Squid Game had a completely different ending before Season 2

Hwang Dong-hyuk, the creator of one of the biggest Netflix hits, Squid Game, has opened up about the process of writing two chapters at the same time, with Season 2 changing the ending of the story altogether. 

You see, Squid Game was only ever meant to be one season. Dong-hyuk wrote the script 10 years before it landed with Netflix, and even once the deal was made, it was a stressful process to film – so much so that the creator lost “eight or nine teeth”. 

But when the first season dropped in 2021, it broke all kinds of streaming records, becoming Netflix’s biggest launch of all time. Fan demand for Squid Game Season 2 ramped up, especially given its open-ended finale, and so Dong-hyuk got to work. 

Netflix

Now, Squid Game Season 3, which was written at the same time as Season 2, will wrap up the story. The second chapter premieres on December 26, and will see Player 456 Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) returning to the games with a mission of his own.  

In a new conversation with IndieWire, Dong-hyuk spoke about how writing the two installments together had a major impact on the ending of the story. 

“I wrote Seasons 2 and 3 at the same time… and along the storyline, there is a turning point that takes place, and that leads to a series of different events, and also leads to a significant change in the character,” Dong-hyuk told the outlet. 

“Relatively speaking, the ending for Season 2 came to me quite early on. However, the ending to Season 3 actually ended up in a different direction than what I had initially conceived of. 

“While I was working on the story and working on the script, I saw this new path that I wanted to go down, and so the ending of Season 3 actually changed in the process of creating Season 2.”

Thankfully, we won’t have to wait another three years to find out how the TV show ends, as Squid Game Season 3 is due to land on Netflix sometime in mid-2025. 

Before he got to work on the follow-up, Dong-hyuk felt the pressure. “Because I created Season 1 without much thought about doing the second season, when it was decided that we would do Season 2, the pressure was indeed immense,” he continued. 

“I was thinking to myself: will I really be able to pull this off? Will I be able to create or write something that would exceed Season 1? But once I got to writing, and once I got into the story of Gi-hun returning to the games with his own motives, it actually went a lot better than I thought it would. 

“I was able to create a story that I felt was more intriguing, come up with more interesting characters and come up with more original and intriguing games as well.”

Even though the Squid Game Season 2 trailers have shown some familiar settings, Dong-hyuk revealed in an earlier press conference that “most are going to be new games where the scale has gotten greater.”

We get a few teases in the latest trailer, which shows what appears to be a sinister game of tic-tac-toe, as well as the contestants spinning around on a giant carousel… let the games begin.

Until then, read about the inspiration behind Gi-hun’s red hair, who won the original Squid Game, and the Netflix show David Fincher should finish before his English-language Squid Game. You can also check out our list of the best TV shows of 2024.