Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Making the first season of Squid Game cost its creator, Hwang Dong-hyuk, nine of his teeth. If you’re among the quarter of a billion viewers who watched the ultra-violent Netflix series, you might fantasise about how this happened. Was his head locked by studio execs in a ghastly contraption, a single tooth pulled for each day the script was late? Or his mouthwash swapped for corrosive acid when he failed to tie up plot strands? The reality was more pedestrian: Hwang was so busy and stressed that he totally neglected his oral hygiene. After production wrapped in 2020, he got dental implants.The suffering paid off. When it was released the following year, Squid Game became an instant phenomenon. To this day, it is the most-watched show in Netflix history. It was also nominated for 14 Emmy awards, the first non-English language show to be shortlisted for outstanding drama, and won six. Its cultural impact was similarly enormous: for Halloween 2020, the hot pink overalls of the game’s guards and mint-green tracksuits of the contestants became the costumes of choice. In Korea, a broadband provider sued Netflix for damages, saying people watching the show were putting too much strain on their network. “I never expected it to become a global phenomenon, it all felt very surreal,” says Hwang, speaking on a video call via a translator from his home in Seoul, wearing a striped T-shirt and round black-framed glasses, his hair tousled.Expectations for the forthcoming second season, which will debut on Boxing Day, are impossibly high. Could the even greater pressure this time around jeopardise more than just his teeth? Smiling wearily, he explains that he has become better at managing stress. “Teeth-wise, this season didn’t hurt as bad as season one,” he says, “but I am a bit more drained, I have to say. I think I’m in the middle of a burnout.” This is not surprising. As with the first, Hwang was sole writer and director of the second season, as well as the third and final season, due next year. The two were shot back-to-back over the past year.Squid Game’s first season (and here come some spoilers) saw naive optimist and deadbeat dad Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) enter a competition where he competes with hundreds of others in deadly versions of children’s games to win a life-changing cash prize. By the season’s close, he has won the money but lost almost everything else, from his naive innocence to the friends he made along the way, each of whom meets a grisly end in the competition. In the season’s final moments, Gi-hun decides that, rather than flying to the US to repair his relationship with his daughter, he will stay in Korea and bring an end to the games once and for all. Unsurprisingly, in season two Gi-hun realises that in order to stop the games, he will have to compete in them again. There are younger competitors this time, emphasising that with today’s ‘buy now, pay later’ schemes, people are becoming trapped in debt ever earlierSticking to the formula seems a wise choice. The first season’s games provided the show’s most memorable moments, combining the white-knuckle tension of characters’ lives hanging in the balance with emotive moments in which they are forced to make terrible choices about who will live or die. Hwang says he thought carefully about which games to include. Much of the show’s power comes from its chilling juxtaposition of brutal violence and the kinds of games children play, so he had to find activities that would invoke the innocence of youth for viewers all over the world, not just in Korea.The idea for Squid Game came to Hwang in 2009 while he was struggling with debt and trying to make it in the Korean film industry. He would spend long hours in cafés reading mangas such as Battle Royale and Liar Game, two series about high-concept death games. The desperation of the characters seemed to echo that of his own life — the competition to succeed felt similarly fierce. “I thought if there were games that weren’t too hard to play, maybe somebody like me could participate and win a huge cash prize,” he says. Yet he struggled to find a local production company to back the idea; repeatedly he was told it was too grotesque and unrealistic. So he shelved it and worked on other film projects until, nine years later, Netflix came knocking. The streamer was looking for fresh intellectual property from outside the anglophone world, and took a gamble on Hwang’s outlandish idea. It paid off handsomely: according to Bloomberg, the first season generated $891mn in “impact value” (a metric used by Netflix to assess the performance of shows) on a $21.4mn budget.What does Hwang think accounted for that success? He points to the post-Covid moment in which the show aired, when many people were struggling financially and could relate to the show’s pointed critique of capitalism. The games can be seen as an allegory for the brutal competitiveness of 21st-century society, in which the most ruthless are more likely to succeed. Hwang drew on stories of South Korea’s spiralling personal debt crisis (household debt grew to more than 100 per cent of GDP) and a tendency he had noticed for people to take big risks on the lottery, gambling or cryptocurrency to repay debtors. The decade between the show’s conception and release did nothing to diminish its social relevance. “I think everyone can agree that our lives have become a lot harder,” he says. “Climate change, incessant wars and — more than anything — worsening wealth gaps in every corner of the world. All of these things point to [the fact] that the capitalist system is working in a very unequal way. I think we can all agree that we are not going in the right direction and are in dire need of change . . . I believe all creators should have that level of critical perspective on capitalist society.”These weighty themes are balanced in the show by mordant humour, cartoonish violence, frequent plot twists and memorable characters. Hwang acknowledges that the show’s success was down to its packaging of difficult social questions in an accessible form. “It wasn’t presented like a documentary or a conference,” he says, “it was just an entertaining show that also had food for thought, and I think that’s why it appealed to so many audiences.”Some of the most affecting moments were the glimpses into characters’ lives outside the games in scenes that deftly portrayed the myriad indignities of life on the poverty line. In season two, Hwang explores the characters’ motivations to enter the competition more deeply. Key rules are changed that force contestants to vote on whether to stay in the games between each round. This causes the group to divide into two factions, reflecting contemporary society’s tendency towards extreme polarisation.Hwang confesses that he came to regret killing off so many of the main characters in season one while developing its follow-up. The solution is a batch of new competitors, who include a crypto influencer and a man who is surprised to find his own mother in the game. There are also younger competitors this time, emphasising that with today’s apps facilitating high-interest loans, high-risk trading and “buy now, pay later” schemes for online shopping, people are becoming trapped in debt ever earlier.Apart from its final moments, which clearly telegraphed a sequel, the first season felt very complete, and it’s easy to wonder whether the show really needed another chapter. Hwang himself was unsure whether he wanted to make more, and had not originally plotted out a multi-season arc.From a viewing of only the first episode, it is impossible to say. The show retains its mastery of both tension and humour, but it remains to be seen whether the new characters will prove compelling, what twists are in store, and ultimately whether this season will have anything new to add.But Hwang is confident. “I think we’ve created something that does not fall behind one bit compared to season one,” he smiles, showing teeth that are perfectly intact. “At this stage, I’m trying to let all of the pressure go, take it off my shoulders, and just wait humbly for the global response.”Season two of ‘Squid Game’ is on Netflix from December 26Find out about our latest stories first — follow FTWeekend on Instagram and X, and subscribe to our podcast Life and Art wherever you listen
