Long awaited Squid Game season two will be released on Boxing Day

If you’ve been missing those killer thrills because it’s been, oh, two years, 10 months and 13 days since Squid Game took over the obsession-driven parts of our brain, you won’t have to wait too much longer for the next instalment.

Squid Game season two will be released on Boxing Day, December 26. Given the choice between a murderous cautionary tale about the dehumanising excesses of capitalism and the cricket, it’s a no brainer.

Netflix also made official a third season will follow not long after in 2025. While you’re not waiting another three years, the bad news is that season three will be the final one.

So, if you want to continue to proclaim your expertise on dalgona candy, it’s a limited time engagement.

For the uninitiated (are there any left?), the series follows 456 desperate people hoping to clear their crippling debts compete in an elaborate series of childhood games. The winner scores 456 billion won, which converts to roughly $50 million.

The losers (all 455 of them) are killed as they’re eliminated.

The second season is set three years after the explosive finale of the first, and Player 456 is on a mission to hunt down and stop the depraved souls behind the game. Luckily, he has that new fortune to fund his quest.

He eventually finds the guy who lured him in the subway and realises the only one to take down the organisation is from the inside. Which means re-entering the game. Sounds like a bad idea.

Lee Jung-jae (Seong Gi-hun aka Player 456) will return in the lead role, hot off the back of his performance in Star Wars series The Acolyte. Also reprising their characters from season one are Wi Ha-jun, who played police officer Hwang Jun-ho, Lee Byung-hun as the overseer of the game and Gong Yoo, the charismatic recruiter.

Obviously, the fates of many other season one characters (devo!) meant those actors won’t be lining up for season two.

Newcomers include Yim Si-wan, Kang Ha-neul, Park Gyu-young, Lee Jin-uk and Park Sung-hoon.

Creator and director Hwang Dong-hyuk will helm the show.

Squid Game became a global sensation when it was released in September 2021 while much of the world was under lockdown from the Delta strain of Covid-19, and within weeks, became Netflix’s most watched original series, a record no other show has managed to overtake.

It clocked up 1.65 billion hours in its first 28 days after release.

The series was universally praised for its eye-popping production values, its performances and its unflinching story of South Korea’s debtors culture, wealth inequality and the viciousness of the haves to the have-nots.

Lee Jung-jae won the Emmy for outstanding lead actor in a drama, the first Asian performer to triumph in the category and the first ever win for a non-English language role in a drama series.

In his acceptance speech, he thanked Hwang for “making realistic problems we all face come to life so creatively on the screen with a great script”.

Hwang also won the Emmy for directing in a drama series while Lee, Jung Ho-yeon and the ensemble cast picked up three gongs in the American Screen Actors Guild Awards.

The enormous global success of Squid Game was influential in other streamers investing more heavily in international formats.

A reality competition version of the show recreated the games in the drama (minus the deaths).