“Squid Recreation” is as large as ever. Netflix revealed that the second season of the smash South Korean drama debuted to a whopping 68 million views globally since debuting on the streamer on December 25.
Netflix says it’s a file for the streamer, notching probably the most views in a premiere week ever, beating a file set by “Wednesday” in 2022, which managed solely 50.1 million views. It has already climbed to No. 7 on Netflix’s All-Time hottest record of Non-English language sequence, cracking the record in simply three days.
However Season 2 just isn’t fairly as large as Season 1 simply but, which stays the largest Netflix present, English or worldwide, of all time. The primary season has spent 24 weeks within the World Prime 10, even touchdown again within the Prime 10 this week with one other 8.1 million views. It was additionally introduced again because of the “Squid Recreation” cell online game and the arrival of the “Squid Recreation: The Problem” actuality sequence final 12 months. When it first aired again in September 2021, it remained on the Prime 10 for 19 straight weeks into January of 2022.
And whereas it was a success from the get-go, it had launched mid-week, and “Squid Recreation” didn’t change into a phrase of mouth sensation till its second week, when it exploded to 448 million viewing hours in every week. That helped catapult it to the No. 1 all time slot, notching 265.2 million views globally and a couple of.2 billion viewing hours in its preliminary 90 days on the service. The brand new season could have an extended street to achieve that degree of viewership.
“Squid Recreation” was one of many first main recipients of the Netflix Prime 10 bump. The service didn’t begin publishing Prime 10 viewing outcomes till summer season 2021, and having a present high the record every week, a world one no much less, was an effective way for Netflix to brag about its actually international attain. On the time although, Netflix solely tracked hours seen, not complete viewers, and it has since refined its methodology, giving extra weight to general viewers fairly than merely sequence or movies with future occasions.
Season 2 of “Squid Recreation” is a condensed seven episodes, ending on a cliffhanger earlier than the arrival of Season 3 — additionally the conclusion to the sequence — in late 2025. The world of “Squid Recreation” may proceed to broaden following the present’s conclusion, as experiences have circulated that David Fincher may direct an English-language spinoff for Netflix.
Lee Jung-jae stars within the sequence from creator and showrunner Hwang Dong-hyuk, which follows a dystopian world during which individuals scuffling with debt are given the prospect to win a fortune by enjoying kids’s video games — solely to seek out out that they’ll be killed in the event that they lose. The second season follows the victor of the primary season’s video games, Seong Gi-hun, as he tries to make use of his winnings to trace down the masked Entrance Man working the video games and shut them down for good.
Opinions of Season 2 have been a bit extra muted, with IndieWire’s Ben Travers writing that the return to the video games this time round lacked a few of the similar novelty that going into this colourful and lethal world evoked the primary time round.
Netflix had a giant Christmas, averaging over 30 million viewers globally for every of its NFL Christmas video games. It will likely be the primary of three seasons value of Christmas video games for Netflix. Each video games have been its most-viewed English-language TV titles of the week. As IndieWire beforehand reported, “Carry-On” has now spent three straight weeks because the No. 1 English language movie, and it may very well be on its method to cracking the All Time Prime 10. And the hour-long stand-up particular “Your Buddy, Nate Bargatze” managed to land at No. 4 on the English TV record when it debuted on Xmas.