After three years of anticipation, Squid Game season 2 arrived on Netflix to considerable fanfare and viewership in late 2024. Despite all the excitement though, another TV show managed to become the most-watched K-drama on the streaming service, with a perfect Rotten Tomatoes score to boot.
The release of Squid Game season 2 on Netflix may have been one of the biggest pop culture events of last year. After all, we’d been waiting since November 2021 to see what comes next for Seong Gi-hun, and that’s reflected in the 619,900,000 hours we all spent watching the episodes once they arrived on December 26, 2024.
But, in the words of Matthew McConaughey in The Wolf of Wall Street, those are rookie numbers, as a Korean newcomer managed to steal the show’s thunder. Romantic drama Queen of Tears debuted on Netflix in March 2024, accruing an astonishing 860,400,000 hours of watch time over the ensuing nine months.
Not only does that place it comfortably ahead of Hwang Dong-hyuk’s sci-fi thriller, Queen of Tears places second behind Bridgerton season 3 for the year as a whole. Impressive, especially when you consider the wider competition in the likes of Emily in Paris season 4, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, and The Perfect Couple.
It’s not just subscribers who became enamored by the romance series, either. Critics who reviewed it fell in love as well, leading to a nice, round 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, leapfrogging Bridgerton season 3’s 87% and Squid Game season 2’s 83%.
A melancholic affair, Queen of Tears follows a married couple, played by Kim Soo-hyun and Kim Ji-won, who rekindle their relationship after one of them receives a life-changing diagnosis. Together, they confront the issues impeding their marriage and rediscover what caused them to love each other in the first place.
It’s the latest creation from Park Ji-eun, a prolific TV writer in South Korea, known for several hits including Queen of Housewives, My Love from the Star, and Crash Landing on You. The latter is also available on Netflix, if you're looking for a good follow-up to the lovelorn events of what happens here.
Watching them will make our wait for the Squid Game season 3 release date feel a little shorter, in any case. We have a list of the best Netflix shows, too, for more of the finest entertainment on the platform.
