Why Squid Game Season 2's Most Terrifying Game Was A Behind-The-Scenes Nightmare

One of the most impressive playground games on Netflix's "Squid Game" is the season 2 standout Mingle, which turns a real world team-building exercise into a breathtaking struggle for survival. The contestants step on a rotating platform and wait for a number to be announced, then enter the nearby rooms in groups the size of the ordained number. It's hectic, it's chaotic ... and, thanks to the gigantic, elaborate set, also strangely beautiful.

Some shows might have created the set using green screens, but "Squid Game" wasn't playing around: The makers of the show chose to tackle the behind-the-scenes nightmare of creating a practical Mingle set and filming the game on it. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, a number of key people behind the show gathered together to explain what a pain it was to put the set together (and how difficult it was).

"Everything was all real and practical on that set," production designer Chae Kyoung-sun explained. "2,000 light bulbs were used. We wanted to show this sparkly, beautiful lighting ... and it took about three months to build." According to cinematographer Kim Ji-yong, the massive, functioning rotating disc and the hectic nature of the game posed a massive challenge, as the size of the set made it impossible to catch all the action. At the end of the day, the series' creatives decided to combine the hectic shots on the ground with a bird's-eye view that showed the bigger picture.

"The result looks like you're looking through a microscope," Kim noted. Fortunately, the set also contributed to the show's sense of authenticity, as "Squid Game" creator Hwang Dong-hyuk could simply instruct the actors to play the game like it was real. "When you look at it from above, it's weird and dysfunctional, and it looks like so much chaos," Kim added.

"Squid Game" has featured many deadly versions of Korean playground games. By and large, the season 1 games are fairly straightforward. The Red Light, Green Light game with the giant creepy doll has a massive participant count, but it's just a matter of not moving when the motion-detecting doll is facing you and crossing the goal line within the time limit. Similarly, the dalgona carving of the Sugar Honeycombs game consists of figuring out how to carve the designated shape out of a circular candy, while Tug of War and Marbles are pretty much what it says on the label, and Glass Stepping Stones is a simple leap of faith game above a giant pit. Even the titular Squid Game, while unknown to most Western viewers, is fairly simple and the show explains it very thoroughly.

Unless we count the small-scale games the Recruiter (Gong Yoo) sets up for his personal enjoyment, the games in "Squid Game" season 2 are surprisingly few. Apart from the returning Red Light, Green Light, the season only features two new games, and both suffer from a pretty serious bout of sequelitis ... though not in an entirely negative sense, considering that their bloated nature also hits the viewer like a brick.

In an effort to one-up the previous contests, the Six-legged Pentathlon features no less than five different games, which have to be completed in groups of five people with their legs tied together. However, the carousel complexity of Mingle is far and away the most elaborate game the show has introduced yet, with its rules, set, and hectic group game nature custom designed to make things difficult. Seeing as "Squid Game" now has this to one-up, expect the games' scale only to increase when the show's third and final season premieres on June 27, 2025.