KPop Demon Hunters 2 is Coming: What We Want from the Sequel

Huntrix is back for an encore. Just days before KPop Demon Hunters is sure to net a couple of Academy Awards, Deadline has announced that Sony has put a sequel to the Netflix hit in development, with Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans back to direct. “These characters are like family to us, their world has become our second home,” Appelhans said. “We’re excited to write their next chapter, challenge them and watch them evolve — and continue pushing the boundaries of how music, animation and story can come together.”

It’s those last lines that really have us excited about the future. The first KPop Demon Hunters melded modern pop star spectacle with Korean folklore and CGI animation with classical cartooning, resulting in a unique work that pleased a range of viewers. How do Kang and Appelhans follow that up? We don’t know, but we do have some requests for the next stop on the Huntrix tour.

Sunlight Sisters

Easily the biggest mystery surrounding the KPop Demon Hunters narrative involves Rumi’s mother, Mi-yeong Ryu. At first, it seems as if Ryu and her fellow performers in the Sunlight Sisters exist as little more than table-setting, a brief and easy explanation for how Rumi became a demon hunter. But as we learn more about Rumi’s backstory, Ryu becomes more complex. How did she come to fall for a demon? What sort of conflicts did that create in her profession? What led up to her death?

We don’t necessarily need Ryu and the Sunlight Sisters to become the stars of KPop Demon Hunters 2, but there’s clearly some narrative and thematic ground to travel there. If the sequel can show us the path that Ryu traveled, we may get a better understanding of where Rumi will go as she comes to accept her new normal.

Mira and/or Zoey

Given her dual identity and her connection to Jinu, Rumi was the perfect focal point for the first film. But Mira and Zoey clearly have more to offer than just being supporting characters. If Rumi’s main arc has more or less finished, it’s time to let a new member of Huntrix take the lead.

Obviously, a shift in focus will change the balance of the story, as Mira and Zoey have very different personalities than Rumi. But that could allow KPop Demon Hunters 2 to have a new tone. Will we get a darker story, with Mira coming to grips with her band’s even greater fame? Will Zoey allow her exuberance to get the best of her, forcing her to clean up a mess she didn’t intend to make? Whatever the direction, we’d love to see Zoey and Mira become more than just backup singers.

The Other Acts

Part of KPop Demon Hunters‘s magic stemmed from its ability to work a high-stakes spiritual battle into the world of pop music competition. To pull off something on such a cosmic scale, Kang and Appelhans had to narrow their focus to just two acts, Huntrix and the Saja Boys. They could only gesture toward the existence of other KPop performers.

The sequel is the perfect time to let us see (and hear!) some other groups in the KPop Demon Hunters universe. Maybe we see Huntrix go on tour with an act that has nothing to do with the demon hunting side of things, leading to new hijinks. What if they get paired with a traditionalist act who wants to dethrone Huntrix while rejecting Rumi’s new sympathy for demons? There’s clearly a lot of room to expand in this universe.

No More (But No Less!) Bobby

Voiced by Ken Jeong, Huntrix’s nervous manager Bobby was a highlight of the first film. He always brought welcome comic relief to the story, and stole every scene he was in. However, animated films have a bad habit of taking a likable side character and pushing them to the forefront in the sequel (see: Mater in the Cars movies and Olaf in Frozen).

KPop Demon Hunters 2 cannot do that with Bobby. They have a perfectly good side character already, one who works great with less than ten minutes of screen time. Putting more attention on Bobby not only takes up space that could be used for other acts or Rumi’s mother, but it also stretches Bobby beyond his limits, turning him from a welcome distraction and into an annoyance.

Beyond Demon Hunting

By the end of the first KPop Demon Hunters, Gwi-Ma had lost and the Honmoon was restored, blocking the demons out of our world. So, that’s one problem out of the way, but surely a world in which demons exist also has a lot of other monsters lurking around. Let’s see Huntrix hunt something other than demons.

What, exactly? Well, that’s where we don’t know, because we don’t have the knowledge of Korean folklore to make recommendations. But Kang and Appelhans brought such specificity to the first film that they can surely do it again, giving us another look at monsters most of us in the West have never even heard of.

KPop Demon Hunters can be found streaming on Netflix.