More than three years on from its Netflix debut, the Squid Game phenomenon is bigger than ever. In the lead-up to the highly anticipated release of the show’s sophomore season, Netflix went all-in on the franchise — launching everything from Squid Game-themed live events around the world to a video game as well as a reality competition series that recreated everything about the hit show minus the part where participants who lose challenges get killed off.
And then there’s the fact that not only was Squid Game Season 2 an immediate success for the streaming giant. The new season actually racked up 68 million views in its first four days of streaming availability, making it the biggest debut for a new or returning series in the entire history of Netflix.
That data is based on the newly available weekly Top 10 list that Netflix updates each week, and which reveals the hottest TV shows and movies globally on the service.
Meanwhile, here’s even more good news about the franchise: Unlike the gap between Seasons 1 and 2, the latter of which arrived on Netflix in December after a three-year wait, Squid Game creator Hwang Dong-hyuk has assured us that won’t happen again. Specifically, by having no production break between Seasons 2 and 3, the latter being the final season of the show, it ensures the games will continue much sooner than we might have thought. In a new interview, in fact, he suggests that Season 3 might only be months away!
“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.
“But as for the storyline of the third season, Gi-hun having lost everything, including his best friend, and all of his attempts going to failure, it’s now, what is he going to be like? What state is Gi-hun going to be in? And what will he choose to do? Will he continue on with the mission? Is he going to give up or persist? And so you’re going to meet our character Gi-hun at a very critical crossroads as we begin the third season. Gi-hun will not be the man he was in Season 2.”
This is certainly great news for fans of the series, and one wishes that Netflix would actually normalize this practice of not making us wait so long between seasons of its biggest shows. It’s been more than two years, for example, since the debut of another of Netflix’s biggest shows of all time — the Addams Family spinoff Wednesday. Of course, I understand that the price of Squid Game doing things this way seems to have been that Season 2 kind of feels like an incomplete season based on the cliffhangers it leaves you with.
Because of that, it probably goes without saying that expectations will be even higher on Season 3 to wrap up everything in a way that feels satisfying for Netflix’s biggest show in history.
