Squid Game creator Hwang Dong-hyuk has been through a lot to bring audiences one of the best dystopian television dramas ever — and that includes losing teeth. Yep, you read that right. Hwang recently revealed that he has lost even more of his pearly whites since making Season 3.
“I thought it was going to be okay, but this time I had to pull out two more teeth as well,” the creator recently told Entertainment Weekly. “I had to pull out about eight teeth in Season 1, and now I have two more out, and I haven’t put them back in yet. So I’m waiting for them.”
Originally, reports had claimed that Hwang lost six teeth early on in the series, but in November 2024 he revealed it was actually closer to eight or nine teeth. That said, the last season of the series — which Hwang has confirmed as the final season — proved to be a little less stressful. However, it still resulted in more loss for the creator.
“I do already have the universe and the space that I have envisioned come to life, so in a sense, Season 2 and Season 3 was easier compared to Season 1,” he told EW. “But the problem is that for Season 2 and Season 3, we had to shoot and write in one go. It was as if we were making one season, and we tried as best as we could to bring in Season 3 as fast as possible. So the total amount was much larger, and we had to shoot for around one year, so it was very physically demanding.”
Earlier this week, Hwang opened up about what he would do if he could make a Squid Game spin-off show. “If I make [a] spin off, it will be a story happening between Season 1 and 2,” Hwang revealed to Indiewire on the Gotham Awards red carpet recently. “There [was] a three years gap between Season 1 and 2. So, I want to show what they did for those times.”
Season 3 of Squid Game premieres on Netflix on June 27, 2025.
Hwang Dong-hyuk.
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
