It’s been three days since Hwang Dong-hyuk completely wrapped up post-production work on the final season of Squid Game, a global phenomenon that has occupied the last six years of his life, and he’s ready to relax.
“It’s not sinking in yet, the fact that I’m now done,” he tells MovieMaker in early March on a Zoom call from his South Korean home, where he’s about to start packing for his first vacation in three years. “I didn’t really get to think about what I want for the future that much. All I know now is that whatever my next project is going to be, I want to work on a film rather than a series.”
The wildly successful Netflix drama series, centered around desperate people playing deadly children’s games for a huge cash prize, has been a battle for the creator since the very beginning. “Every day on the set of Squid Game, we had, on average, 300 extras, and then the main members of the cast, about 15 to 20 actors, and then we had 200 people as part of the crew and staff,” the writer and director explains. “And so every single day felt like I was going to war.”
The stress of making Season 1 cost him eight of his teeth. And it wasn’t any easier to make the latest batch of episodes, which were split into a second and third season, the latter of which is the final season, premiering June 27.
“Sadly, I lost another two teeth,” he says.
“I don’t think there’s a way around that kind of stress, especially when you’re working on something that gives you this much pressure, or something that is as big as Squid Game,” he explains. “You can go try to find a way to calm yourself, relieve stress, meditate, do yoga and whatnot, but I just learned, I think even more so than before, that there’s no way around it.”
At least he ate better this time around. He says he usually loses 12 pounds on shoots: “When I’m under a lot of stress, I just can’t stomach food. But this time around, I made sure that, you know, when I get up, even if I don’t feel like eating, I would force myself to at least drink some kind of green juice or just have something. … This was the only time that I didn’t lose any weight during production.”
The most strenuous days of Season 2 were the 15 it took to shoot the second game, which is introduced to contestants as the Six-Legged Pentathlon. It’s a relay race through five common Korean kids games, all while five players are tied together at the ankles. If one of them fails, they all fail, and failure means death.
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“Everyone was in that sound stage where we literally have sand on all of the ground. And then, because it was winter, a lot of people were sick… and they had to be there on set breathing in all of that sand dust. So, it was quite chaotic,” says Hwang, who was sick himself while shooting the colossal sequence.
“I felt like I was actually one of the players of the game,” he continues, “because with one single mistake, it might completely ruin everything. A single mistake on my end could lead to the budget going over. So, I was filled with a lot of pressure and fear and concerns.”
Squid Game Season 1 became Netflix’s most-watched series ever, and earned the Korean filmmaker his first Primetime Emmy — one of six for the show.
But the success of Season 1 meant even higher expectations for Seasons 2 and 3.
“It must have been very demanding, both physically and mentally for him,” says Squid Game star Lee Byung-hun, who plays Front Man. “There are so many lead characters and all the storylines that come with them. And at the same time, the plots are so intertwined, and there’s such a great character dynamic that he had to highlight. So, it would have required multiple times more effort, energy and time on his end. And yet, he pulled everything off so impeccably.”
Lee Jung-jae, who plays Squid Game protagonist Seong Gi-hun, was also impressed by the director’s precision as a storyteller. He says working with Hwang on Season 1 helped him prepare to shoot his own debut feature film, 2022’s Hunt: “Director Hwang is someone who, when it comes to what kind of story you want to tell, what kind of points you want to make… knows how to do that in a very concise and accurate manner.”
Hwang says he was “quite in shock” by the massive reception Squid Game garnered in 2021, leading Netflix to ask for more seasons.
“Everything felt surreal, but all in all, I was filled with gratitude, and I was really focused on wanting to make the next season the best possible,” he says.
So far, so good. Season 2 became the biggest TV debut in Netflix history with 68 million views in its first four days, and ranks high among Netflix’s most-watched seasons ever. It also scored a Golden Globe nomination for best drama series this year.
The reaction to the Season 1 ending made Hwang acutely aware of how much scrutiny he would get for his Season 2 finale — and the show’s conclusion.
“I wouldn’t say that I looked up a lot of the fan reaction as much as I did when we launched the first season, but I was aware that there was a lot of talk going around about how people felt about the ending,” he says of Season 2’s final episode.
“A lot of people were telling me that they were quite perplexed. They didn’t expect it to end where it did. Some people thought that it wasn’t satisfying for them,” he continues. “Some people thought that because of that kind of ending, it made them even more excited about seeing the third season.”
Hwang Dong-hyuk on Squid Game Season 3
While Season 1 wrapped up with Gi-hun as sole survivor of the Squid Game gauntlet and winner of all the prize money, Season 2 ended on a cliffhanger: Gi-hun’s revolution to overthrow the dystopian deathmatch from the inside doesn’t go as planned, and he’s once again at the mercy of Front Man and his masked minions.
Hwang is amused by critics who objected to Season 2 leaving some things unresolved.
“That kind of reaction is along the lines of what I had expected from the audience when it was decided that we were going to do Seasons 2 and 3,” he says. “I remember this one journalist actually telling me that they were so perplexed with how Season 2 ended. They thought I must have missed another episode and it should be there, but maybe somehow it’s not showing up. And that person went around and asked people, ‘Is there an eighth episode that I didn’t get to watch?’ So that was kind of fun.”
Despite the premise of the show being built on classic children’s games like Red Light, Green Light, “fun” is not really the best adjective for Squid Game, which holds a mirror to the moral decay of a real world burdened by debt, inequality, division and tension. So while the director is tight-lipped on any details about Season 3, people might not want to expect the show to take an abrupt turn toward optimism.
“I don’t think that it can have a happy ending,” he says, “because it all started from these things that I felt about the capitalist society and the issues that we currently face in the world today. The human society that we look at today, can it have a happy ending? It sort of all began with cynicism on that issue, and so, it would be very hard for a story like Squid Game, by nature, to have a happy ending.”
Lee Jung-jae is at least happy with how it all ends, and expects the series finale to spark a lot of dialogue amongst viewers this summer.
“The ending has many different meanings and layers to it,” the actor says. “I was satisfied with how it all came to a closure, but I think for the viewers out there, regarding what it all means, I think everyone is going to have their own interpretations of it, what they prefer. And so, I definitely think there is going to be a very wide range of different emotions that people are going to respond with.
“As for how it comes to an end,” he continues, “I know that the director put in so much of his effort and thought into that, and I think if it was something that really didn’t have any room for further interpretation, it wouldn’t be an ending that does justice to Squid Game, which has so many themes and different stories.”
Lee Byung-hun adds: “I really believe that this show captures a phenomenon that we have been seeing, not just in the current society, but for a long time: the wealth gap and the divide between the haves and the have nots.”
“I think this show really takes this theme to the extreme,” he adds, “and everything is kind of summarized in that small set.”
Front Man tells an angry Gi-hun early in Season 2 that the deadly games concocted for the entertainment of the world’s wealthiest people won’t end unless society changes. And from the Korean movie star’s perspective, that won’t happen any time soon.
“It might be right for me to take on a more hopeful stance, and I would like to do so,” says Lee Byung-hun, who viewers may also recognize from English-language action franchises G.I. Joe and RED, as well as the 2016 Magnificent Seven remake. “But unfortunately, it seems to me that we are transforming into a more brutal and worse world.”
Timing is everything for a project like Squid Game, and the world wasn’t ready for it back in 2009 when Hwang first wrote the screenplay as a feature film — only to be told by potential backers it was too grotesque and unrealistic.
Hope and change were in the air as Barack Obama became the first Black president of the United States. A government bailout after the 2008 financial crisis restored some confidence in the markets. In 2011, the Occupy Wall Street populist protest called for an end to economic inequality and corporate greed. And the U.S.’s legalization of same-sex marriage in 2015 felt like a big step forward for LGTBQ+ rights.
Then the pendulum swung back, hard, with President Donald Trump’s 2016 election. After four years of President Biden, Americans are under another Trump Administration that is empowering tech billionaires. In a farewell address to the nation last year, Biden warned, “an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.”
In South Korea, meanwhile, the household debt crisis has only intensified over the years, as suicide rates increase. The country has also been gripped in political tension since former President Park Geun-hye was impeached and imprisoned on corruption charges. Last December, President Yoon Suk Yeol was impeached by parliament after he attempted to declare martial law. Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, his replacement, was impeached by lawmakers just two weeks later. (At the time of this writing, the country’s constitutional court dismissed the impeachment and reinstated him as the country’s acting president.)
“I would say that those kinds of political divisions or chaos in Korea would be as bad, if not worse, as what’s happening in the United States,” says Lee Byung-hun. “And I think these days, people are divided more and more into different groups. They only stick to their beliefs and declare which side they are on.”
As the world’s political climate started to heat up, so did Netflix’s desire for international stories to satisfy hungry viewers outside of North America. Shortly after the streaming giant opened its Seoul offices in 2018, Hwang pitched Squid Game as a film, but executives saw it better suited as a series.
Minyoung Kim, Netflix’s vice president of content for Asia, told Fortune in 2021 the company was “looking for shows that were different from what’s traditionally ‘made it,’ and Squid Game was exactly it.”
The first Squid Game script was born out of Hwang’s own experience with burdensome debt — a common denominator between contestants on the show — and now, 15 years later, he tells MovieMaker the world seems even worse.
“Isn’t the entire world suffering today? Every year, people feel like it’s worse than the past year,” he says. “We see this all over the world. Living costs are increasing to no end. We are seeing less and less decent jobs. I don’t know how it is there in the States in detail, but I think especially in Korea, whenever we talk about the harsh reality that’s getting worse nowadays, we use the term ‘Squid Game’ to express and describe that.”
“The whole world has become the real squid game,” he says.
The entertainment industry has its own Squid Game-ish elements — even though South Korea appears to be artistically flourishing. Before Squid Game broke language barriers at the Primetime Emmys, Bong Joon Ho’s feature film Parasite won four Oscars in 2020, including Best Picture of the Year. Bong’s latest, Mickey 17, stars Robert Patinson as a man being constantly killed and reprinted, as part of his job.
“On the outside, it actually seems like the Korean entertainment industry is in its golden age and is currently very successful. But honestly, on the inside, it’s not the case,” Hwang says. “The number of productions are decreasing by the year. We’re seeing less and less jobs and less income for those involved. And so, I think, in a way, this industry has taken a turn for the worse.”
Lee Byung-hun agrees: “That’s a fact.”
“Fewer people are visiting the theater, and even though Korean content is receiving so much love and support across the globe, we’re seeing less films produced in the country,” says the actor, who has been working in the Korean film industry for over 30 years, and previously worked with Hwang on the 2017 feature film The Fortress.
“I think there are multiple factors that play into what’s happening right now, including the young generation’s preference for watching short-form videos with small monitors,” Lee Byung-hun continues. “And I think people in the filmmaking industry have to come together and really put their heads together to find a breakthrough for this situation.”
Hwang hopes to be one of the problem solvers.
“I think that I was very lucky thanks to Squid Game, so what I hope to do is to take whatever privilege that I am grateful to have, and really use that to contribute to bettering the industry as a whole,” he says.
That sense of hope, believe it or not, is reflected in the subtext of the series.
“While it is about a death game, it still speaks about how people cannot live on their own,” Lee Jung-jae says. “People have to come together and join hands; they have to work together in order for us to have hope for a better society. And I think, in that sense, it really is a story that has a theme of hope.”
That theme runs concurrently behind the scenes, too. If the show is about powerful men pitting poor people against each other for their own twisted entertainment, the making of Squid Game — and any TV show or film for that matter — is about collaboration, not just for entertainment, but to uplift, inspire and, ideally, enlighten viewers.
The process of production proves humanity can, in fact, put differences aside to work together toward a common goal. If 300 extras, 20 actors and 200 crew members can co-exist in a cold, sandy pit to enact a six-legged pentathlon on a small set for 15 grueling days, isn’t there hope humans can do the same at an even larger scale?
“I believe that’s completely right,” Lee Byung-hun says. “Even for our show, all of the staff, crew and cast could have different ideologies, different political beliefs, and they might have different ideals that they’re pursuing, but still, this one, overarching story brought us together, and we are working for the same shared goal, and we’re really collaborating, and only then can we produce something great.
“The content industry,” he adds, “really carries a force of power that is really unparalleled by the power that any materialistic value can have.”
There’s as much to learn about humanity’s potential from watching TV shows and movies as there is making them. We’ll see this summer if Gi-hun and the rest of the contestants can come together to overthrow Front Man’s sadistic Squid Game.
But no matter how Hwang concludes his historic hit series, perhaps the happiest ending awaiting fans would be more Squid Game — a prospect Hwang completely endorses, even if he’s not going to be at the helm.
“I know that Netflix has many plans for it,” the director tells MovieMaker. “Whether it’s a remake or animation, maybe other versions of other countries and their own Squid Game. I created this universe and the story, so in whatever way it’s further developed, I would be happy to provide my support.”
If the games continue, Lee Jung-jae is also on board for more.
“I don’t think I’ve ever felt like I was truly done with Squid Game, and that’s still true to this day. I’m very excited to see how the viewers are going to react to it all,” the actor says. “If Netflix wants to do something with Squid Game, even if it’s like a cameo appearance, if they invite me to do it, I am always open. I would love to do it.”
For Hwang, the series is like a baby, and like any good parent, he wants his creation to grow up to be the best it can be.
“I know that there’s going to be a lot of other creations related to the IP, but as the father of Squid Game,” he concludes, “I just want to be there to make sure that it’s not distorted or changed into something completely different.”
Squid Game Season 3 arrives on Netflix Friday.