Not only has Netflix confirmed that Squid Game: The Challenge season 2 is set to air on November 4, 2025, but it’s also swiftly followed-up with the announcement that season 3 is also underway. This comes two weeks after the hit K-drama wrapped up for good with its own third season, which ended with an unexpected cameo that may (or may not) lead into David Fincher’s American remake.
In 2023, Netflix answered the question we all had on our lips – how would we all fare if Squid Game was real? It put 456 real-life players to the test, competing for the largest cash prize in reality TV history ($4.56 million). Games such as Red Light, Green Light and Dalgona carried over from the hit Netflix series, while new games, such as Battleships, were substituted for genuinely fatal ones, such as Tug of War.
Netflix has already told us to expect “new games and new rules,” with logic telling us each of the first three seasons of The Challenge should replicate the same fictional series. If that’s the case, Squid Game: The Challenge season 3 already has a huge problem on its hands with its most perilous game of all.
Squid Game season 3’s Jump Rope scene would be almost impossible to replicate in The Challenge
Of course I’m talking about Jump Rope, which appeared in episodes 3 and 4 of Squid Game season 3. In the episode, 16 players were eliminated with only 8 passing, including Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) managing to carry Kim Jun-hee’s (Jo Yu-ri’s Player 222) baby over safely. The rules are simple: cross from one side of a suspended path to the other while two giant robots wield a rotating jump rope across its path. There’s a gap in the middle of the pathway, making this slightly more perilous than season 1’s Tug of War. Teams were on two suspended platforms of this, with a giant guillotine cutting the rope when one team lost.
Squid Game: The Challenge season 1 did manage to replicate Glass Stepping Stones, with players falling to their ‘deaths’ while crossing a similarly suspended bridge made out of fake glass. However, it can’t be compared to Jump Rope, which has a closer level of actual danger to the binned-off Tug of War. Namely, both share one singular trait that makes a real-life version impossible – they’re an absolute health and safety nightmare.
The minute you have sharp things, flying things and any part of a game where players risk serious injury, there needs to be a Plan B. It might be one of the best streaming services around, but even Netflix won’t want to risk a lawsuit just for the sake of replicating the K-drama scene by scene. The safer option is to introduce a brand-new game nobody is expecting, which gives more reasons for subscribers to keep tuning in.
Then there’s the fact even the cast of Squid Game season 3 filmed the Jump Rope scenes using CGI. The robots are green screen, the suspended bridge is actually non-existent, and really, it’s just Lee Jung-jae making his own legs wobble while his feet are firmly planted on the ground.
Are we likely to see Jump Rope in Squid Game: The Challenge? I say no. And considering Battleships was my favourite game in the reality TV contest, I’m ready for some unexpected change.
