Courtesy of Netflix
Finally, some concrete details about Squid Game season 2.
After the Korean thriller series became a worldwide sleeper sensation, delivering a season two became a no-brainer for Netflix. For the past six months-plus, creator Hwang Dong-hyuk has pulled double duty, campaigning for the first season throughout both the winter awards circuit and now the summer TV season while writing a second season of the drama it took him 12 years to bring to life.
And now, Netflix has officially greenlighted the second season, along with some specifics about who we’ll actually see, via a letter from Hwang and released by the streamer (mild spoilers for the global few who haven’t yet watched the show): Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), of course, as the winner and sole survivor of the titular games, as well as the mysterious Front Man, revealed as superstar Lee Byung-hun, who operates the competition.
In addition, Hwang teases the possible return of a fan-favorite cameo: beloved Korean leading man Gong Yoo, who played the anonymous recruiter who lures desperate people into the game via the traditional Korean card-flipping game of ddakji.
And finally, Hwang promises a new threat: “You’ll also be introduced to Young-hee’s boyfriend, Cheol-su.” Although never named as such in the show, Korean viewers of a certain age will recognize Young-hee as the name of the little-girl character in their childhood textbooks, whose image was terrifyingly reappropriated as the larger-than-life animatronic figure during the deadly game of “Red Light, Green Light.” In the textbooks, Young-hee shared adventures with a little boy, named Cheol-su.
Netflix also has released the first official teaser art for the second season, a close-up of the eye of an animatronic figure (likely Cheol-su), with a glowing red “2” in the iris: