How Many Episodes Are In Netflix's Squid Game: The Challenge?
Yes, a "Squid Game" reality show is arriving on Netflix soon — and the 1st season is made up of ten episodes.
Before you get too excited about watching very real contestants duke it out for a cash prize (and, ideally, not die in the process), there's something you need to know. "Squid Game: The Challenge" will follow in the footsteps of Netflix's other buzzy reality shows, like "Love Is Blind" and "The Mole," and release its episodes in small batches, one week at a time. The first drop happens on Wednesday, November 22, with the second arriving on November 29 and the final batch of episodes hitting the streamer on December 6.
Thanks to time zone differences, "Squid Game: The Challenge" will also air at various times depending on where you are in the world. Like other Netflix shows, it'll drop at 12 a.m. PST — so if you're an Australian viewer, you'll get the series at about 7 p.m. If you're a North American East Coast denizen, you'll have to either stay up really late or wake up entirely too early to catch the show at 3 a.m. The United Kingdom will be able to watch the episodes at 8 a.m. You get it.
So what about the episode titles? They are as follows, in order: "Red Light, Green Light," "The Man with the Umbrella," "War," "Nowhere to Hide," "Trick or Treat," "Goodbye," "Friend or Foe," "One Step Closer," "Circle of Trust," and "One Lucky Day."
Wait, there's a Squid Game reality show?
There sure is! Here's a quick refresher on what exactly "Squid Game" is. The hit South Korean drama arrived on Netflix in 2021 and was an instant hit, becoming one of the streamer's biggest sensations in recent memory. In the 1st episode, viewers meet Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung Jae), a man whose financial struggles threaten to derail his entire life ... until he receives an invitation to participate in a mysterious competition. When he arrives at the strange arena, Gi-hun learns that they're all there to participate in the Squid Games, where they'll fight it out to win a truly enormous sum of money. This all takes a seriously dark turn during the competition's first game — a bizarre version of the children's game Red Light, Green Light run by an enormous robotic doll — where anyone who doesn't stop during a "red light" is massacred by sudden gunfire.
This should be clarified once again. "Squid Game: The Challenge" will not mow down its contestants like the source material. The players will be competing for an enormous cash prize, though — $4.65 million, to be precise, and the game also boasts over 456 players at the start. How people will be eliminated remains to be seen, but it'll certainly be less bloody than the fictional version.
"Squid Game: The Challenge" premieres its first batch of episodes on Friday, November 22.