Wait, red light, Squid Game almost had a completely different ending? Apparently so.
Hwang Dong-hyuk, the creator and director of the hit Korean series, which recently made headlines for being streamed over 3 billion minutes, revealed that there was an alternate ending for season one of the survival drama in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. The ending as we know it concludes with Seong Gi-huna (Lee Jung-jae), known as Player 456, deciding not to get on a plane to see his daughter. Instead, he turns around on the jet bridge and walks toward the camera, ultimately risking his life to go seek revenge on the game that took the lives of 455 contestants, and almost his own.
But Dong-hyuk said that the season almost concluded in the opposite way, revealing, "We actually wrestled between two different scenarios for the ending."
Apparently, one ending featured Gi-hun getting on the plane with the intention of reuniting with his daughter. That's the ending Lebron James would've preferred, but we digress.
So why didn't this ending happen? "We constantly asked ourselves," Dong-hyuk answered, "is it really right for Gi-hun to make the decision to leave and go see his family, to pursue his own happiness? Is that the right way for us to really propose the question or the message that we wanted to convey through the series?"
After a lot of consideration, Dong-hyuk decided to end on a cliffhanger, in order to leave room for a potential second season. "We came to the conclusion that the question that we wanted to propose cannot be done if he left on the plane," he explained. "The question that we want to answer: why has the world come to what it is now?—can only be answered or can only be proposed if Gi-hun turned back and walked towards the camera. So that's how we ended up with that ending in the finale."
And it looks like our wish for a season two will be granted. Dong-hyuk told the Associated Press in an interview that "there will be a second season," but it's "too early" to say when it's going to happen. Hey, as long as we get a second season, we're not going to be picky about when it comes!
Season one of Squid Game is available to stream on Netflix now.