Is <em>Squid Game</em> Coming Back for Season 4?

This story does not contain spoilers for Squid Game season 3.

Does the future of Squid Game have a green light? Or a deadly red light? The smash hit dystopian thriller from South Korea continues to be a worldwide phenomenon. And on June 27, the series returned for its third season on Netflix. But is season 3 the last time fans will have their hearts (and guts) ripped out? Or is there yet more bloodshed to experience? Well, here's what we know about the future of Squid Game—and it's not pretty, but it's not hopeless either.

Unfortunately, we have to say: mianhaeyo. (That's a formal way of saying sorry in Korean.) Since 2021, creator Hwang Dong-hyuk has stated that season 3 of Squid Game would be its end, with no intentions of continuing the story afterward. Years later in July 2024, Netflix confirmed the third season—shot back-to-back with its second season—would mark the series finale.

In November 2024, while speaking at a For Your Consideration panel in Los Angeles, Hwang elaborated (via The Hollywood Reporter) on his decision to end the show on its third season. "When I was thinking about the idea for the ending of season 3, I think it sort of naturally came to me that this was the finale," Hwang said. "I believed that with that story, I was able to tell everything that I wanted to tell through the story of Squid Game and also in the perspective of Gi-hun as a character, and I thought that we don’t need any further stories from here."

But while the upcoming third season is the end for Squid Game, the original show, it doesn't mean the end for Squid Game the franchise.

A second season of Squid Game: The Challenge, the British reality competition inspired by Hwang's series, will hit Netflix at some point in the future. In October 2024, Deadline reported that David Fincher—yes, the director of Seven and Fight Club and The Social Network—is overseeing development of an American version of Squid Game. Importantly, the show is billed as a spin-off of Hwang's show that will expand the setting, and not simply remake the show in English. Truly, the horrors of capitalism transcend borders.