Cheerful Fool

It's not ending!! Mydramalist just tends to put a placeholder number for long ongoing series since we don't know exactly how many episodes the whole thing will be as it'll most likely be on for years, so for now they just say its out of 100 episodes. Once we reach 100 they'll just change the number to something larger. I'm hoping this season lasts for a few years at least, 2d1n is well loved so I don't see it ending anytime soon.

I've watched from the second half of season 3, and I'm pretty sure they had just as many people in the crew if not more. They need a lot of cameras to capture all the angles for editing later, they have quite a few writers there as well, the PD I think has junior producers around or maybe they're assistants but you see them when they split into teams, one will lead one team and the main PD leads the other. As well as all the managers/stylists for each member. So there's definitely a lot of people but I'm not sure I'd say its overkill as they all seem to have some purpose or other.

It's pretty common for them to do more informative episodes around holidays/ days of interest. I don't think it's something they have to do, its just a fun way to spread information/celebrate the holiday. I know previous seasons would also sometimes have more informational episodes, like the King Sejong the Great episode, the admiral yi-sun-sin episode and the North Korea episode from season 3 all come to mind. Sure they're not usually as funny or entertaining but I find them interesting.

I started watching recently and I didn't start on episode 1 and I feel like I'm able to enjoy it well enough, what I did was google Running Man episode list, and look through and watch the ones I thought seemed fun/interesting. Once I got a feel for the members and started to enjoy it more I started watching the weekly episodes, I guess it depends if you want to view it casually or understand everything about the show whether to start at ep 1 or skip around/start with the most recent. If you want a shorter variety show that has a similar feel to running man, 2 days and 1 night season 4 has 90 episodes out right now so it'll be easier to catch up.

They released on Wavve, its a streaming service that i'm fairly certain is only available in Korea.

All 8 episodes will be released at once on it's original platform, but viki will be releasing them spread out (2 a week).

There's also the fantasy tag to think about, he might come back as a spirit or something. It will be interesting to see what happens.