Making the first season of Netflix’s international breakout hit Squid Game was infamously difficult on creator Hwang Dong-hyuk—so tough that he lost several teeth during production. But he returned for more anyway, signing on to make second and third seasons of the South Korean show centering on a series of deadly games played by contestants hoping to strike it rich.
Through a translator, Hwang spoke to Vanity Fair about the sophomore season, which will hit Netflix on December 26. In it, Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), who won the games but was riddled with guilt and rage at their conclusion, decides to return in order to take revenge on those behind the games and hopefully stop them for good. The second season sets up a battle between Gi-hun and Hwang In-ho (Lee Byung-hun), a.k.a. the Front Man, who oversees the games. It also introduces some newer, deadlier games, as well as a whole new group of contestants, who range from a mother and son to a K-pop boy band member.
Hwang continues to explore timely issues through the show, while also raising the stakes from the first season. Here, he reveals what made him decide to continue this story, why the characters are younger this season, and whether he lost any teeth in the making of it.
Vanity Fair: When did you finally feel ready to start writing season two?
Hwang Dong-hyuk: Right after I signed on the contract with Netflix. Then I was ready.
But what made you ready to sign the contract?
I thought that the storyline of season two was going to depend on the story of Gi-hun after turning away from getting on the flight, how he was going to go about trying to stop the games. At first, I tossed around different ideas. I thought maybe he would try to stop the games from the outside, maybe try to track down the hosts one by one and kill them. But I came to the conclusion that in order for Gi-hun to try to stop the games, he has to return to them, and he has to go back and play the games. I thought that it was very entertaining. I thought it was a good story, and could possibly be an even better story than season one.
The game has changed this time in that the players can vote to leave, and if it’s a majority, they will split the money that has been won so far among all of them. Why make that change?
In season one, there was the rule where the players could vote and decide to leave. However, if they did decide to leave, they would not walk away with any money. But in season two, as you know, this is a duel between Gi-hun and In-ho. And in the eyes of In-ho, for him to have a very clean and perfect win, he had to prove to Gi-hun just how greedy human beings could be. He wanted to shove it in his face. And so that’s why In-ho almost generously allowed this new voting element. He wanted to lay it all out there and say to Gi-hun, “See, I give you this rule and opportunity for them to leave, but do you think they can make the decision to leave? Because day by day and round by round, their greed is going to snowball.” In-ho wanted to show Gi-hun that this is what true human nature is like.
We live in a free, democratic society, one of the prime examples of that being the voting system. We have these leaders that become decision-makers and are given the power to do so by being chosen by the majority. I wanted to ask this very timely question of: Can the public, or the majority, make the right decision? Do we have the power to do so? Do we have the ability to do so as a majority? And if a decision is made by the majority of the people, does it mean that is always the right decision?
