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This Squid Game season 2 article contains major spoilers for season 1.
Three years after Squid Game first hit Netflix, the Korean series remains the streamer’s most-watched title of all time. Ahead of the show’s season 2 release, creator, writer, and director Hwang Dong-hyuk and returning cast members Lee Jung-jae (The Acolyte) and Wi Ha-joon (The Midnight Romance in Hagwon) traveled to Lucca, Italy’s annual comics and gaming convention to give new details on what the second season of the Emmy-winning tale will look like.
Squid Game Season 2 Plot and Characters
When Hwang made the first, nine-episode season of Squid Game, he intended the story to end there. However, the series’ immense success has led to the greenlighting of two more seasons, necessitating an expansion of the world and a continuing journey for its characters—well, the few that have survived.
Lee’s Gi-hun is the only contestant to make it out of season 1’s Squid Game alive. He finished the season with bright red hair and a determination to take on the gamemakers. Lee teased of his character’s mindset, through an interpreter: “I believe that, after going through such a tremendous experience, in order for Gi-hun to be able to live a new life, I thought that dyeing his hair red was sort of the beginning of his new, summoned courage.”
Hwang confirmed that Gi-hun would be using this courage to return to the island where the games are played again. “If season 1 was about the story of Seong Gi-hun, or Player Number 456, entering Squid Game for the first time, and about how he survives and leaves the game as a winner, season 2 is going to be that Gi-hun, based with his memories of the first game and the experiences, going through a new realization and an awakening and returning once again to the game in order to stop this unjust game,” said Hwang.
Wi’s detective character, Jun-ho, will also be returning. In season 1, Jun-ho infiltrated the Squid Game to search for his missing brother, who had previously taken part in the competition. The season 1 ending reveals that Jun-ho’s brother is actually Front Man In-ho (Lee Byung-hun), also known as the Recruiter. In-ho was a previous winner of the game, and has since become part of the operation. Jun-ho eventually finds In-ho in Season 1, only to be shot by his brother and to subsequently fall off a cliff.
“I hope that all of you will be looking forward to seeing the story of Jun-ho unfold,” teased Wi, through an interpreter, at the Lucca press conference, “where he quite literally turned away from the gates of death and, in order to find his brother and to chase those cruel ones behind the game and to put an end to this unjust, brutal game, what kind of things he will go through, how determined you will find him and his charisma along the way.”
Season 2 will introduce 12 new cast members, including The Glory’s Park Sung-hoon, Sweet Home’s Park Gyu-young, and K-pop star Jo Yu-ri.
Squid Game Season 2 Setting and Games
It wasn’t just Squid Game’s plot, characters, and themes that struck a chord with viewers in 2021, but also the show’s incredible art and production design, which helped define the competition’s bright brutality. “You will get to see some of the more familiar places that you’ve already seen in season 1,” said Hwang. “For example, the dormitory set and the stairway with those very vivid colors, and also the space where these games are played. However, unlike before, there are definitely a lot of new elements that we’ve added. So, when you watch season 2, it’s going to feel familiar, yet very refreshing. ”
The design is inextricably tied to the children’s games at the center of the deadly competition, and Hwang confirmed that there will be both returning and new games in season 2. “Most of [the challenges] are going to be very new games where the scale has gotten greater,” said Hwang. “It’s going to be more intriguing and also play against a more beautiful backdrop.”
Of course, it will all be in service of the series’ deeper themes, which center around a scathing critique of capitalism. “Squid Game is a series through which I hoped to show how the current contemporary capitalist society and its limitless competition and the competitive system has led to an exacerbated wealth gap, as well as created numerous numbers of so-called ‘losers’ of the game,” shared Hwang of the series he created. “I wanted to show that side and hold a mirror to the current society that we live in through Squid Game.”
While Hwang spoke eloquently about Squid Game’s complex, and often brutal themes, he also took the time to make a pitch for the show’s entertaining side: “When I get questions asked about Squid Game, I get a lot of very heavy, complex questions. And I just want to say, first of all, that our series is not that heavy or that serious of a show. It is a show that can be a fun watch for anybody who wants to watch it.”
Squid Game season 2 will be released on Netflix on December 26. The third and final season will be released in 2025.
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