A couple of Squid Game season one casualties are hoping we haven't seen the last of them.
On June 12, Netflix announced the return of the series—the most-watched in the streamer's history—for season two and revealed that series protagonist Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) and The Front Man (Lee Byung-hun) would reprise their roles from season one, but made no mention of any other characters returning.
This made sense because, well, basically everybody else died.
Still, that hasn't deterred a couple of season one stand-outs from tossing out some creative ways to bring their characters back.
"Director Hwang [Dong-hyuk] has a lot of ideas, so it's very difficult for us to pitch in," Oh Young-soo, who played fan favorite-turned-evil mastermind Oh Il-nam, told E! News at Netflix's Squid Game FYSEE event on June 12. "But I'm dead already, as you know. So maybe I can appear in flashbacks."
A new series of fatal children's games—which Oh Il-nam orchestrated in season one—have been confirmed to return, so perhaps he'll be back to break out hearts all over again, this time from the great beyond.
Anupam Tripathi, whose Squid Game death hasn't allowed us to look at marbles the same way since, took a bit more of a fantastical approach.
"As you know, we are all dead. The dead might be re-born, hopefully?" he suggested. "Hope is a good word. Let the writer imagine. I'm super excited to see everybody in season two. Let's hope for the best!"
Netflix also announced that Cheol-su, the boyfriend of giant animatronic killer doll Young-hee, would debut in season two. Outside of pondering how Young-hee could possibly have a boyfriend, Lee Jung-jae gave us some context for what to expect.
"Young-hee and Cheol-su are like the Jack and Jill of Korea," the actor told E!. "They're a pair that appear in children's books. So I imagine the character will look a bit like how we saw him in those books back in the day."
That doesn't make us any less terrified.
As for the fate of his character in season two—who was last seen abandoning a trip to Los Angeles in order to, presumably, expose those involved with the deadly game—Lee Jung-jae said simply, "All I want is to survive."
While Squid Game creator, writer and director Hwang Dong-hyuk remained very secretive about the plot of season two, he said a plan is firmly in place.
"I'm working on the treatment. I have like 30 pages of it," he said. "I basically have all the games and characters and storylines."
While the games are the crux of the series, Hwang Dong-hyuk said coming up with them is actually the worst part of his creative process.
"It's not easy to make a serious game out of a children's game," he said. "It was not easy at all for seasons one and two. It took a lot of time to figure out which games I wanted to use. It's still agonizing. I had to come up with six new games, so we'll see."
Don't expect any secrets about season two to start floating around, as Hwang Dong-hyuk is being incredibly protective of his material—even when it comes to members of his own cast.
"Confidentiality is the most difficult for me," he said. "Except for the main character of Seong Gi-hun, I don't think the supporting roles will get the full script at once, because there could be so many spoilers about the games and everything. If some actors just appear in one part, I'm just going to give that part of the script to them."
Getting Squid Game intel is proving to be the most difficult game of all!
In May, Hwang Dong-hyuk told Variety that the second season of Squid Game is not expected to premiere until at least the end of 2023.