Overview
You're about to play a game to the death for a huge cash prize. A former contestant pops up to tell you what you're really getting yourself in for. Would you heed his warning? The latest teaser trailer for Squid Game season two depicts this very scenario, as 455 newcomers contend for 45.6 billion won — and season one's competitor 456, aka Lee Jung-jae's (The Acolyte) Seong Gi-hun, attempts to inform them of the true brutality that they're signing up for
When you've fought for your life and a ridiculous amount of money while donning a green tracksuit, you're probably not going to shake off the deadly endeavour easily. When you've barely survived a game that's hardly fair, you're also going to want to steer others away, as well as take down those responsible. That's the Squid Game season two situation, too, which Netflix has been teasing with multiple sneak peeks, including the just-dropped official teaser trailer.
These games don't stop, even if viewers have had a three-year wait since its award-winning first season. As the show's protagonist gets back into his green tracksuit, and on bunks, his new fellow competitors are wary of his motives. Also part of the current glimpse at the series' new episodes: Lee Byung-hun (The Magnificent Seven) as Gi-hun's nemesis Front Man, plus Wi Ha-joon (Little Women) also back as detective Hwang Jun-ho.
Netflix is promising raised stakes this time around, with audiences able to see the results when Squid Game returns on Boxing Day. If you usually spend the day after Christmas shopping, at the cinema or recovering from your food coma by trying to play backyard cricket, you now have other plans if you want to catch the next instalment of the South Korean thriller ASAP.
After Squid Game season two arrives on Thursday, December 26, 2024, Squid Game season three will drop sometime in 2025. There's no exact date for the latter as yet, but it will be the final season, closing out the show's story.
Squid Game was such a huge smash in its first season that Netflix confirmed at the beginning of 2022 that more was on the way, and also released a teaser trailer for it the same year, before announcing its new cast members in 2023 — and then unveiled a first brief snippet of Squid Game season two in a broader trailer for Netflix's slate for 2024, as it releases every 12 months.
For season two, Gong Yoo (Train to Busan) also returns as the man in the suit who got Gi-hun into the game in the first place; however, a show about a deadly competition that has folks battling for ridiculous riches comes with a hefty bodycount. Accordingly, new faces were always going to be essential — which is where Yim Si-wan (Emergency Declaration), Kang Ha-neul (Insider), Park Sung-hoon (The Glory) and Yang Dong-geun (Yaksha: Ruthless Operations) all come in.
If you somehow missed all things Squid Game when it premiered, even after it became bigger than everything from Stranger Things to Bridgerton, the Golden Globe- and Emmy-winning series serves up a puzzle-like storyline and unflinching savagery, which unsurprisingly makes quite the combination. It also steps into societal divides within South Korea, a topic that wasn't invented by Parasite, Bong Joon-ho's excellent Oscar-winning 2019 thriller, but has been given a boost after that stellar flick's success.
As a result, it's easy to see thematic and narrative parallels between Parasite and Squid Game, although Netflix's highly addictive series goes with a Battle Royale and Hunger Games-style setup. Netflix turned the show's whole premise into an IRL competition series as well, which debuted in 2023 — without any murders, of course. Squid Game: The Challenge has already been picked up for a second season.
Check out the new teaser trailer for Squid Game season below:
Squid Game season two streams via Netflix from Thursday, December 26, 2024. Season three will arrive in 2025 — we'll update you when an exact release date for it is announced.
Images: No Ju-han/Netflix © 2024.