Red Light: Why ‘Squid Game’ Season 2 Won’t Catch Season 1
“Squid Game” Season 2: You have been… eliminated (from competition with Season 1).
“Squid Game 2” just had the biggest week-to-week decline in series history — and it’s only Week 3. That whole prediction we made about “Squid Game 2” topping the first season as Netflix’s biggest ever? It’s time to start walking that back a bit.
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From its first full week of availability to its second, “views” of “Squid Game 2” declined 55 percent, from 58.2 million (the week of December 30 to January 5) to 26.3 million (Jan. 6-13). We wrap “views” in quotation marks there because it’s an official Netflix metric that is more math equation than the exact meaning of the word. For Netflix, “views” are a season’s total hours viewed during the defined time period divided by a season’s runtime. The resulting quotient is then rounded to the nearest 100,000.
When the first “Squid Game” season rolled out in September 2021, Netflix only reported weekly hours viewed, so we had to do some retroactive math. Counting only full weeks within the first 91 days of availability — Netflix’s self-imposed cutoff for viewership records — the largest “Squid Game” decline was a drop of 43 percent fewer views between the first season’s fifth to sixth weeks.
“Squid Game” Season 1 was consumed very differently than “Squid Game 2.” The original season was a snowball — but snowballs take time to build. Because Season 1 became such a breakout sensation, “Squid Game 2” got out of the gates at a far faster pace.
In just its first four days of availability (Dec. 26-29, 2024), “Squid Game 2” was viewed a whopping 68 million times. That’s fantastic. Only Week 3 of “Squid Game” Season 1 (an estimated-by-us 68.7 million views) matched that number — with nearly twice as many days (seven vs. four) counted.
The first full week for “Squid Game 2” racked up 58.2 million views, more than any other Season 1 week. But Week 3 would not be a high this time around — it went the other way, all the way down to 26.3 million. That’s still a strong number, but it’s not “Squid Game”-strong.
Here is where we point out that last week’s viewership may have been impacted by a number of factors. First and foremost, this past weekend was NFL’s Wildcard Weekend with five playoff games to consume. The week also featured a pair of high-profile NCAA football semifinal playoff games. It is also possible the L.A. wildfires had some impact in terms of potential viewership.
Netflix is probably glad we shared those caveats. They won’t like this one: “Squid Game” Season 1 was just better than Season 2. Among its flaws, “Squid Game 2” ends on an annoying cliffhanger. Not that anyone hangs around the office water cooler anymore (or even goes to an office anymore), but there’s less to discover and less of an urgency to discover it. The series will culminate with a third season.
None of this means “Squid Game 2” is a flop. It’s not.
In just 20 days, “Squid Game 2” already has the third-most views (152.5 million) of any Netflix series, English-language or otherwise. The first “Squid Game” got 265.2 million views in its first 91 days; “Wednesday” Season 1 had 252.1 million. In our estimation, it would require quite a rally for “Squid Game 2” to move up any higher on the all-time leaderboard. Our bad on that one.
In our defense, the opportunity was certainly there: Netflix now has approximately 69 million more global paid subscribers than it did when the first “Squid Game” season came out.
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