Following long-standing rumours that Squid Game season 2 would air in 2024, we finally have a green light. Netflix have confirmed that it'll arrive later this year, some two years after the follow-up season was announced in 2022.
The announcement should come as no surprise. In Squid Game's first month on the streaming service, the story of 456 debt-ridden contestants playing playground games to win 45.6 billion dollars (or be killed) consumed 1.65 billion hours of our collective time, making it easily one of the most mammoth shows in the streaming giant’s stable.
The concreted date follows a slow trickle of Squid Game news since 2022, with the streamer and show creator Hwang Dong-hyuk mostly keeping stuhm on the big details. Then divisive reality show Squid Game: The Challenge dropped — with its alleged unethical set conditions, including hours-long waits in freezing cold temperatures — and soured the taste of the umbrella-shaped biscuit. No doubt Netflix will want to right the course with the franchise's return to fiction, and as soon as possible.
Here’s everything else we know so far about Squid Game season two.
Who’s in the cast of Squid Game season two?
Squid Game ended pretty much with a blood bath: most of the principal cast died except for hapless protagonist Seong Gi-hun (played by Lee Jung-jae) and mysterious Front Man / Hwang In-ho (Lee Byung-Hun), the entry point and overseer of the murderous games. Squid Game creator Hwang – who’s returning to direct and executive produce season two – already confirmed that both would return for the sophomore season back at Deadline’s annual Contenders Television conference in April 2023, with Lee Byung-hun tipped for an even bigger role.
Now, it’s been confirmed that Wi Ha-joon (portrayed by Hwang Jung-ho) will also return. Many fans had already speculated on his reprisal, as, although he was shot and left for dead, we never actually saw the body. Recruiter (Gong Yoo) is also set to return.
A whole host of new cast members have been announced, too, though their characters are still TBC. New players include Yim Si-wan, Kang Ha-neul, Park Sung-hoon, and Yang Dong-guen.
When is Squid Game season two out?
The marble is officially rolling: we'll get Squid Game season 2 some time in 2024, per a letter to Netflix investors.
Streamer execs confirmed the date as part of a broader announcement of this year's slate. Other shows announced include second seasons of The Diplomat and Bridgerton, plus brand new titles, like 3 Body Problem — a new literary sci-fi adaptation from the creators of Game of Thrones — and their live-action version of late-Millennial cartoon TV fave Avatar: The Last Airbender.
What will the plot of Squid Game season two be?
So far, the creators have kept their lips sealed. But we can glean a little from snippets of cast chatter. For example, Front Man (Lee Byung-hun), the show's menacing villain, could come into the spotlight. That's what star Lee Jung-jae reckons, at least. “It’s probably safe to assume that, as we all saw at the end of season one, the main plot of season two will be revenge,” he said in an interview last year. “And the key figure who controlled the workings of the games in season one was Lee Byung-hun, so it seems that the two of us will be the central figures of this next story.”
As for our main guy Seong Gi-hun, creator Hwang mentioned in a 2021 interview that “He will come back, he will come back and do something about this world.” What does he mean by that? Are we looking at a Kill Bill-style revenge series? A cross-over episode with The Handmaid’s Tale where player 456 nips to underground Gilead for some pointers on rebellion?
Meanwhile, as reported by Complex back in January 2022, Netflix’s co-CEO Ted Sarandos giddily confirmed during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings review that “the Squid Game universe has just begun,” suggesting that this new season could be followed by — or release in tandem with — an array of spin-offs. Hopefully they'll fare better than Squid Game: The Challenge.
What happened in Squid Game season one, again?
You mean you’ve forgotten already?! OK so, by the end of the nine episodes, we’d seen favourite characters come and go (mainly categorically go) and Gi-hun emerge as the triumphant contestant. Life did not work out wonderfully for him afterwards though: it turns out a bag of money doesn’t quite compensate for murdering a bunch of innocent people (there’s a lesson in there somewhere…).
However, there are some unanswered questions setting up Squid Game season two nicely. Player 456 seems to be formulating a plan as the show ends, and though the narrative arc surrounding the ‘games’ themselves seems closed, well, there’s nothing stopping them starting all over again, which seems incredibly likely to be the premise of the next series.
