Squid Game creator Hwang Dong-hyuk has teased a potential release date for the hit Netflix thriller’s third and final season.
Season two of the Korean language series — which sees hundreds of cash-strapped individuals compete in deadly games for a life-changing sum of money — released on the streamer on December 26, three years after its record-breaking 2021 debut.
The new entry welcomes the return of Lee Jung-jae as Seong Gi-hun/Player 456, who seeks to infiltrate the games and put an end to it once and for all.
While the second season impressed critics and viewers with its new array of characters and storylines, its action-packed finale proved divisive as some questioned how it could end on such a major cliffhanger.
“Of course, those watching would feel like, ‘Oh, no. What’s going to happen next? Give us the next episode right now,’” Hwang acknowledged in a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly. “But I think that because, at that moment, Gi-hun loses everything, he fails all of his attempts [to stop the games], that is when he goes through yet another character transition. So I thought that was the best place to end the season.”
However, speaking in a new interview with Variety, Hwang, who also wrote and directed the show, shared an update for the forthcoming season’s release.
“At this point, anything I might say is going to be a spoiler, so I want to be cautious,” he said. “But what I can say is, after Season 2 launches, I believe we will be announcing the launch date for Season 3 soon. I probably expect that to launch around summer or fall next year.”
*Warning — Spoilers ahead for the ‘Squid Game’ season two finale ahead*
He explained that he had originally planned on writing the second season story across a span of about eight to nine episodes, but “once I finished the story, it came to over 10 episodes, which I thought was too long to contain in a single season.”
“So I wanted to have an adequate point where I could give closure as a second season and then move on with the third,” he continued.
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Going on to speak about all of the obstacles the series’ star Gi-hun/Player 456 faced, Hwang said all of his failures led to a heavy climax — the death of his best friend Jung-bae (Lee Seo-hwan), at the hands of The Front Man (Lee Byung-hun).
“And when you think about Gi-hun’s journey, I thought that that was an adequate moment to put a stop and give him a little bit of closure along that long story arc,” Hwang added, revealing that the third season will pick up with Gi-hun “having that sense of huge guilt and sense of failure weighing heavily on him.”
“How is Gi-hun going to carry on his mission? That’s the story that’ll further unfold,” he said.
Squid Game seasons one and two are currently streaming on Netflix.
