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This article appears in the new issue of DEN OF GEEK magazine. You can read all of our magazine stories here.
In late 2021, as wealth inequality inched ever higher globally, Squid Game hit Netflix. The Korean-language drama about a group of desperate people who take part in a deadly competition for the slim chance to win roughly $35 million struck a deep chord with viewers around the world, including in the U.S., where one in four tuned in.
“I wanted to hold a mirror to the current society that we live in through Squid Game,” writer-director Hwang Dong-hyuk told press at Lucca, Italy’s annual comics and gaming convention in November 2024, as Netflix geared up its promotional machine for the series’ second season. “Squid Game is a series through which I hoped to show how the current contemporary capitalist society and its limitless competition and competitive system has led to an exacerbated wealth gap, as well as created numerous numbers of so-called ‘losers’ of the game.”
Three years later, Squid Game remains Netflix’s most-watched TV series ever, and capitalism is still a thing. A second season of Hwang’s story will be released on Netflix on Dec. 26, just as the Christmas cheer is fading, with the hopes that global viewers are still interested in Squid Game’s specific flavor of media catharsis.
“If season one was about the story of Seong Gi-hun [played by The Acolyte’s Lee Jung-jae], or Player Number 456, entering Squid Game for the first time, and about how he survives and leaves the game as a winner,” teased Hwang, “[then] season two is going to be that Gi-hun, based with his memories of the first game and the experiences, is going through a new realization and an awakening and returning once again in order to stop this unjust game.”
As before, Gi-hun will not be alone in the game. With most of the first season’s ensemble killed off, viewers will be introduced to a bevy of new characters played by a cast recognizable to fans of Korean pop culture. K-pop idols Jo Yu-ri (Iz*One) and T.O.P (BIGBANG) will appear alongside actors like Park Gyu-young and Lee Jin-uk, who both appeared in Sweet Home, the first K-drama to make it into the U.S. Netflix Top Ten. “With each episode, you’ll be able to meet characters with different backstories,” said Lee of season two, “and you will find yourself rooting for these characters and wanting to really understand them and relate to them.”
Wi Ha-jun’s (The Midnight Romance in Hagwon) detective, Hwang Jun-ho, will also return in season two. When last we saw him, Jun-ho had been shot by his long-lost brother, In-ho (the G.I. Joe franchise’s Lee Byung-hun), after Jun-ho went undercover as a game guard to find him. As part of the climactic betrayal, In-ho was revealed to be the Front Man, a former winner who now leads the game’s staff. Wi teased of Jun-ho’s season two arc: “He quite literally turns away from the gates of death in order to find his brother and to chase those cruel ones behind the game.” Lee’s Front Man will be back and was seen continuing to stoically oversee the games in an official trailer.
With a third and final season planned for release in 2025, Hwang hopes Squid Game will continue to raise questions like, “What kind of society are we living in?” and, “What kind of world is the future world going to be like, and is there any way we can put a stop to it?”
Thematically, there is a deeper warning at the heart of Squid Game’s diverting story: “If we neglect the weak [classes] that have been created through this current system,” says Hwang, “those who have benefited from the labor… of the weak will no longer be able to live [in this] status quo.”
Squid Game season 2 premieres Thursday, December 26 on Netflix.
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