Season 1 ends with Seong Gi-Hun (Lee Jung-jae) and Sang-woo (Park Hae-soo) facing off in a knife fight. Sang-woo stabs himself in the neck, the ultimate sacrifice that causes his friend to become the winner of the game. Detective Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon), who joined the game to find his brother, turns out to be the Front Man, In-ho (Lee Byung-hun). To demonstrate his loyalty to the game, he shoots Jun-ho.
The new season will take place three years after Gi-hun secures victory. Jun-ho is unexpectedly alive and well, and Gi-hun makes a return to the game. Using his prize money, Gi-Hun tries to find the creators of the deadly operation so he can put a stop to it. He begins his search with a man in a suit playing ddakji on the subway. However, all roads lead back to Gi-hun re-entering the game in order to stop it.
Gi-hun, also known as Player 456, joins new participants to compete for a $45.6 billion prize. Expect games just as spine-chilling and creative as the show’s debut season.
Hwang Dong-Hyuk, the director, creator, and writer of Squid Game, said that he will be focusing less on fulfilling fan theories and more on picking up where Season 1 left off. “I just thought about the last moment when Gi-hun turned away from boarding the plane, and I thought about what he will do next,” Dong-hyuk told The Hollywood Reporter. “There will naturally be a flow of events that will lead all the way to the end of the season.”
The director teased a more in-depth plotline about the two brothers, as well as the story of the recruiter who plays ddakji with Gi-hun and gives him the card in Episode 1.
In the Season 2 trailer, Gi-hun tells the new participants, “I have played these games before. We will all die if we keep playing.” Participants are seen playing the familiar “red light, green light” game and taking part in a new 100-meter race on a track.
Unlike the previous season, it seems that in Season 2, participants will be offered a cash incentive to stay in the game longer.
New participants in the game include former K-pop star singer Yim Si-wan, Kang Ha-neul (The Pirates: The Last Royal Treasure), Park Sung-hoon (Into the Ring), and Yang Dong-geun (Grand Prix).
Seong Gi-Hun (Lee Jung-jae) will return, along with Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon), the Salesman (Gong Yoo), and the Front Man (Lee Byung-hun).
The number of episodes has not been announced yet, but Season 2 is likely to follow the format of Season 1 with nine one-hour episodes.
Squid Game Season 2 premieres on Netflix on December 26, 2024.
The director has confirmed that Squid Game will release its third and final season in 2025.
“I believed that with that story, I was able to tell everything that I wanted to tell through the story of Squid Game and also in the perspective of Gi-hun as a character, and I thought that we don’t need any further stories from here,” he told The Hollywood Reporter when asked about a third season.