Real Reason ‘Squid Game’ Season 2 Ends That Way Has a Positive Silver Lining Despite Fans’ Frustration
- Squid Game 2's ending has frustrated the fans who waited for the show for a very long time.
- Season 3 is going to be the last season for Squid Game.
- Lee Jung-jae's performance has been appreciated.
2024’s hotly awaited South Korean dystopian survival thriller horror show, Squid Game season two, premiered on December 26 on Netflix. Created by Hwang Dong-hyuk, Squid Game 2 stars Lee Jung-jae, Wi Ha-joon, Lee Byung-hun, and more. Set three years after Jung-jae’s character Seong Gi-hun won the first game, the second season saw Gi-hun returning to the games, but this time with a new resolution.
Upon release, critics and the audience have lauded the storyline, performances, and direction of the new season. However, the end of the seven-episode-long season two has got fans frustrated because it ends on a massive cliffhanger, and the creator compares the cliffhanger episode to that of The Walking Dead’s mid-season finales. But there is a silver lining to the frustrating end.
Squid Game creator talks about season 2’s biggest cliffhanger
Lee Jung-jae returns as Seong Gi-hun to the highly anticipated Squid Game season 2 and enters the game as Player 456 again to take revenge on the creator of the game. Dexerto describes that instead of piggybacking on the success of the first season, creator Hwang Dong-hyuk decided to craft an entirely new but much darker experience for season two.
After violent and calamitous games, the finale episode opens with a bathroom brawl with contestants deciding on whether to continue the game or leave. It ends up in a massacre with blood spilled all across the room. Gi-hun, on the other hand, convinced his team to hide under the bed until the guards stepped in to stop the fight.
The team grabs the guns of the people who are now dead and makes their way to the staircase where a firefight ensues against countless guards. Gi-hun and Jung-bae somehow make it to the next level, where they are confronted by more armed guards. After struggling, Gi-hun and Jung-bae surrender only for Young-il, who is revealed as the Front Man, to shoot Jung-bae in the chest.
Front Man walks away while Gi-hun screams at the dead body of his friend. After the uprising, the game resumes as normal, and it’s unclear what happens to Gi-hun.
The cliffhanger episode has got fans frustrated as the users asked why the makers would end on such a big cliffhanger. Creator of the show Hwang Dong-hyuk answers (via USA Today)
Gi-hun has a huge sense of loss, defeat, and guilt weighing on him. When he is just filled with complete loss and guilt after all of his attempts fail, I thought that was the adequate ending to give closure to the second season.
However, it’s an abrupt and shocking finale, which has left a lot of questions unanswered. Some of the fans wrote that season 2’s episodes felt like a bunch of filler episodes to stretch everything out for the third season.
Squid Game Season 2’s end lays the foundation for Season 3
The abrupt end of Squid Game season two has made the fans wonder why the creator decided to actually end season two on such a note. A Reddit user reminded the audience that the creator had envisioned seasons 2 and 3 as a single story but decided to split it into two seasons because he had so much content.
Hwang Dong-hyuk, in his interview with Deadline, shared that when asked about the number of episodes reduced for season two compared to the first season, he said,
I wrote seasons two & three at the same time, and we were in production for both simultaneously, and currently, we are in the post-production process for season 3. When I was writing the script for the two seasons, I felt like there was a big turning point or an inflection point, and that was the end of episode seven, so I thought it would do it justice to have a separate season after that.
During the conversation, the creator noted that season 2, in a way, feels like a way of returning the love to the fans. He added that it’s his first time feeling this much love in his career, and it does not feel like a product or content; it feels like a gift or a present.
According to Dong-hyuk’s statement, if season 3 was already in post-production ahead of season 2’s release, it can be said that the last installment of Squid Game could arrive sooner than expected. (via Netflix)
It was announced that it’s going to premiere in 2025, but no date was announced, fans believe that it’s going to premiere around spring break or around Christmas so that fans have enough time to binge-watch.
Season 2 of Squid Game is streaming on Netflix.
