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This article contains spoilers for Squid Game season 2.
The stakes of Squid Game season 2 somehow feel even higher than the last. With Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) returning to the games in an effort to bring them down from the inside, he soon discovers that, despite his warnings, the promise of potential wealth that the games offer is still too great for most people to resist. So when his plan falls through, he decides to take the fight to the top, inspiring rebellion amongst some of his fellow players.
It’s a gripping, action-packed series of events in the last two episodes, and yet the season ends so abruptly, it feels like we’re missing an episode or two. I was fortunate enough to get to watch the season early as a journalist, and even I found myself Googling how many episodes were meant to be in this season to make sure I had actually watched them all. After the perfectly-bookended start and end to season 1, the end of season 2 may be unexpected, but thankfully it’s not without reason.
How Many Episodes Are in Squid Game Season 2?
Season 2 of Squid Game has only seven episodes, two less than season one. According to series creator Hwang Dong-hyuk, this season and season 3 were originally conceived as one chapter of this story. “That’s how I wrote it,” he says. “But in the process, it came out to be too many episodes. So I thought it’d be better to divide it into two.”
Given that Hwang lost teeth due to the stress of making Squid Game’s first season, it’s completely understandable that he would want to break up the story into more manageable chunks. But at the same time, it is a shame that more than seven episodes is considered “too many” in today’s TV landscape.
How Does Season 2 of Squid Game End?
After convincing some of the other players to join him in taking the fight to their wealthy overlords upstairs, Gi-hun gets closer than he ever has to getting justice for those he lost. He and Jung-bae (Lee Seo-hwan) find themselves in a stand-off with pink-suited soldiers – and things aren’t looking good.
The entire group is running out of magazines for their guns, and decide it’s ultimately better to split up. They send Young-il (Lee Byung-hun) and a couple others after Gi-hun and Jung-bae for support while Dae-ho (Kang Ha-neul) and then Hyun-ju (Park Sung-hoon) go to scavenge more magazines from the first wave of soldiers in the players’ quarters. It doesn’t take long for Young-il – who we know is the masked man from season 1, Hwang In-ho (Lee Byung-hun) – to betray them. After killing the men he’s with, and an impressively-quick costume change, the man in the mask shoots Jung-bae point blank, but lets Gi-hun live to deal with the consequences of his uprising.
Don’t get me wrong. This ending is far from anti-climatic. But after how beautifully the first season was able to begin and end a chapter of this story, this ending feels awfully abrupt. Things were left open enough at the end of season 1 for the story to continue, but at the same time season 1 didn’t end mere moments after an epic shootout with a lot of characters’ futures still up in the air.
Thankfully, we won’t have to wait quite as long between seasons 2 and 3, as the final chapter of Squid Game is set to drop in 2025. Hopefully season 3’s beginning will justify this abrupt stopping place in the story, and give us a moment to catch our breath as we find out what fresh hell, punishments, new games await Gi-hun and the surviving players.
All seven episode of Squid Game season 2 are now available to stream on Netflix.
The post Squid Game Season 2 Ending Explained: Why Episode 7’s Conclusion Feels So Abrupt appeared first on Den of Geek.
