Squid Game season 2 has finally arrived, and with it the masses. While audiences may not be competing for $4.56 billion themselves, there's still an undeniable winner: Netflix. 68 million viewers turned in to watch Seong Gi-hun take on the games once again, breaking the record for most views for a show in its premiere week, according to the streamer. (Wednesday previously held the record with 50.1 million viewers in 2022, according to Variety.) The season also apparently broke into the platform's most popular non-English shows list in "record time," landing at number seven. (Season one is currently sitting comfortably in the first position with 265,200,000 views. Still, there's lots of time for season two to rise through the ranks.)
Of course, Netflix viewership numbers are often as difficult to interpret as the pink guard's facial expressions. Per Wired, a user is counted as a viewer as soon as they watch a mere two minutes of a show, meaning the above number likely includes at least a few accounts who were actually looking for a documentary about squids or had the show autoplay while they were doing dishes.
Still, there's no denying that Squid Game is a phenomenon. Production ramped up in advance of this season, as did promotion. Since October, Netflix has brought murder dolls, Red Light Green Light competitions, and other interactive games to 10 different countries and nearly 37,000 real-life participants. It's hard to imagine all 37,000 of those people really grasped the message of the show or else they may have been a little more hesitant to put on the tracksuit, but it clearly worked for the big men in charge.
You can catch up on our season two recaps here.
