SPOILER ALERT: This article contains major spoilers for the second season finale of Squid Game, now streaming on Netflix.

Game over – for now. The seventh and final episode of “Squid Game” season 2 ended with the brutal murder of Gi-hun’s (Lee Jung-jae) best friend Jung-bae (Lee Seo-hwan) right in front of his eyes. Jung-bae is shot by Squid Game supervisor The Front Man (Lee Byung-hun) after Gi-hun leads a player uprising in the current game.

While the death itself is shocking, upsetting and frightening, it is all the more cruel to the viewer than Gi-hun because, unlike our hero, the audience knows the frontman’s true identity: he is In-ho, a former winner of the Squid Game, now acting as the main guardian.

In-ho spent this game pretending to be player 001 (under the name Young-il) and getting close to Gi-hun and Jung-bae in order to gain their trust and pretend to be part of their cause and their rebellion, only to then accept his trust Front Man ends up masking himself again and killing Jung-bae to punish Gi-hun.

With one more season to go, “Squid Game” creator Hwang Dong-hyuk has announced the season two finale diversity – including the mid-credits scene that announces an unknown version of the Squid Game with new male and female versions of the giant, deadly “Red Light, Green Light” puppets with laser eyes – and what he has planned for Season 3 and the series Final.

“Squid Game” Season 2 ends with a huge cliffhanger as the frontman (In-ho/Young-il, unbeknownst to Gi-hun) kills Jung-bae right in front of Gi-hun, leaving Gi-hun screaming in horror as the pink guards restrain him and force him to watch his friend bleed to death. Why did you decide to end the season here?

When I first wrote the story for Seasons 2 and 3, it was one long story arc. And I had originally planned to write this story over a period of about eight to nine episodes, but by the time I finished the story, it was over ten episodes, which I felt was too long to fit into a single season. So I wanted to have a reasonable point where I could complete a second season and then move on to the third. And if you look at Gi-hun’s story, all his attempts to stop the game: the first one, which is to capture these mercenaries and try to plant a tracking device, fails; The second attempt to get people to vote so that they get out of the game also fails; And then the third and final attempt to bring people together and trigger the rebellion also fails.

All his failures led to this serious, serious crisis where he had to lose his very best friend Jung-bae at the hands of the frontman. And reflecting on Gi-hun’s journey, I think this is an appropriate moment to draw a line and give him a little closure to this long story arc. And from that moment on, in the third season, Gi-hun has this great sense of guilt and failure weighing heavily on his mission – how will he carry on his mission? This is the story that will continue to unfold.

When can we expect the third season to premiere and what can you say about the plot of the final episodes of the series?

At this point, everything I say is a spoiler, so I want to be careful. But what I can say is that after the start of the second season, I think we will soon announce the start date for the third season. I probably expect it to launch in the summer or fall of next year. But as for the plot of the third season, where Gi-hun lost everything, including his best friend, and all his attempts failed, now the question is: what will he be like? What condition will Gi-hun be in? And what will he choose? Will he continue the mission? Will he give up or persevere? And so you will meet our character Gi-hun at a very critical crossroads at the beginning of the third season. Gi-hun will not be the man he was in Season 2.

Will the format of the show change in Season 3 since Gi-hun and much of the other players rebelled against The Front Man and Pink Guards in Season 2? How can they go back to regular Squid Game after so many players disrupted the system?

If you saw the hidden post-credits clip after the final episode of season two – watching that clip will give you a little hint of where season three might take you. I think that’s all I can say at the moment.

Which of the Season 2 games did you enjoy the most and why?

I would say the pentathlon. Not only was it the most challenging thing to shoot, but I think the most fun I had after we finished filming was watching it myself. And this is mainly because there are five smaller games within one game round. And like Season 1, I wanted to introduce these real children’s games that Koreans grew up with, especially the ones that I grew up with myself. Given the way I was able to show the world five different games in a single round, I’d say the pentathlon was probably the most satisfying shooting.

What would you like to say about the rest of the series?

It gets better with every episode. With each season it gets better and the story becomes more comprehensive, more intense and definitely more entertaining. So be sure to watch it until the end!

This interview has been edited and condensed.