The story of Squid Game is fairly straightforward. A shadowy organization runs a clandestine, dystopian contest where people who have major financial problems play children’s games to win a prize pot of 45.6 billion South Korean won (that’s nearly 31.2 million United States dollars at the time of writing). The games are strictly regimented and deadly: a single mistake can cost you your life. The contest also pits people against each other, both friend and foe alike. And it’s all done for the amusement of incredibly rich VIPs who watch the entire ‘show’ as it unfolds.

The first season, released in mid-September 2021 on Netflix, follows a divorced father and debt-ridden compulsive gambler, Seong Gi-hun, who gets unwittingly drawn into the Squid Game, seduced by the prospect of winning it big.

The second season, released in late December 2024, picks up three years after the end of the first season. It follows Seong Gi-hun’s attempts to dismantle the terrifying contest for good, and how he once again gets caught up in the deadly events.

The third and final season is speculated to launch on Netflix on June 27, 2025, half a year after the previous one, Forbes writes. If you think that the second season ended too quickly and on a huge cliffhanger, we promise you that you are not alone. Yours truly thinks that seasons 2 and 3 were meant to be one season, but they were artificially cut in half for whatever reason. Probably to prolong the popularity and cultural impact that Squid Game has worldwide. It’s bound to be good for Netflix’s profits, that’s for sure.

Jean Mackenzie, the BBC’s Seoul correspondent recently spoke with director Hwang Dong-hyuk about the phenomenon that is Squid Game. He admitted that he was so stressed during the filming of the very first season that he lost “eight or nine teeth.” In fact, things got so bad that he swore he wouldn’t make anything else.

What changed his mind? “Money,” Hwang told Mackenzie. “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. And I didn’t fully finish the story.”

Hwang quipped after the filming for the second season wrapped up that his teeth have been aching again. “I haven’t seen my dentist yet, but I’ll probably have to pull out a few more very soon.”

The BBC reports that Hwang tried for an entire decade to get Squid Game made. He even had to take out loans to support his family. Netflix paid the director upfront, so he was “unable to cash in on the whopping £650m it is estimated to have made the platform.” It’s not just Hwang who is upset. Many South Korean movie industry directors, actors, producers, writers, and creatives have a love-hate relationship with the streaming platform.

In short, Netflix forces them to relinquish their copyright when they sign their contracts. Meanwhile, South Korea has outdated copyright laws that don’t protect people properly. “In Korea, being a movie director is just a job title, it’s not a way to earn a living,” said the vice president of the Korean Film Directors Guild, Oh Ki-hwan, who added that some of his director friends work part-time as cab drivers or in warehouses.

The South Korean government told the BBC in a statement that they recognized that the compensation needed to change, but that it was up to the industry to fix the issue. Meanwhile, Netflix said that it offers “competitive” compensation and guarantees creators “solid compensation, regardless of the success or failure of their shows.”

Full disclosure: yours truly loved the second season of Squid Game. In fact, I’d argue that it has a far more impactful and tightly knit narrative than the first season. You saw more action, psychological depth, and twists than before.

Meanwhile, while I enjoyed the first season, it was nowhere near the fantastic experience that everyone else was raving about. It was good, not great. The second season matched my expectations far more: it was what I thought the show would initially be like. But take this criticism as a way to show that I care about the project. Coming up with genuinely engaging plot twists and survival games is incredibly tough.

Personally, I’ve been a fan of survival-themed media that focuses on dystopian settings, bizarre social and mathematical games, and (sometimes) mysticism for years and years.

I started off with manga like Battle Royale, Liar Game, Kaiji, and Death Note, which also have animated and live-action versions.

I then moved on to projects like The Game (a classic!), Escape Room, Animal World (a reimagining of Kaiji), and Alice in Borderland (good first season, awful second season).

The Cube and Saw franchises also fit the genre, as do movies like Exam, Circle, and The Platform. The main appeal of these sorts of movies is that they allow you to experience harrowing, horrifying situations from the comfort of your own home.

You can’t help but put yourself in the main characters’ shoes (so long as they’re even remotely relatable) and wonder how you’d handle the situations they find themselves in. There’s also almost always a constant subtext that criticizes modern society for its competitiveness, ruthlessness, and worship of money at the expense of warmth and basic kindness.

Media that features survival games creates a brutal environment where you can face your real or theoretical fears and come face to face with your values, strengths, and weaknesses.

A couple of constant questions lingering at the back of your mind are, “How far would I go to survive?” and “How do I really win these games?”

More often than not, the obvious way to win these games isn't how you actually survive. Your wits, insight, and ability to make good allies are always being tested.

You can learn about yourself once you’re honest. Some people might realize that they’d try to rebel against the rules and organizers. Others come to the uncomfortable realization that there’s nothing they wouldn’t do to get back home safely to their loved ones or… that they would give up because they couldn’t handle the horror. There will also always be people who will look for ways to ‘break’ the games and outwit the organizers, trying to come up with the most optimal (social and logical) strategies.

The survival game genre is great, but the biggest drawback is that there isn’t too much content in this niche. The hope is that with the popularity of Squid Game, other creators will be inspired to push the boundaries of the genre and create their own spins on it with unique games and twists.

No matter what genre of film or show you’re creating, you’ve got to make the characters relatable and the worldbuilding solid. To put it simply, if the audience can’t connect with at least one character in the midst of the action, they’ll tune out. Give them a reason to root for the hero or villain.

Meanwhile, the world itself has to be consistent and logical. Sure, it can be fantastical, magical, mind-bogglingly dystopian with bizarre tech and what have you, but the (un)seen rules that govern it have to be solid. You cannot and should not change the rules that govern your world to suit the narrative that you want to push through.

The characters have to behave and think ‘realistically,’ as you’ve set out in the story before. They should stumble and strive. It would be boring if the hero got their way all the time, without any challenges.

What’s your relationship with the shopping/unique/squid-games-season-2-games/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Squid Game show, dear Pandas? Do you love it and can’t get enough? Do you hate it and think it falls short of the mark? What did you think of the second season and the cliffhanger? What are your expectations for the third and final season?

Let us know in the comments! Meanwhile, we’ve shared our recommendations for media that’s similar to Squid Game; feel free to share your own fave finds, too.