When Squid Game first landed on Netflix back in 2021, it became a global phenomenon. A brutal, bloody, brilliant South Korean satire on class warfare with a sort of Parasite-meets-Battle Royale premise, creator Hwang Dong-hyuk’s show — in which childhood favourite games form the basis for a deadly tournament with a life-changing cash prize — remains the most viewed show the streamer has ever made. So now, as Lee Jung-jae’s Prisoner 456 prepares to re-enter the arena in Squid Game Season 2 this Boxing Day, the question on everyone’s lips is: How exactly do you make a follow-up to the biggest show on Netflix?
As showrunner Hwang Dong-hyuk tells Empire in our world-exclusive Andor Season 2 issue, while he’s certainly felt the pressure of being the man charged with answering that question (“I try not to dwell on it,” he says), he’s confident he’s found a way — even if doing so has come at no small cost. “I believe what we’ve created on Season 2 is a deeper, more advanced story,” says Hwang, who recently revealed that the show is set to end with a third and final season sometime next year. “I feel it could even surpass Season 1. But physically, mentally, it was not easy. Some of the sequences we shot were the most challenging in my whole career. It was… hell.”
Gladiator II: Directing Gladiator II (Featurette)
But if Squid Game’s sophomore outing was hell to make, then that’s only because the second series — which is set to pick up exactly where the first left off, with Gi-hun (Jung-jae) not getting on that plane — continues to reflect the world the show’s made in. “It’s not getting better out there — it’s getting worse,” says Hwang. “Worse climate change, more wars, more people dying. Compare the world [in 2021] and now — our lives are not improving. You know that!” All of which is to say that if you thought the first series was heavy, then you ain’t seen nothing yet. “I even had some concerns because the story told in the second season is much crueller, scarier and more gruesome than the first,” shares Hwang. “Honestly, I thought to myself… ‘Is this too much for people to handle?’” Crueller, scarier, and more gruesome? Of course we can handle it, Hwang — let the games begin.
