Introducing Chul-Su Meet Squid Game S3s new killer doll After getting 68 million views in first three days, Squid Game's third season is already being teased.. Jennifer Ouellette Jan 2, 2025 12:58 pm | 3 Chul-Su is a new killer doll in S3 of Squid Game Credit: Netflix Chul-Su is a new killer doll in S3 of Squid Game Credit: Netflix Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreSquid Game's hotly anticipated second season debuted on Netflix the day after Christmas and racked up more than 68 million views in just three days. It had already been renewed for a third and final seasonfilmed back-to-back with S2but Netflix ushered in the new year by gracing us with a 15-second teaser on X, introducing a brand new killer doll dubbed Chul-susimilar to the giant "Red Light, Green Light" doll Young-hee.(Spoilers for S1 below; some spoilers for S2 but no major reveals.)As previously reported, 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.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 to re-enter the game and take it down from the inside.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?Jennifer OuelletteSenior WriterJennifer OuelletteSenior Writer Jennifer is a senior reporter at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban. 3 Comments