Squid Game’s Creator Offers a Few Tantalizing Season 3 Scraps

Squid Game season two hit Netflix December 26, and with a third and final season arriving later this year, it’s not a shock it ended on an agonizing cliffhanger. While fans wait to see what’s ahead for Seong Gi-hun—aka Player 456, played by Lee Jung-jae—and the other survivors, Squid Game creator Hwang Dong-hyuk is offering some carefully chosen words that’ll probably the only clues we can nibble at until more episodes arrive.

Speaking to the Hollywood Reporter, Hwang allowed that Squid Game‘s final third will focus on the two characters you’d most expect: Gi-hun, of course, as well as Lee Byung-hun’s Front Man. The latter slithered his way into the game as Player 001 and at times almost seemed to be sympathetic to Gi-hun’s desire to tear down the competition once and for all. However, as the season two finale amply demonstrated, he’s not secretly a good guy. He’s still a cold-blooded murderer, and he’s still sticking by his sinister priorities.

Or is he? Asked if there’s hope for the Front Man, all Hwang would say is “You can see it in season three. There’s an answer to that question.”

Ending season two in such a bleak place—Gi-hun’s player rebellion has been stomped out, and he still doesn’t know the Front Man’s been playing him all along—was a deliberate choice to set up season three. Gi-hun’s failures along the way lead up to the devastating loss of his best buddy, Player 390. “I wanted to end the second season at that very moment—then begin the next season from that space where he’s ridden with a huge amount of guilt and defeat,” Hwang said. “I wanted to see where that would carry Gi-hun further on.”

He continued. “The third season will really explore that sense of loss and failure, that guilt weighing so heavily on Gi-hun. How’s he going to navigate the story further with all of that weighing down on him? Personally, I see the third season as being the finale to this story. That’s because I believe I’ve had closure to the story I wanted to tell about society through the character of Seong Gi-hun. If I ever wanted to go back to the world of Squid Game, it would be about different characters with a different story arc. Some kind of spinoff, maybe.”

One character we won’t be seeing again (unless there’s some kind of prequel situation) is Thanos, the villainous fan favorite played by Choi Seung-hyun, also known as former K-pop star T.O.P. Hwang feels your pain, but he assured THR that Thanos won’t be easily forgotten. “He’s one of my favorite characters, too! I believe that was the right time to see him off … it was very intense, which was the right way at just the right time for him to go. The way he leaves the story, if you watch until the third season, it will almost feel as if he’s still there in some ways in terms of how he affects the plot.”

Squid Game seasons one and two are now on Netflix; season three is due sometime in 2025.

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