"One more game! One more game! One more game!" So chant the latest (un)lucky lot of contestants locked into the life-and-death battle that is Squid Game in the first trailer for Season 2 of Netflix's wildly popular K-Drama. But whilst the games are quite visibly — and violently — once again afoot as Hwang Dong-hyuk's darker-than-dark satire readies its return to our screens after three years away, not all the players are eyeing the same prize. Namely, Player 456 — aka Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) — who, having survived the game once before, is re-entering the fray in the hopes of putting a stop to the Front Man (Lee Byung-hun) and his wretched bloodsports once and for all. Check out the pulsating teaser trailer below:
Creepy doll-bot Young-hee being creepy. A "What's The Time Mr. Wolf?" riff involving headshots for flinching. Swathes of Pink Men, beads of sweat, and panic-stricken players everywhere you look. Yeah — we're thinking Squid Game is back! Only now, there's the added wrinkle of having a player in the games who already knows the system and is trying to dismantle it — if only his fellow contestants would trust his motivations for more than a moment. This may still be a pretty short and enigmatic teaser of what lies ahead, but it's all suitably stressful looking stuff once again, impeccably stylised and shot through with real human drama.
And here's the official logline for the season ahead: "Three years after winning Squid Game, Player 456 gave up going to the states and comes back with a new resolution in his mind. Gi-hun once again dives into the mysterious survival game, starting another life-or-death game with new participants gathered to win the prize of 45.6 billion won."
Will Gi-hun finally stop the games for good? Will the Front Man's grand plans be revealed? And will another one of our childhood favourite games be reimagined as a torturous device for the execution of desperate civilians that haunts our dreams forevermore? Well, with only one more season to go after this one and an English-language retooling from David Fincher reportedly on its way, we expect we'll start getting some answers to those questions — and more — when Squid Game Season 2 arrives on Netflix on 26 December, 2024.