‘Squid Game’ Season 4: Why Netflix Isn’t Making Another Season

For better or worse, the Squid Games have officially come to an end.

Despite being Netflix’s most popular show of all time, and the most recent season breaking even more records, Squid Game will not return for Season 4, with Squid Game‘s Season 3, Episode 6, “Saram-eun…” serving as the series finale.

Series director, writer, and executive producer Hwang Dong-hyuk confirmed in a letter to fans last summer that Season 3 would be the last. Referring to Season 3 as “the final season,” the director said, “I am thrilled to see the seed that was planted in creating a new Squid Game grow and bear fruit through the end of this story.”

Later opening up about the decision to wrap up the show with three seasons, Dong-hyuk told The Hollywood Reporter in November that when he began thinking “about the idea for the ending of Season 3, I think it sort of naturally came to me that this was the finale. I believed that with that story, I was able to tell everything that I wanted to tell through the story of Squid Game and also in the perspective of Gi-hun as a character, and I thought that we don’t need any further stories from here.”

Launching on Netflix to viral fame in 2021, Squid Game centers around Seong Gi-hun, a former gambling addict facing massive debt from loan sharks. He accepts a cryptic invitation to participate in the Squid Games for the chance to win a life-changing 45.6 billion Korean won. Entering the games as Player 456, he soon finds himself fighting for his life in a round of childhood games that could cost him his life.

Telling Gi-hun’s story was no easy feat, though, and Dong-hyuk told USA Today that he “had a lot of depressing thoughts in my mind as I was working on the show… I think I am more happy that I am free of the burden, the intense pressure. I have now finished.” He added to The New York Times that he is “very tired” and wants “to take a rest. Then I want to do feature films.”

Although the South Korean drama has wrapped its three-season arc, with little to no chance of a fourth season ever coming, the Squid Games may ultimately continue. Rumors have swirled that an American spinoff, directed by David Fincher, could be in the works following a surprise celebrity cameo in the series finale. However, Dong-hyuk told THR that he “wrote that scene wanting an impactful ending for the show, not in order to open rooms for anything else.”

All three seasons of Squid Game are now streaming on Netflix. The streamer hasn’t commented on the speculated American spinoff.