Netflix's 2-Part Thriller Series Is Officially One of the Biggest Streaming Hits in History

Published Nov 7, 2026, 3:08 PM EST

Liam Gaughan is a film and TV writer at Collider. He has been writing film reviews and news coverage for ten years. Between relentlessly adding new titles to his watchlist and attending as many screenings as he can, Liam is always watching new movies and television shows. 

In addition to reviewing, writing, and commentating on both new and old releases, Liam has interviewed talent such as Mark Wahlberg, Jesse Plemons, Sam Mendes, Billy Eichner, Dylan O'Brien, Luke Wilson, and B.J. Novak. Liam aims to get his spec scripts produced and currently writes short films and stage plays. He lives in Allentown, PA.

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There have been many valid criticisms made of Netflix’s streaming model and how the binge-watching model does a disservice to viewers, but in many cases it can be an important tool in spearheading experimental shows with daring high-concept stories. Squid Game was a surprise sensation that no one could have anticipated through algorithms or marketing meetings, as there was no expectation that a South Korean dystopian thriller would end up being a crossover success around the world. The greatest takeaway that can be drawn from the dominance of Squid Game is that it resulted from the singular vision of Hwang Dong-hyuk, the brilliant creator and showrunner who remained steadfast in producing the show his way and not making compromises. It’s this unfiltered and sincere approach that Hwang took to the material that made Squid Game such a lightning-in-a-bottle event, as audiences responded positively to a show where they genuinely could not predict what was coming next.

Squid Game happened to air at the right time at the end of 2021, when audiences were slowly beginning to move on from COVID-19, yet were still sticking to the viewership habits that they had picked up during the height of the pandemic. One of the novelties of the COVID era of Netflix is that international content grew more popular. When there was a limit on the amount of new English-language content being produced due to shutdowns, audiences showed willingness to try out international shows and ended up learning something about their own taste. Although a more enlightened viewership block may have helped Squid Game get a leg up in initial engagement, a show that is popular doesn’t rack up this amount of hours watched if it doesn’t cut deeper. Squid Game explored the devastating gap between the haves and the have-nots, and it questioned the way that entertainment took advantage of those deemed by society to be “lesser.” This wasn’t just an idea that resonated in South Korea, as it embodied sentiments that were shared around the world.

‘Squid Game’ Was an Unprecedented Global Phenomenon

Despite the fact that the series is completely original and not based on any previously existing material, Squid Game has a didactic style of storytelling that allows viewers to get clued into its implications because of their familiarity with dystopian narrative tropes. What distinguishes Squid Game from other shows or films that involve survival game show programs is that it is not set in the distant future; the reality of Squid Game resembles that of the present, and it is not unfeasible within the era of the “gig economy” to imagine that those with debts would sign up for the chance to win a fortune. Part of the reason that Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) is such a compelling protagonist is that he has a very relatable story of someone who wants to provide for his family, but is stymied by economic consequences. It was also a pure showcase for Lee, an actor with such charisma and pathos that he made the twisted plot mechanics of Squid Game all the more involving.

COLLIDERInteractive

Impact

Action/Quizzes/Your Franchise

Collider QuizWhat Action Series
Would You Thrive In?8 Questions · 4 FranchisesFour franchises. Four completely different ideas of what a hero is: the professional with a code, the family that never leaves anyone behind, the man who does his own stunts, and the guy who simply refuses to go down. Only one of them runs on your particular brand of trouble. Eight questions will tell you which one you would survive.The Four

Wick

Fast

Mission

Die Hard

Find Your Franchise

Beat 01 / 080% Shot

Question 01PRESENCE

01How does a room know you've walked into it?Every action hero arrives differently. Some of them arrive before they arrive.

ASomeone recognizes me, and the temperature in the room drops without a single word being said.BLoudly and warmly. I arrive with my people, and we're already laughing about something.CI'm the one who told everybody where to stand. I walked this room twice before anyone else arrived.DBy accident. I wasn't supposed to be here, and now I'm the only one who can do anything about it.

← BackPick one, then Next

Next Question

Beat 02 / 0812% Shot

Question 02COMBAT

02It turns physical. What does your fighting look like?Choreography is character. Yours says something about you.

AEconomical and devastating. Trained technique, no wasted motion, finished before most people notice it started.BLoud, heavy and weirdly joyful. I'm not elegant, I hit like a truck, and I always have backup.CTo plan, until the plan breaks. Then I improvise at full sprint and refuse to stop moving.DBadly, honestly, and with a lot of swearing. I take more punishment than I deal and I still don't go down.

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Next Question

Beat 03 / 0825% Shot

Question 03CREW

03Who is standing beside you when it starts?Some franchises are built on a team. Others are built on one person walking in alone.

ANobody. I have contacts, favors and people who owe me, but when it begins I work alone.BEveryone. My people are the entire point, and I'd trade the whole mission for any one of them.CA small hand-picked team I trust completely, and I'd still take the worst part of the job myself.DA voice on the other end of a radio and a building full of people who don't know I exist.

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Next Question

Beat 04 / 0838% Shot

Question 04PRESSURE

04It has gone badly wrong. What keeps you upright?Act two exists to find out what you're really made of.

AFocus, commitment and sheer will. Grief is fuel if you point it in the right direction.BThe people counting on me. I don't appear to have a limit when it's family on the line.CRefusing to accept the odds. Somebody has to do the impossible part, and it's going to be me.DSpite, mostly. And a growing sense that these people picked the wrong building.

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Next Question

Beat 05 / 0850% Shot

Question 05WHEELS

05There's a vehicle. What are you driving, and how?No action franchise has ever survived without a car chase. This one is yours.

AA black muscle car I am unreasonably attached to, and I will dismantle an entire empire over it.BSomething impossibly modified, at impossible speed, off an impossible ramp. Physics is a suggestion.CA motorbike at full throttle through a city I memorized last night. And then off a cliff.DA borrowed car, badly, while somebody in the passenger seat politely asks me to slow down.

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Next Question

Beat 06 / 0862% Shot

Question 06ORDERS

06How do you feel about the people giving the orders?There is always an institution. There is rarely a good one.

AThere are rules and I respect them absolutely, right up until somebody breaks one against me.BI don't take orders. I take care of people, and everything else tends to sort itself out.CI serve the mission, not the memo. If my people are in danger, the orders come second.DThey're in a van outside telling me what I'm doing wrong while I'm the one standing on broken glass.

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Next Question

Beat 07 / 0875% Shot

Question 07MOTIVE

07Underneath all of it, what are you doing this for?The stunts are the reason people come. This is the reason they stay.

ASomething was taken from me that can't be replaced, and I've been settling that account ever since.BBelonging. I built a family out of people who had nowhere else, and I'll defend it with everything.CThe conviction that if I stop, people pay for it. I don't know how to hand that to anyone else.DI just wanted to get through the holidays with my family. Everything after that was self-defense.

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Next Question

Beat 08 / 0888% Shot

Question 08LEGEND

08When the credits roll, what do people say about you?Every franchise is really an argument about what makes someone worth watching.

AThat I was a myth people warned each other about in whispers, and that they were right to.BThat I never left anyone behind, the door was always open, and there was always a place at the table.CThat I did the impossible part myself, every single time, and never asked anyone to risk it for me.DThat I was just a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time, who turned out to be very hard to stop.

← BackPick one, then Next

Reveal My Franchise

Casting Has Been CompletedYour Franchise Is

Four action series. One of them is built around exactly the way you handle pressure, people, and a room that has just gone very quiet. Here is where you would survive the trilogy, and probably headline it.

2014-2023John WickJohn Wick to Chapter 4Reasonable to the line. Immovable past it.

You are precision with a grudge. You don't posture, you don't escalate, and you don't warn anybody twice. That is exactly why the people who know you are so careful never to be the reason you start.Why You Would Thrive Here

• The Wick films run on discipline: an underworld with actual etiquette, a hero who honors every rule of it, and a world that unravels the instant someone breaks one against him.
• You share that quality. You are extraordinarily reasonable right up to the line, and then completely immovable past it.
• Focus, commitment and sheer will. You'd be the one carrying grief through three sequels and turning it into technique rather than noise.
• People wouldn't call you dangerous. They'd say your name quietly and let that do the work.

The CodeNo Wasted MotionSay It Quietly

2001-2023Fast & FuriousThe Fast and the Furious to Fast XThe mission can wait. The barbecue cannot.

You understand the thing the whole franchise is secretly about: the cars are spectacular, but the crew is the point. You collect people, you keep them, and you'd drive through a building for any one of them.Why You Would Thrive Here

• This series went from street racing to orbit without ever changing its real subject, because loyalty scales and plot doesn't have to.
• You have the same instinct. You build a family out of whoever turns up, and then you defend it past the point of reason.
• You'd thrive here because the franchise rewards exactly your strengths: warmth, nerve, an absolute refusal to leave anyone behind, and a relaxed relationship with physics.
• The mission can wait. The barbecue cannot.

Found FamilyRide TogetherPhysics Optional

1996-2025Mission: ImpossibleMission: Impossible to The Final ReckoningYou have never once delegated the cliff.

You over-prepare and then take the dangerous part yourself anyway. It looks like control, but it's really responsibility. You have never worked out how to ask somebody else to carry the risk.Why You Would Thrive Here

• This is the franchise of the plan that collapses on schedule: the team, the mask, the rooftop, and the one person sprinting flat out because sprinting is all that's left.
• You share that refusal to accept an outcome. Told the odds, you treat them as an administrative error.
• You'd thrive here because these films reward competence and loyalty in equal measure. The mission matters, but nobody on the team gets left on the wrong side of a door.
• Some people delegate the cliff. You have never once been that person.

Over-PreparedOwn The RiskStill Running

1988-2013Die HardDie Hard to A Good Day to Die HardYou declined to be the person who let it happen.

You are not the most trained person in the building, the best equipped, or the one anybody would have picked. You are simply the one still standing at the end, which turns out to be the only qualification that matters.Why You Would Thrive Here

• Die Hard invented the modern action hero by making him mortal: outnumbered, out-planned, battered, and extremely funny about it.
• You share that stubbornness. Adversity doesn't make you noble, it makes you sarcastic, and then it makes you unstoppable.
• You'd thrive here because these films reward improvisation and nerve over preparation, and you've never had the luxury of preparing anyway.
• You didn't want any of this. You just declined to be the person who let it happen.

Wrong PlaceImprovisesStill Standing

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Although Squid Game is a series that works best as a binge-watch because of how each installment dovetails into the next, the show takes advantage of the episodic format with the different challenges that exist within the game. The teases as to how the game escalated made it more exciting to finish the season, especially given how much focus Hwang put into the strategy involved to complete them. The complication of the series goes beyond pure survival because each of the individual games requires judgment calls regarding the ethics of self-sacrifice and making decisions on behalf of a collective. Part of the reason that Squid Game stuck around in the culture for months after it initially aired is that it prompted legitimate social, philosophical, and political conversations among audiences who debated what they would do in a similar situation; it is one of the few instances in which a streaming show had a “water cooler effect” and became “must-see television” over time.

‘Squid Game’ Retained Enthusiasm Until the End

The overall viewership numbers for Squid Game are staggering, and it’s unlikely that there will be another show that matches its performance given the way that streaming has grown more fragmented. The first season of Squid Game is the most-viewed individual season of any Netflix show ever with 265.2 million views; of the top five, three slots are taken up by Squid Game, as Seasons 2 and 3 take up the third and fourth places, respectively. Although Wednesday seemed as if it could have posed a challenge with its second-place performance of 252.1 million views for Season 1, it took a dramatic spiral for Season 2, losing half of its viewers. One of the advantages that Squid Game had in shooting Seasons 2 and 3 back-to-back was that it didn’t ask audiences to wait years for a cliffhanger, and thus there was not a significant drop-off.

Squid Game is Hwang’s show, and it has been proven that no one else has the vision to make it successful. The American remake of the show ended up dying in development, and the strange attempts to make an actual game show ended up feeling counterintuitive to the point of the story. Although Seasons 2 and 3 did not entirely live up to the hype, the joy of discovering Squid Game in its inception was a truly wondrous moment that showed the magic of what “peak TV” can do.