After breaking all sorts of Netflix viewing records, Squid Game returned at the end of last year for another round of brutal episodes – but that was only the beginning of the end.
- READ MORE: ‘Squid Game’ season two review: Netflix’s survival thriller will wrap its tentacles around you again
Season one finished with Player 456 Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) emerging alive (and victorious) from his winner-takes-all deathmatch. Instead of enjoying his blood money and heading to America to be with his daughter though, he had a last-minute change of heart after crossing paths with the mysterious recruiter (Gong Yoo). With Gi-hun now determined to stop the games, it set the stage perfectly for a sequel.
And season two of Squid Game sees him finally put his plan into action. While Gi-hun re-enters the life-or-death battle royale to take it down from the inside, former police detective Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon) leads a slick team of soldiers in hunting down the games from the outside. There are some early victories and painful losses across the seven episodes before the season ends with both our heroes getting betrayed. The story will conclude with a third and final season which is coming later this year.
Does Squid Game season three have a release date?
Season one of Squid Game launched on Netflix in September 2021 while season two had its festive premiere on Boxing Day 2024. Season three will have a summer 2025 launch, though.
After leaked announcements and rumours of a May release, creator Hwang Dong-hyuk said: “I don’t think it’s May, but it will come out this year. I’m working on it [and] it’s coming soon. Sooner than you’d expect”.
It’s now been confirmed that Squid Game season three will be released June 27, 2025.
#SquidGame's director, Hwang Dong-hyuk, reassures fans that they won't have to wait too long for season 3. pic.twitter.com/N9bmbXWrbP
— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) January 6, 2025
What about a trailer?
Squid Game season three is a direct continuation of season two, so Netflix is keeping what happens next under wraps for the time being. However, the streamer has shared a brief teaser which features Chul-su, the ‘boyfriend’ of Red Light, Green Light doll Young-hee. It’s only 15 seconds but thatt’s still long enough to terrify anyone who watches it .
Everyone say hi to Chul-su 👋 Squid Game 3 coming 2025. pic.twitter.com/hCgNexjJbC
— Netflix (@netflix) January 1, 2025
Who’ll be involved in Squid Game season three?
Writer, creator and director Hwang Dong-hyuk is back in the chair for both season two and three of Squid Game. Also returning is Player 456 as the sole survivor of the first season’s contest.
After uncovering all of the game’s secrets in search of his missing brother during season one, plucky police detective Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon) returned for season two but ended it in a precarious position with a saboteur in his team. And speaking about his brother, mysterious boss The Front Man (Lee Byung-hun) originally entered this new contest in disguise before revealing his true identity in the dying minutes, giving the battle between him and Player 456 a more personal edge.
Season two featured plenty of gory deaths but there are still a number of contestants trapped in the latest games who will return for season three. Among them, mother and son team Jang Geum-ja (Kang Ae-shim) and Park Yong-sik (Yang Dong-geun), the pregnant Jun-hee (Jo Yu-ri), former soldier Cho Hyun-ju (Park Sung-hoon) and plucky but terrified Kang Dae-ho (Kang Ha-neul) who also claimed to be a former marine but struggled during the final firefight.
There’s also Guard 011 aka Kang No-eul (Park Gyu-young) who wasn’t interested in the black market organ-dealing that her colleagues were so passionate about, but could she have used her position to save Park Gyeong-seok (Lee Jin-wook) after forming a bond with his sick daughter prior to the games?
What could the plot of Squid Game season three be?
The first season of Squid Game was all about survival but Player 456 and Hwang Jun-ho focused on revenge in season two. That looks set to continue into season three, especially after they lost more loved ones in the recent finale’s climactic battle.
We ended things with Player 456 failing to overthrow the organisers of the games after trusting the Front Man was nothing more than a regular competitor, while Hwang Jun-ho’s commando force was infiltrated by a mole. There’s also the small matter of the 45.6billion Won prize money that’s still up for grabs, with a lot of the surviving contestants more interested in that than keeping their mates alive.
Speaking about season two’s new election system that allows surviving players to vote to end the game and split the winnings after each and every round, Hwang told The Hollywood Reporter he was “inspired by the fact that everywhere you turn, people are drawing lines, whether it’s by generation, class, religion, ethnicity or race. I wanted to tell a story about how the different choices we make create conflicts among us and to open up a conversation about whether there is a way to move toward a direction where we can overcome these divisions,” so expect that to come back around in season three.
What else have the cast and crew of Squid Game said
In a recent interview, creator Hwang Dong-hyuk revealed that he “wanted to explore the very end of despair” during season three. “Where even those holding onto the faintest glimmers of hope see them shattered,” he explained. “When all hope is extinguished and only despair remains – what lies beyond that?”
He added: “Among the three seasons, the final one is my favourite and you should be prepared for something intense. It will be the strongest message yet.”
It comes after he compared season two of Squid Game with the ongoing political turmoil that’s happening in South Korea over the impeachment of President Yoon Suk-yeol. Hwang said his intention was to “ask whether the system of deciding everything through majority rule in a single vote is truly the right approach in a country like Korea, which operates under an imperial-style presidential system, and if there are any different alternatives.”
Speaking to Deadline, star Lee Jung-jae said season three would be “slightly different” to what’s come before. “There’s going to be more twists and turns and more conflict between the characters — something a little bit different, more complex. It’s going to be chaotic and you are not going to know where we’re taking you.”
Hwang Dong-hyuk said he originally wanted to write more Squid Game for the money. “Even though the first series was such a huge global success, honestly I didn’t make much. So doing the second series will help compensate me for the success of the first one too,” he told the BBC. “And I didn’t fully finish the story.”
He’s also said the scripts came together “naturally” but it was a fluid process. “I wrote seasons two and three at the same time and, along the storyline, there is a turning point that takes place. That leads to a series of different events and also leads to a significant change in the character,” he told Indiewire.
“Relatively speaking, the ending for season two came to me quite early on. However, the ending to season three, 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 three actually changed in the process of creating season two.”
Is season three really the end of Squid Game?
When season two and three were confirmed, Hwang announced that he was planning on ending the series there. “I believed that with that story, I was able to tell everything that I wanted to tell through the story of Squid Game and also in the perspective of Gi-hun as a character, and I thought that we don’t need any further stories from here,” he told The Hollywood Reporter.
Of course, Squid Game was originally planned to be a one-off series, so there’s every chance Hwang could be convinced to return. But last week he once again shut down the possibility of a fourth season. “Everything will conclude in the last season, both in terms of the characters’ stories and the messages I want to convey to viewers”.
If he doesn’t want to make more, there’s always the English-language adaptation of Squid Game that’s rumoured to be directed by David Fincher. Responding to the reports, Hwang told Radio Times: “You know how there’s those VIPs that you see in the first series? That is to show that these games are being played in different parts of the world. It’s something that I’ve planted in there, so that the world built within Squid Game can be expanded to different cultures and different parts of the world.”