It’s an understatement to say that anticipation is high for “Squid Game“ Season 2.
More than three years have passed since the South Korean dystopian survival thriller debuted Sept. 17, 2021, quickly ascending to the top of Netflix’s streaming charts and becoming its most popular and most-watched show ever — a distinction it holds to this day. The worldwide acclaim led “Squid Game” to collect dozens of accolades in the year that followed, including historic acting wins at the Emmys, the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild Awards, while also increasing Netflix’s value by almost $1 billion and cementing itself as a ubiquitous global hit, spawning the controversial real-life competition show “Squid Game: The Challenge.”
“Squid Game” mastermind Hwang Dong-hyuk, who initially intended for the Korean-language series about class disparity and economic inequity to be a one-season story, felt immense pressure in crafting a sophomore follow-up — all seven episodes of which drop Dec. 26 — worthy of the attention and praise Season 1 achieved.
“Because I didn’t plan to do a second season from the beginning, especially because it was immediately after such a huge success of the first season, that pressure of not wanting to disappoint the fans of the first season hung over my head for quite a long time,” said Hwang, the series’ sole director and writer. “But rather than have it serve as a negative energy or a huge burden on me, I tried to channel all of that into a positive energy and a source of motivation to push me to do even better.
“Having gone through all of those processes, I now look back on it thinking that while it was burdensome at first, I’m very happy that we decided to do subsequent seasons — and I’m also gaining a lot more confidence in what we’ve created.” (The third and final season is slated for a 2025 premiere.) “Now, I feel like I’m very happy with what we’ve created.”
The result is a darker, grimmer and more sinister Season 2, which picks up promptly where the last episode left off. As Lee Jung-jae’s red-haired Seong Gi-hun, the lone survivor and winner of the games, prepares to board a plane to reunite with his estranged family in the U.S., an ominous phone conversation with the Front Man (Lee Byung-hun), the master puppeteer of the games (and like Gi-hun, a previous winner), leads him to abandon his plans and vow to dismantle the games’ existence — from the inside.
Lee “felt the pressure” of suiting back up in the iconic green tracksuit as Player 456, due in part to the two- to three-year production hiatus between seasons. During that time, Lee made his feature directorial debut with the espionage thriller “Hunt” and headlined the “Star Wars” series “The Acolyte.”
“I had [racked] up my personal and professional experiences, which meant I had to free myself from those in order to get back to Gi-hun,” he said, adding that “it was not easy for me as an actor to connect” with his “Squid Game” character again. “While it was not an easy gig, I was very excited to get back into the games and get back onto the set.” It also marked the first time he has revisited a role in his 30-year career.
At the start of Season 2, Gi-hun enters the games numbed by the tragedy and trauma he experienced in the arena three years earlier when he earned his bittersweet victory — his demeanor, personality and perspective in stark contrast to the unflinching optimism he had, even against impossible life-and-death odds, in Season 1. “Some people might say that maybe he would do better this time around because he’s been through it already,” Lee said. “But other people would say he may not because the host knows it’s his second time so they will make things harder for him. There are lots of theories that are possible.”
Because of Gi-hun’s past participation in the games, he assumes an unofficial leadership role with the new players, causing tension, strife and distrust among the group. Some of the new “Squid Game” characters are played by established South Korean actors and singers, such as Im Si-wan, Jo Yu-ri, Choi Seung-hyun (formerly T.O.P. of the K-pop group Big Bang), Park Gyu-young and Park Sung-hoon. “I felt very energized by this new group of actors and working with these different characters,” Lee said. “Sometimes they would listen to Gi-hun and work the way Gi-hun would like them to, but there could also be betrayal.”
Among the twists in the upcoming season are the introduction of new games (the most challenging part of developing the scripts, Hwang said) and having the players decide whether they want to continue or stop playing after each round. Votes are memorialized by an “X” for nay, in favor of ending the games, or an “O” for yay, in support of continuing, on each of the player’s tracksuits.
“Season 2, Gi-hun is driven by a very clear purpose, which is to stop the games,” Lee said. “He wants to persuade the players to save lives and he also wants to punish the host behind the games. He has a very clear objective this time around and that’s the biggest change from Season 1.”
Hwang agreed that “vengeance and the sense of mission are [Gi-hun’s] strongest motives,” but he suggested other factors are at play too. “He also carries with him survivor’s guilt and he wants redemption.” Another underlying motivation, Hwang said, is Gi-hun’s unending drive to compete and win. “He is driven by the need or want to prove that he is right, whether that’s the way he thinks or views the world or his values.
“In his duel with the Front Man, he wants to bring the Front Man down to his knees. That’s something that’s deep-seated inside him,” Hwang continued. Gi-hun’s desire to win “is going to continue to work its way as the episodes unfold. At times, it might blind him in terms of making a logical decision, and also it may have its role that it plays in the journey to put an end to the games.”
Lee and Hwang had frequent conversations on set during the filming of Season 2, regularly checking in to ensure both were aligned about Gi-hun’s psychological mindset, and how interactions with other players would fuel his decisions or inform his emotions.
“A lot of fans loved the naïve and childish Gi-hun in Season 1,” Lee said. “If I portray the more hardened Gi-hun in Season 2, maybe people would miss the old Gi-hun. So I tried my best to show my new character but still give peeks of his old self.”
Hwang agreed that that was a primary area of focus. “We wanted to narrow the gap between the two different Gi-huns,” he said. “I wanted that side of his human nature to still show. We talked a lot about how to let those aspects of the character come out, despite him being in a much more serious and determined manner.”
Even with a bleaker path laid out for Gi-hun and the other players in Season 2, the DNA of “Squid Game” remains intact, some of the creative footprints informed by fan theories and responses.
“I realized the direction I was going for was different from what the fans out there were expecting to see,” Hwang said, “so I was very happy to know that I was going to provide them with the twists and turns that I would want them to [experience]. They were quite helpful in allowing me to avoid any kind of predictions.”
Lee hinted at a more devastating shift at the midway point of the season. “After Episode 4, you will see an even bigger change in the character of Gi-hun. I can’t give too much away, but there are more desperate circumstances coming up — and that leads to a lot of dramatic changes in Gi-hun’s character.”
And that’s just the beginning. “Every episode, there are going to be twists and turns,” Lee promised. “That’s going to be the forte of the this show.”
A version of this story first appeared in the SAG Preview/Documentaries/International issue of TheWrap awards magazine.
Read more from the SAG Preview/Documentaries/International issue here.
