‘Squid Game’ Returns With New Games, New Contestants, and a Revenge Plot

Making the first season of Netflix’s international breakout hit Squid Game was infamously difficult on creator Hwang Dong-hyuk—so tough that he lost several teeth during production. But he returned for more anyway, signing on to make second and third seasons of the South Korean show centering on a series of deadly games played by contestants hoping to strike it rich.

Through a translator, Hwang spoke to Vanity Fair about the sophomore season, which will hit Netflix on December 26. In it, Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), who won the games but was riddled with guilt and rage at their conclusion, decides to return in order to take revenge on those behind the games and hopefully stop them for good. The second season sets up a battle between Gi-hun and Hwang In-ho (Lee Byung-hun), a.k.a. the Front Man, who oversees the games. It also introduces some newer, deadlier games, as well as a whole new group of contestants, who range from a mother and son to a K-pop boy band member.

Hwang continues to explore timely issues through the show, while also raising the stakes from the first season. Here, he reveals what made him decide to continue this story, why the characters are younger this season, and whether he lost any teeth in the making of it.

Vanity Fair: When did you finally feel ready to start writing season two?

Hwang Dong-hyuk: Right after I signed on the contract with Netflix. Then I was ready.

But what made you ready to sign the contract?

I thought that the storyline of season two was going to depend on the story of Gi-hun after turning away from getting on the flight, how he was going to go about trying to stop the games. At first, I tossed around different ideas. I thought maybe he would try to stop the games from the outside, maybe try to track down the hosts one by one and kill them. But I came to the conclusion that in order for Gi-hun to try to stop the games, he has to return to them, and he has to go back and play the games. I thought that it was very entertaining. I thought it was a good story, and could possibly be an even better story than season one.

The game has changed this time in that the players can vote to leave, and if it’s a majority, they will split the money that has been won so far among all of them. Why make that change?

In season one, there was the rule where the players could vote and decide to leave. However, if they did decide to leave, they would not walk away with any money. But in season two, as you know, this is a duel between Gi-hun and In-ho. And in the eyes of In-ho, for him to have a very clean and perfect win, he had to prove to Gi-hun just how greedy human beings could be. He wanted to shove it in his face. And so that’s why In-ho almost generously allowed this new voting element. He wanted to lay it all out there and say to Gi-hun, “See, I give you this rule and opportunity for them to leave, but do you think they can make the decision to leave? Because day by day and round by round, their greed is going to snowball.” In-ho wanted to show Gi-hun that this is what true human nature is like.

We live in a free, democratic society, one of the prime examples of that being the voting system. We have these leaders that become decision-makers and are given the power to do so by being chosen by the majority. I wanted to ask this very timely question of: Can the public, or the majority, make the right decision? Do we have the power to do so? Do we have the ability to do so as a majority? And if a decision is made by the majority of the people, does it mean that is always the right decision?

Can you talk about creating the new characters who are now competing in the games, and how they’re different from the first season?

For season two, I added a lot more younger players in the game. And that was because when I was creating season one, at that time I thought that in order for people to have that much debt, they had to be a lot older. They would have to be in a place in their life where they felt like they had no hope for the future. And in order for someone to be put in that mindset, I thought that it would have to be over middle age.

However, after creating season one, I observed what was happening around the world. More and more young people have begun to believe that they no longer are able to climb up the social ladder through labor. They grew to want to become rich as quickly as possible, hit the jackpot, which leads to investment in things like cryptocurrency or online gambling, and they found themselves neck-deep in debt even at a very young age.

So because the world was changing in that way, I came to realize that the people who would be willing to participate in something like Squid Game no longer had to be older. They could be very young and still hit rock bottom, and would willingly come into a brutal game like that.

There are more characters who have relationships, like a mother and son, or who know each other from outside the games too.

In season one, there was this married couple that participated in the games. They weren’t a very significant role, but they were a married couple who—after playing the game of marbles, the wife dies and the husband survives. I later learned that there was a lot of interest and curiosity surrounding this couple. People were wondering, How did they end up there? What’s their backstory, and what happened after that? Watching that kind of response, it gave me more confidence in terms of these characters. If they have a story or a relationship outside of the games, when they are brought to the games with that existing dynamic, that could lead to greater drama. And so this time around, I brought in many characters that already had a relationship with somebody else in the games.

You also center more on the people who are running the games, like the recruiter.

In season one, the viewers just got a slight glimpse of the world, of the masked people, through the eyes of Jun-ho when he went undercover. And after that, I learned that a lot of the fans and audiences out there were curious about the world of those who were running the games, what kind of organization it was, and how these individuals started working for them. So in seasons two and three, because we were allotted more time as well, I wanted to introduce the viewers to that side of the world—give the fans a little bit more information about what they were curious about.

You had spoken about how writing and making season one was very difficult on you, physically and emotionally. How did you protect yourself from that this time?

There is no protection. I just have to endure it. Because I had to write, to direct, and also take part in the postproduction process, I was doing that all by myself. And that entire process took about over two years, because we started in May of 2022. There was really not much to it other than just trying my best, enduring it, making sure that I ate well, trying my best to sleep well, and also making sure I went for a dental checkup now and then. And just taking it day by day, really, and then doing it again. So aside from that, I don’t think there was any way to protect myself.

Didn’t lose any teeth this time, though?

Not yet. Not yet. But I have an ache, so now I have to go to the dentist.