squid game

Meet Squid Game S3’s new killer doll

culture, Entertainment, netflix, squid game, streaming television, teasers / Tim Belzer / January 2, 2025

S2 is set three years later, and by the end of the second episode, Gi-hun has successfully finagled his way back into the game after winning Russian roulette against the game’s recruiter and tracking down game overseer Front Man (Lee Byung-hun) at a Halloween party. The desperate players this time include a YouTuber who launched a failed crypto scam and a couple of victims of said scam bent on revenge. There’s also a compulsive gambler and his mother, a rapper addicted to ecstasy, a loud and neurotic self-appointed shaman, a former Marine, and a transgender woman who once served in special forces.

Meanwhile, Front Man’s police officer brother, Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon), has hired mercenaries to track down the island where the game is staged. As in the first season, alliances form and shift as the games proceed, and betrayals abound, culminating in a cliffhanger ending. That’s because series creator Hwang Dong-hyuk conceived of S2 and S3 as a single season, but there were too many episodes, so he split them over two seasons.

Squid Game S3 will premiere on Netflix later this year. Other than the new killer doll, we don’t know much about what’s in store for Gi-hun and his quest to destroy the game other than that it will pick up where S2 left off and will most likely end with a final showdown against Front Man. Is the cynical Front Man right about human nature ensuring that the game will never end?

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Player 456 is back for revenge in Squid Game S2 trailer

culture, Entertainment, netflix, squid game, streaming television, Trailers / Tim Belzer / November 28, 2024

Lee Jung-Jae returns as Player 456 in the second season of Squid Game.

The 2021 Korean series Squid Game was a massive hit for Netflix, racking up 1.65 billion viewing hours in its first four weeks and snagging 14 Emmy nominations. Fans have been longing for a second season ever since, and we’re finally getting it this year for Christmas. Netflix just released the official trailer.

(Spoilers for S1 below.)

The first season followed Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-Jae, seen earlier this year in The Acolyte), a down-on-his-luck gambler who has little left to lose when he agrees to play children’s playground games against 455 other players for money. The twist? If you lose a game, you die. If you cheat, you die. And if you win, you might also die.

“The grotesque spectacle of Squid Game is where it gets most of its appeal, but it resonates because of how relatable Gi-hun and the rest of the game’s contestants are,” Ars Senior Technology Reporter Andrew Cunningham wrote in our 2021 year-end TV roundup. “Alienated from society and each other, driven by guilt or shame or pride or desperation, each of the players we get to know is inescapably human, which is why Squid Game is more than just a gory sideshow.

In the S1 finale, Gi-hun faced off against fellow finalist and childhood friend Cho Sang-woo (Park Hae-soo) in the titular “squid game.” He won their fight but refused to kill his friend, begging Sang-woo to stop the game by invoking a special clause in their contract whereby they get to live—but do not get the prize money. Sang-woo instead stabbed himself in the neck and asked Gi-hun to take care of his mother. Wracked with guilt, Gi-hun was about to fly to America to live with his daughter when he spotted the game recruiter trying to entice another desperate person. He didn’t get on the plane, deciding instead to try and re-enter the game and take it down from the inside.

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‘Squid Game’ Multiplayer VR Experience Coming to Sandbox Locations This Year

Location Based VR, netflix, netflix vr game, News, sandbox, sandbox vr, squid game, squid game vr / Rejus Almole / February 9, 2023

Sandbox VR, the location-based VR destination, announced a new partnership with Netflix to create a virtual reality experience based on South Korean hit show Squid Game.

Netflix’s most watched show of all time will soon have its own location-based VR experience, which will let fans take on the role of Squid Game contestant.

Set to roll out to Sandbox locations in late 2023, the location-based VR game promises “pulse-pounding challenges” where users compete against each other to be the last one standing. What’s more, game sessions include personalized highlight videos capturing in-game reactions for post-game review.

There’s no trailer for the Squid Game VR game, although the company’s hype video should give you a good idea of what to expect:

Sandbox’s locations feature motion-tracking technology, which captures the movements of a player’s body and props, such as guns. Its haptic system also provides players with added realism to go along with the large room-scale VR experience.

The company currently features six proprietary experiences based on both exclusively licensed IP (Star Trek: Discovery), as well as in-house experiences. All Sandbox VR experiences are developed by an in-house gaming studio, which tailors the company’s social experiences for groups of up to six users at a time.

The Squid Game licensing deal is likely the direct result of its $37 million Series B funding round from November 2021. The company has made a strong rebound from the stagnation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, seeing the company’s eventual reemergence from Chapter 11 bankruptcy following debt restructure.

Sandbox now operates 30 VR locations, spanning major cities in North America, Europe, and Asia. The company says it’s launched a dozen such locations over the past twelve months, making for one of its largest growths spurts.

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