The creator of “The Squid Game” explains why the Netflix series will end with season 3

season 2 of The squid game in Netflix is gearing up to premiere on December 26, but the Emmy-winning series is already scheduled to end with Season 3 in 2025.

The creator/writer/director Hwang Dong-hyuk revealed to the EW portal that never intended to return with more episodes after the first season (during which he lost many teeth due to stress), but everything changed due to critical and fan response.

“Honestly, when I started working on the first season, I had no plan or idea that there would be more seasons,” Hwang says. “In Korea it is not very common for series to have several seasonsand also because season 1 was incredibly demanding, so I don’t think I had the confidence to go back to work on more seasons where I was the writer, director and creator all the time.”

The showrunner explains that he thought about how the series could continue, but never saw himself developing it. “I remember when I was finishing my scripts for the first season, towards the end, I had a vague idea,” he says. “AND I started thinking about creating seasons 2 and 3, first of all because of the great success of season 1as well as the great expectation and expectation that there was on the part of the fans that the story would develop further. “So I revisited that small possibility that I had left towards the end of Season 1 after it was created, and we wanted to do a larger story.”

Seeing how much fans around the world loved The Squid Game, Hwang was inspired to jump back into Seong Gi-hun’s world (Lee Jung-jae), also known as Player 456, after he won $45.6 billion in the deadly games competition. “I knew there was a lot of anticipation and curiosity about what Gi-hun would do next from fans, so I didn’t want to end it here,” Hwang says. “I wanted to tell the story of what happened to Gi-hun after where we left him at the end of season 1 and what he does, what kind of actions he takes to put an end to these games. As creator, writer and director , it was almost my mission or my role to continue telling that story. And I wanted to give back all the love that we had received in one way or another.

The end of The Squid Game

The showrunner did not want to leave fans hanging, and that is why he decided to end the series with the next two seasons. “The desire to bring closure to the story I started telling came about after we worked on Season 1,” Hwang says. “As for why I decided to end the story with season 3, I think the story I wanted to tell came to a complete conclusion at the end of season 3. The story that I wanted to tell and that I am able to tell through Gi-hun has been told with season 3.”

The commercial and critical success of The Squid Game was undeniable. The series made Emmy history as the first non-English-language show to be nominated (with 14 total nominations) and win (taking home six trophies, including best lead actor in a drama and best directing in a drama). . Netflix He even made a reality show spin-off (non-fatal), The Squid Game: The Challenge, which debuted with different games than the ones Hwang created in the scripted series.

“Honestly, I didn’t have the opportunity to watch all the episodes, but I did visit one of the sets,” Hwang says of the reality show. “I know that the games we used in season 1 aren’t really suitable for playing on a reality show, so when I saw the games that were played, I thought they were pretty well thought out in terms of creativity and practicality. And I thought it was done a lot of effort to come up with games that could be played realistically on the reality show, both the set design and the way they were executed. [los juegos] They required a lot of effort, and I thought it was quite interesting.”

Season 2 of The Squid Game premieres December 26 on Netflix.