Player 456 re-enters the game in Squid Game's season two trailer
The highly anticipated second season of Netflix’s hit satire sees our hero return for one last game.
Photo courtesy of NetflixIt’s taken nearly three years, a complete dismissal and exploitation of the show’s themes and ideas, and a whole lot of patience, but Squid Game 2 is only one month away. Sadly, the new season will not be home for Christmas—it’s bowing on December 26—but Netflix was nice enough to supply us with a trailer for the new season.
Set three years after the first game, Player 456 (Lee Jung-Jae) returns home to his first loves: surviving the capitalist X Games and his beloved Young-Hee. Oh, what a treat it is to behold her in all her horror again. This time, though, it’s personal. Seong Gi-hun makes his reentry into the game to destroy it—if it doesn’t destroy him first. However, Netflix assures fans that Squid Games’s third season will arrive in 2025, so we will assume he doesn’t finish the job. Season three is reportedly the final season, so he better figure it out by then.
In the years between seasons, Netflix has been busy making Squid Game a globally recognized franchise. Last year, the streamer turned the overt satire of capitalism run amok into Squid Game: The Challenge, a reality competition in which people compete for cash. (It’s so fun in our little boring dystopia.) However, show creator Hwang Dong-Hyuk doesn’t appear to be buying into Netflix’s watered-down spin-offs. The new trailer adds quite a few tantalizing wrinkles to the story, turning our hero into a cog in the machine, inspiring his fellow players to fight back, and, of course, wallowing in the despair of a free market that forces people to degrade themselves to get out of debt. Welcome back to Squid Game. Let the games begin.