If you’ve watched Squid Game season 2 at this point, you’ll know that it really only feels like half a season with a huge cliffhanger in the middle, and making it through (spoilers) only half of the current games.
But we will not have to wait another three years for season 3, thankfully, as both Netflix and creator Hwang Dong-hyuk have ensured that won’t happen by having no production breaks between seasons. The result is a season 3 of Squid Game that is much, much closer than we think.
We’ve previously heard a “2025” launch window, though that could have meant Christmas, a full year break. But now Hwang Dong-hyuk is saying that it’s closer, and might even potentially be just a half year until Squid Game returns. Here’s the window he’s giving when he was asked about a season 3 release date by Variety:
“At this point, anything I might say is going to be a spoiler, so I want to be cautious. 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.”
Early summer would be six months, very late fall would be closer to 11 months, if it’s November, but somewhere in the middle we can split the difference at maybe 8 or 9. Regardless, it is way outside the norm for Netflix to do literal yearly seasons, much less new seasons of a show coming in under a year. But it’s clear Squid Game season 2 and 3 are different cases, really just one very long season broken in half.
And yes, it was very much broken, one of the aspects that didn’t quite work with season 2 (spoilers follow). The two B and C plotlines about the cop finding the island and the guard interfering with an organ harvesting operation were built up all season but barely actually went anywhere, no doubt only paying off when season 3 gets here. And in season 1, we got through all six games in nine episodes. Here, we only got through three in seven episodes, and yes, it seems exceedingly likely all three will be played in season 3. At least we won’t have to wait that long.
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