“I originally envisioned seasons 2 and 3 as a single story,” says creator Hwang Dong-hyuk.

Squid Game is going to end next year after season 3 hits Netflix, but it actually could have ended a lot sooner than that.

Creator/writer/director Hwang Dong-hyuk tells Entertainment Weekly that he had intended to only make one more season of his hit Korean drama. “I originally envisioned seasons 2 and 3 as a single story,” he says. “That’s how I wrote it. But in the process, it came out to be too many episodes. So I thought it’d be better to divide it into two.”

Squid Game season 2 is gearing up to debut all seven episodes on Dec. 26, and will ultimately end with season 3 in 2025. The showrunner previously opened up about how he lost many teeth due to the stress of making the Emmy-winning first season, which is why he didn’t want to return to make more. However, that all changed due to the critical and fan response.

“Honestly, when I was first working on the first season, I didn’t have any plans or thoughts about there ever being further seasons,” Hwang previously told EW. “In Korea, it’s not very common for series to have multiple seasons, and also because season 1 was so incredibly demanding, so I don’t think I had the confidence to once again work on further [seasons] where I would be the writer, director, and creator all throughout.”

The creator went on to explain that he did think about where the show could continue, but he never saw himself actually developing it. “I do remember when I was finishing up my scripts for the first season, towards the end, I did have this vague idea,” he said. “And I got to thinking about creating seasons 2 and 3, firstly because of the huge success of season 1, as well as there being just so much anticipation and expectation for the story to further develop by the fans. So I revisited that little bit of a possibility that I had left towards the end of season 1 after it was created, and we wanted to do a further story.”

Season 2 begins three years after the events of season 1, and Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), a.k.a. Player 456, has dedicated his life (and his $45.6 billion winnings) to put an end to the competition featuring deadly children’s games. He eventually decides to return to the game as a player to destroy it from the inside.

“I knew that there was so much expectation and curiosity as to what would Gi-hun do next by the fans, so I didn’t want to end it here,” Hwang said. “I wanted to tell the story of what happened to Gi-hun after where we leave him at the end of season 1 and what he does, what kind of actions he takes in order to put a stop to these games. As creator, writer, and director, it was almost my mission or my role to further tell that story… the story I wanted to tell came to a full closure at the end of season 3. And I wanted to repay all of the love that we had received in one way or another.”