The 2021 release of the popular show “Squid Games” brought forth a booming success for Netflix, and three years later in December of 2024, season two released, captivating audiences once more with thrilling twists, intense games, and new characters.
More watched than the hit Netflix series “Stranger “Things,” “Squid Games” follows the broke gambler Gi-Hun (also known as Player 456) who competes in deathly children’s games on a remote island in Korea for a $31.4 billion prize. The end of season one saw Gi-Hun win the prize after every other player died in the games, and in season two, he goes back to the island to try and end the games once and for all.
Season two ended on a cliffhanger, with the players engaging in an unsuccessful revolt against the island’s guards. With such a cliffhanger rises equally enticing theories about what season three, premiering through Netflix on June 27, might entail. NVD students have their own predictions regarding the show’s plot, characters, and what new games the contestants will have to beat in the third and final season of the show.
Theories regarding Player 456’s fate vary, especially with Netflix teasing his future with recently released first-look photos from the upcoming season. In one picture, he appears handcuffed to a bed in the island’s dorms. The actor who plays Gi-Hun, Lee Jung-jae, appeared on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” and was asked whether or not Gi-Hun would replace the current mastermind controlling the games–the “Frontman”–and the actor answered both yes and no. The clues of the pictures and Lee Jung-jae’s answer leave fans torn about what happens to Gi-Hun in season three.
Junior Timothy Lee believes that to make the third season interesting, Player 456 will eventually abandon his heroics and take a villainous path, whether or not that means becoming the new Frontman.
“I don’t know about [the] Frontman, but I think [Gi-Hun is] going to be a villain… the story gets really boring if the same guy plays the same role of trying to save everyone over and over again,” Lee said. “I think his daughter might be put in jeopardy to make him turn bad, because if I remember correctly, he doesn’t have a lot of remaining relatives. I think if they take something important from him, that may be what’s needed to make him a villain.”
On the other hand, other students believe that the hero will become the Frontman to stop the games rather than continue them and become a villain.
Sophomore Kaden Zhang said, “Maybe he’s going to kill the Frontman and become the new Frontman… to try and stop it from the inside, because the Frontman has the most power.”
Junior Erika Gargano agrees that Gi-Hun will become the Frontman, and believes that the picture of Gi-Hun handcuffed to the bed plays into the theory:
“Maybe [the guards] give him immunity because they want him to become the Frontman, so they trap him in the [dorm] so he can’t do anything. They’re going to keep him in the room so he can’t die or revolt, and then he’s going to become the Frontman.”
In addition to Gi-Hun’s fate relative to the overseer of the island, theories of what the next games will be are also circulating. In “Squid Games,” pictures on the walls of the dorm clue players in to what the games are. In season two, the walls depict a four-by-33 checkerboard-like array of white and black squares, and stick figures hanging from spikes on a ceiling. Most online theories conclude based on the pictures that the games will be human chess and monkey bars, but NVD students think otherwise, with most agreeing that the show will stick to either Korean games or globally played games.
Lee said, “I don’t know how big chess is in Korea. There may be another game in Korea that uses checkerboards, but it’s probably going to be a Korean game, because they’ve just been doing Korean games.”
Zhang also thinks that Korean or global games are likely, and he explains why he disagrees with the human chess theory.
“Most of the games have been either Korean games or universal games,” he said, “[and] a chess board is traditionally eight-by-eight, so unless they want to fit a lot more people in, I don’t think it’s going to be chess.”
Junior Najiya Phillips proposes her own ideas about what the next games will entail. She comments on both the pictures of checkerboard-like design and the hanging figures.
“The first thing that comes to mind [with the checkerboard] was racing, and that’s the finish line… or it could be a trapdoor game where [the players are] running around…and then they stop, and whatever they’re on will give way, so they have to pick a safe one,” Phillips said.
Regarding the stick figures hanging, she said, “It might be a ropes parkour thing. I think it’ll be a team game, like, team games to get across the obstacle course.”
Overall, NVD students have varying theories about what will occur in “Squid Games” season 3, with most believing that its main protagonist, Player 456, will take a drastic turn and replace the central antagonist–either for heroic reasons, or villainous ones. They also have theories about what the next games in the show will be, ranging from traditional Korean games to games with trap doors. Either way, no one will know which theories were right–if any–until this summer’s release of the third season. Whatever happens, one thing fans know for sure is that season 3 is sure to supply viewers with a plethora of twists and turns that bring “Squid Games” to an intense conclusion.
