Tudum Live recap: Squid Game, Happy Gilmore, Wednesday and more

Netflix's Tudum Live event is running in L.A. tonight, beginning with a trailer for next month's Squid Game 3.

By William Hughes | May 31, 2025 | 8:21pm

Photo: No Ju-han/Netflix

TV News Tudum

Tudum Live recap: Squid Game, Happy Gilmore, Wednesday and more

Introducing Endless Mode: A New Games & Anime Site from Paste

Read our announcement | See the 10 Best Games of 2025 (So Far)

It’s time, once again, for Netflix to a) promote its upcoming slate of big, zeitgeist-grabbing shows and movies, and, b), remind us that they still insist on spelling out the sound that plays at the start of all their originals in the most annoying way possible.

That’s right: It’s Tudum, this time arriving in the form of a live event running at the Kia Forum in Los Angeles. And while we here at The A.V. Club (and you at home) won’t get to feel the pure, adrenaline-pounding thrill of watching a bunch of trailers in a massive concert venue like those in attendance will, we can still simulate the basic experience by, uh, watching those same trailers. And then talking about them! (As an added benefit for you, you also don’t have to watch the comedy bits and musical numbers running between the good stuff; if you need to imagine a dance troupe dressed up like Squid Game guards, we can’t stop you, but it’s about as optional as content gets.)

Most Popular

Unsurprisingly, Netflix kicked off festivities with the next big “event” show on its schedule: the third season of Squid Game, arriving on June 27. Introduced by the show’s cast, the trailer for the series revealed things haven’t exactly gotten better for anybody in the aftermath of the bloody climax of the show’s second season last December: It’s more games, more misery, more thinly veiled allegories for how capitalism will try to murder you dead. (Also, Lee Jung-jae’s Gi-hun seems even more miserable this time around then he did last time.)

We’ll be updating our write-up of Tudum throughout the evening, while also breaking out some of the bigger trailers. (Keep an eye out for the first look at the new Knives Out film, Wake Up Dead Man, up next.)

Update: If you’re not watching Tudum Live—and really, even imagining that possibility sends chills down our spine—some wrestlers were on stage for a minute, doing a lot of One Piece jokes. Then, more excitingly—at least, for this writer, who actually found the series pretty charming—the cast of the live-action One Piece showed up to show off the CGI version of fan favorite character Chopper for the show’s next season, set to come out in 2026.

Update: Next, Netflix brought out the two things every single 16-year-old in their audience is constantly screaming for: Bearded men in their 50s, in the form of Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, who were promoting their new movie The Rip. (Hilariously, you can hear the audience lose their minds like twice as hard for Steven Yeun than for either of the film’s stars after they bring him out as part of the cast.) Besides giving us a look at what we’re going to assume is Damon’s Odyssey beard, Netflix also rolled out a trailer (not posted to YouTube) for the movie, which looks like, yeah, a cop movie—albeit one with the novelty of Affleck and Damon acting together for the first time in a minute.

Next up: Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein!

Update: There’s something very aspirational about how incredibly checked-out and relaxed Adam Sandler seemed while Tudum was giving the big push for Happy Gilmore 2, gently mumbling his way through scripted bits as various actors from the original film showed up to lob questions at him from the audience. (Hey, Lovitz.) That relaxed attitude seemed to infuse the trailer for the film as well, which sees Sandler seemingly trading the anger that made him such a potent comic force back in the ’90s for cameos, gentle smiling, and a weak throughline about connection with family. (In other words, pretty standard modern Sandler.)

Next up: Stranger Things.

Final update: The final push of the event arrived, unsurprisingly, for Wednesday, with Jenna Ortega and the rest of the show’s cast on hand (pun unintended, ugh) to show off an extended look at its second season. (Which does at least have an, uh, killer hook, as Wednesday Addams uses her psychic powers to hunt down a serial killer she’s been interested in since she was 6—played by Haley Joel Osment.)

Oh, and Lady Gaga will be in the second half of the show’s second season, which was announced with (what else?) one last extended musical number in which Gaga performed for the crowd.