The Challenge’ producers explain season 2 Mingle mutiny outcome

This article contains spoilers for the first four episodes of Squid Game: The Challenge season 2.

Squid Game: The Challenge season 2 players may think they took control of the game, but their mutiny didn’t actually change anything.

The first four episodes of Netflix’s Squid Game reality competition series ended on an intense cliffhanger. The players decided they had enough emotional turmoil during Mingle after being forced to exclude many of their friends and allies, leading to their eliminations. So when the next number was called out (two), the players joined hands and refused to keep playing the game.

Even though they realized there was an even amount of players left, meaning no one would get eliminated in that round, they remained standing on the rotating dais in the center and didn’t run into the rooms on the edge to lock in their safety. Their mutiny forced the masked Front Man to show up with an army of guards and announce they would all receive a “gift” as a reward for their “courage” in stopping the game.

But the gift in question was more of a curse — because there are no true gifts in this game. When the players opened the box, they saw it contained a bag of marbles, and they realized the person they held hands with is now going to be their opponent in Marbles. That means all the pairs will be forced to eliminate their closest ally. Now that’s what we call drama!

Below, Squid Game: The Challenge executive producers John Hay and Tim Harcourt tell Entertainment Weekly that while the Mingle mutiny created juicy TV, it didn’t actually affect the game at all. Plus, they answer more burning questions about the first batch of episodes (now streaming on Netflix).

What was it like for you as producers watching the players mutiny against the game during Mingle, as they joined hands and refused to continue playing? Did you have to pivot in your plans at all as a result?

TIM HARCOURT: I think people have imagined that we pivoted a lot more than we did. The intention always for the last round was for there to be an even amount of pairs for everyone to run to a room, no one would be left outside. And then the intention was that the guards were going to put that box of marbles through the window of the doors of everybody’s room. So we didn’t actually pivot in that, but psychologically is incredibly interesting. When that last number was called out and everyone found their pairs, which is what we always intended to do, they rebelled and held hands in their pairs. We quickly figured we can still do what we want to do, just not into their rooms. We’ll just come onto the stage with the Front Man leading the guards to hand out the marbles, so we just literally pivoted to how those marbles were delivered.

JOHN HAY: We didn’t really have to do anything differently. But that was just a really fascinating reaction, which is why we wanted to keep it in (the episode) as we did.

HARCOURT: It was a great natural moment, and we just leaned into what happened — they didn’t want to play anymore and they rebelled, but I don’t feel like we’d lost control of the players in the game or exceeded any sort of power. It was a soft, velvet revolution.

Why did you start the season on a game that wasn’t Red Light/Green Light?

HARCOURT: Well, Red Light/Green Light hasn’t gone away, that’s all I want to say. This keeps the players and the audience on its toes. You can actually hear people when they first come in, they’re like, “Oh my God, we’re in the dorms?” Because they think all of a sudden, “We’re safe. We don’t have to play Red Light/Green Light.” But we are working on season 3 at the moment and Red Light/Green Light will feature again, let’s just say.

HAY: It’s like when see your favorite band, you want to hear the greatest hits, but if that’s all you hear, you’ll feel a bit shortchanged. You want the surprises as well. Once we decided not to do it, we went for something tonally different, as well as substantially different. We like the way it’s played out.

In the group that lost that first counting game, it seemed as if the woman who’s a nurse that was chosen to count didn’t start until like 10 seconds after it started, and then that group lost by like 10 seconds. Is that how it actually happened? Did she just wait to start counting?

HARCOURT: Yes, that is played out. She started late. But she should hold her head up high because she started about 10 seconds late, and she was about that off, so if she started on time, it may have been a completely different story. But I don’t want to put it completely on her obviously, because it is a team game, and it was incumbent on everybody to try and correct that. But obviously, part of the difficulty of the game is it is a team game, and you’ve got 228 voices there in that one room, and you can see how difficult it was for the twins to wrangle their respective teams.

HAY: But also good on her for stepping up. It’s a brave thing to do in that moment.

There are only nine episodes this season, whereas the first season had 10. Why is this season shorter?

HARCOURT: I don’t think there was anything particularly structurally different between the 10 and the nine (episodes).

HAY: It’s about whatever fitted the story best. It’s one of the nice things about being on a streamer, you can make things the length and rhythm that fits them best rather than being locked into a schedule. Nine felt like the right spread for the storyboard.

HARCOURT: We set out knowing it was nine episodes (this season). And I think it also batches quite well. We had a very long first batch (last season) of 5 (episodes the first week, then) 4, (then) 1. I think (this season’s) 4, 4, 1 might be better as well.

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Squid Game: The Challenge season 2 releases new episodes Tuesdays on Netflix.