Spoilers below.
Now that Squid Game’s third and final season is out in the world, I am personally hoping for one thing: that Hwang Dong-hyuk can get some rest. The filmmaker and series creator has not been subtle about his exhaustion after creating the first season of the Netflix sensation. Imagine how he feels now, two seasons after that.
“Yeah, I’m very tired. I haven’t had a deep sleep for a long time. I want to take a rest,” he told The New York Times before the season 3 premiere. “Then I want to do feature films. I have an idea for my next feature.”
There may be someone ready to take up the mantle: David Fincher, the director of Fight Club, Gone Girl, and The Social Network. Though a fourth season of Squid Game as we know it is not in the cards, something else might be on the horizon. Here’s what we know.
Is there going to be an American spinoff of Squid Game?
In October 2024, Deadline reported that Fincher was eyeing an English-language offshoot of Squid Game, although neither he nor Netflix have confirmed the news yet. Still, it seems likely, given Fincher’s ongoing collaboration with the streamer, which includes films and series like House of Cards, Mindhunter, Mank, and the upcoming Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood sequel. According to Deadline, “Insiders say the Squid Game series is likely the project Fincher commits his time to in 2025.”
The final scene of the Squid Game season 3 sure seems to set up that spinoff. (Warning: Spoilers ahead!) The episode closes with a scene of the Front Man in the U.S. coming across a person in a suit playing a version of Ddakji, the “slap game” used to recruit players, with a disheveled man in an alley. When the recruiter turns around, it’s a surprise reveal: She’s played by Cate Blanchett. All she does is exchange a knowing look at the Front Man, their mutual recognition hinting that the Squid Game operation extends beyond South Korea. It’s also the perfect setup for a U.S.-based show.
Hwang, however, insists it’s not. “Actually no, not at all. It’s not related to that,” he told Variety. “All I wanted to have was just an impactful ending, and that’s all that was to it. Honestly, I haven’t heard officially from Netflix about David Fincher creating a Squid Game. I have heard the rumors of course though. But again, it was just the ending that I wanted for season 3.”
Who would be in the cast of the spinoff series?
It’s unclear if Blanchett will be the lead of that new show or just a one-time cameo, but the former is possible, since she previously worked with Fincher on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. For now though, that’s just a theory. No casting announcements have been made yet. As for the creative team, Deadline reported that Dennis Kelly, writer of Matilda the Musical and the TV series Utopia, is supposedly writing the script.
As for casting Blanchett in the final season 3 scene, Hwang explained to Variety, “I knew I wanted to have a woman recruiter, because I thought it would be something different and a little more impactful. Because it’s just one line and it’s a moment that you get to see this person, I wanted someone who had the charisma that could dominate the screen in an instant. I’ve always been a big fan of Cate Blanchett and all of my producers are as well. They really wanted her. As for offering the role to the particular actor, that happened after we began shooting.”
What has Hwang said about Squid Game spinoffs?
Hwang has also voiced his own ideas for an offshoot. He told Entertainment Weekly, “I actually had this faint ideation about possibly a spinoff—not a sequel, but maybe a spinoff about the three-year gap between season 1 and season 2 when Gi-hun [Lee Jung-jae] looks around for the recruiters,” he said. “Maybe I could have a portrayal of what the recruiters or Captain Park [Oh Dal-su] or officers or masked men were doing in that period, not inside the gaming arena, but their life outside of that.”
He also told The Hollywood Reporter that he’s “not too interested in telling a story that continues on from the conclusion [of season 3]. If I were to do a spinoff someday, I think I would rather choose to go back and see what happened during that time gap [between seasons one and two]. But this is something that we are just tossing around, so as for when or how a spinoff might come about, it’s still up in the air.”
That Hwang’s limited series has now ballooned into an international franchise might be a little ironic, considering the show’s pointed critiques of capitalism. But he hopes that at least it gets viewers to start thinking about such issues. “If they do none of that and only enjoy the goods and experiences, that could be a problem. But as long as it entails food for thought, I’m good with that,” he told Times. And if Squid Game comes to America, there will surely be much to discuss.
