What the 'All of Us Are Dead' Director Has Said About Season 2 (And Season 3)

Gripping new Netflix K-drama All of Us Are Dead has topped the streamer's global rankings, including in the U.S. where it ranked first in the country's top 10 listing on Friday, February 4, thus becoming the second non-English series to reach the ranking after Squid Game.

The enthralling series, which follows a group of high school students as they attempt to survive a zombie apocalypse, reached the no. 1 spot in the streamer's U.S. ranking just a week since its release on January 28, according to Deadline.

But the show's Squid Game-like explosive potential was seen even before its official premiere, with is trailer having reportedly received over 10 million views on YouTube just a week after it was first revealed around mid-January.

Fans worldwide gagging for more from the transfixing K-drama will be glad to know All of Us Are Dead was intended to extend beyond Season 1, the director of the series, J.Q. Lee (also known as Lee Jae-kyoo) revealed Monday.

In a video interview with Korean media, Lee said "from the outset, the series wasn't planned as strictly a 12-episode piece," according to the South Korean edition of HuffPost.

Explaining there was still pressure in trying to squeeze the story into 12 installments, the director said it felt like 12 episodes were "most suitable for creating the storyline we had composed" for the first season.

Asked about the potential for a second series of All of Us Are Dead, Lee told Korean media he hopes Season 2 (and possibly even a third season) would come to fruition if many people continue loving the show.

Dishing on potential future plot lines, the director said Season 2 would have "a bit of a different feel" from the first season, reported South Korea's NewsPim.

Lee said: "If Season 1 was about the survival of mankind, then Season 2 would be about the survival of the zombies."

The director explained the first season revealed there were two "mutant zombies," in addition to the standard kind who enter a walking dead state after being infected by the zombie virus.

The mutants include those who are "immune" to the zombie virus (such as the Nam-ra character, plated by Cho Yi-hyun), and "the immortal" (such as Gwi-nam, a villain character played by Yoo In-soo, and Eun-ji, a student played by Oh Hye-soo, who is bullied by Gwi-nam and others). These zombies are effectively not dead in that they still have heartbeats.

Lee said a second season could see the story of these mutant zombies unfold in a battle between the immune and immortals against the rest of the zombies.

If there were to be a third season, the director believes the story would follow a "grand world war type concept," according to NewsPim.

The series is full of raw, gory zombie-fighting galore and emotional scenes of students killed in the apocalyptic tragedy, which some have compared to the Sewol ferry disaster in 2014, which saw the death of hundreds of students on a school trip via ferry to Jeju Island after the vessel capsized.

The incident sparked widespread criticism at the time, with the South Korean government blamed for a series of blunders in the rescue effort and not many survived as they had been ordered to stay in their cabins while the vessel was sinking.

Toward the beginning of All of Us Are Dead, the students' cries for help are ignored by the police.

At a later point, following a martial law ruling, soldiers who arrive to save the students are told to abort the rescue mission due to the possibility of them being infected with the zombie virus.

Speaking about the show's link to the Sewol disaster, the All of Us Are Dead director said that while he didn't specifically have the Sewol tragedy in mind when creating the series, themes around "the contradictions and lack of responsibility seen in society" were "naturally included" in the latest series, according to NewsPim.

"Exposed to life-or-death situations at the school and with no responsible adult in sight, the students lose hope and there is little the state or another group can do for them," he explained.

The pressure is on for All of Us Are Dead, which has been going strong, having topped Neflix's global ranking for nine consecutive days, South Korea's HuffPost reported Tuesday.

According to data from Flixpatrol, the show has topped the Netflix rankings in more than 25 countries since its premiere.

Korean webtoons have been dominating the streaming worlds, with All of Us Are Dead (based on a Korean webtoon whose Korean title translates to "Now at Our School") being among the latest webtoon spin-off K-drama hits on Netflix, following Hellbound and Sweet Home.

All three of these recent hit Netflix K-drama series originated on Webtoon, the world's largest digital comics platform, which launched stateside back in 2014, with around 14 million users in the U.S. and over 72 million users globally, according to the company.

All of Us Are Dead is available to stream now on Netflix.