Squid Game Season 2 Ending Explained: What Happens to Gi-Hun?

This article contains major spoiler for “Squid Game” Season 2.

The end of the first season of Squid Game. makes it abundant that the show’s seven-part season 2 will feature a wealthy and revitalized Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) on a quest to take down the titular game once and for all. Unfortunately, even after a two-year span, the mission runs into trouble and he finally decides to personally re-enter the deadly game.

Even more unfortunate is that Gi-hun greatly underestimates the frontman (Lee Byung-Hun), who appears to have ultimate authority over the Squid Game following the death of Oh Il-nam (O Yeong-su). This time, the masked warden – whose true identity is the stepbrother of disgraced police officer Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon) In-ho – is not satisfied with his usual cephalopod murder business out of social inequality. Instead, he is either fascinated by Gi-hun’s fight or determined to personally sabotage it. Therefore, he decides to play the game himself after the protagonist declares his own intention to wear the emerald green tracksuit again. The exciting (and from Gi-hun’s perspective, completely ignorant) team-up of the two former Squid Game winners lasts several episodes and culminates in the players’ violent rebellion against the guards… which ultimately fails and leaves Gi-hun’s poor friend dead Jung-bae (Lee Seo-hwan) takes a bullet to the head.

With season two’s ever-rising stakes and cliffhanger finale, creator Hwang Dong-hyuk is pushing the pedal so hard that it’s easy to see why “Squid Game” ends with season 3; There is no plausible way to raise the stakes any further without reaching endgame territory. So what happens at the end of “Squid Game” season 2 and how does poor Gi-hun fare in the carnage? Let’s take a moment to analyze the biggest, bloodiest game on Netflix.

Gi-hun starts the second season of “Squid Game” strong. In Episode 1, “Bread and the Lottery,” we find out that he has found a tracking device implanted in him by the organizers. He has also used his wealth to organize a manhunt for the recruiter (Gong Yoo), eventually defeating Squid Game’s grinning recruiter in a game of Russian roulette. After teaming up with Jun-ho, a survivor from the first season, he follows the Breadcrumbs to a Halloween party, has a tense speaker conversation with the frontman, and decides to get back in the game – armed with a secret tracker implant from own him, no less.

Unfortunately, the house is not used to losing. When Gi-hun wakes up again as Player 456 in Episode 3, “001”, his tracker has been removed and his outside team has no reliable way to find him. Gi-hun doesn’t know that the new player 001 is the frontman himself, who soon insinuates himself into the protagonist’s inner circle. The games after Red Light, Green Light are also different from the ones Gi-hun played, undermining its reliability. Despite all this, the protagonist manages to gain a following, and the battle between his enthusiasts marked “X” who leave the game and the players marked “O” who vote to stay symbolizes the philosophical tug of war between him and the frontman.

The main players are joined by a strong band of new Squid Game participants who march towards almost certain doom in the hope of a life-changing victory. Notably, the season also devotes a lot of time to the people who work for the game, from North Korean guard No-eul (Park Gyu-young) to the masked officer (Park Hee-soon) who leads the guards’ organ smuggling network – and of course, the duplicitous Captain Park, who secretly sabotages Jun-ho’s mission to find the island.

If you watched the first season of “Squid Game” and wondered why the players never try to overpower the guards, then the second season finale, “Friend or Foe,” will put your concerns to rest. Episode 6, “OX,” features the frantic game of “Mingle” and a fight that kills several players, including rapper Thanos (Choi Seung-hyun). “Friend or Foe” continues the chaos by turning the season’s voting theme on its head with a variation of the first season’s dorm room “special game” – this time with the two groups of voters specifically designed to vote in the middle of the Attack each other at night. Gi-hun, anticipating another deadly dorm fight, finally gets what he’s been preparing for and hatches a very different plan of attack than the organizers expected.

Instead of fighting other players, after the inevitable chaos, he and his crew pretend to be dead and ambush the armed guards when they approach them. This leads to a surprisingly efficient uprising, with Gi-hun’s newly armed faction battling the guards at familiar Squid Game locations. Unfortunately, they are running out of both ammunition and luck.

The mutiny forces the frontman to abandon his disguise as Player 001 and fake his death before returning to his usual role as organizer. It’s clear he’s not exactly happy with how things turned out, as he punishes Gi-hun by personally shooting his best friend Jung-bae. Still, it looks like the game organizer is emerging victorious despite the turmoil. The many deaths in the episode indicate that the “Leave” faction is now a clear minority and that the game will be played to its full potential… and thanks to Captain Park, who is the mercenaries of Jun-ho and Gi- hun actively sabotaged their attempts to locate them. On the island, help seems to be very far away.

To fully appreciate the end of Squid Game’s second season, we must first remember the first season’s finale, “One Lucky Day.” In this episode, Gi-hun’s older friend Oh Il-nam – the season’s supposedly dead Player 001 – turns out to be the game’s ultra-rich creator, and the two’s conversation on Il-nam’s deathbed expresses their opposing views on humanity. Gi-hun’s optimism triumphs over the rich thrill-seeker’s nihilistic views as the protagonist wins his final bet over whether passersby will help a man in need, but Il-nam dies before any real lessons can be learned or put into action .

As Il-nam’s protégé, the frontman shares his negative view of humanity and willingly takes on the old man’s duties – both as leader of the Squid Game and as the new, secretly evil player 001. He also shares a personal connection with Gi-hun as co-winner of the Squid Game and even has echoes of Cho Sang-woo (Park Hae-soo) from the first season, who is a capable but opportunistic and duplicitous ally. Aside from Gi-hun, the frontman also has a complicated history with Jun-ho, thanks to their familial relationship and opposing sides in the larger Squid Game conflict.

Unless a new threat emerges or the VIPs from season one return and significantly up their game, the frontman seems destined to be the series’ ultimate adversary. However, many questions remain unanswered, as much of his backstory remains shrouded in mystery and it often appears as if he is truly fighting for survival – most notably, he breaks the neck of a fellow contestant in his desperation to survive the “Mingle” game . Expect the character to continue his role as the show’s shady centerpiece in the third season, which will hopefully finally reveal his full story.

While the first season of Squid Game focuses on the game itself and the oppressed people trying to survive it, much of the second season revolves around two Squid Game winners and their diametrically opposed philosophies. However, that doesn’t mean the game isn’t afoot on plenty of other fronts too… and thanks to the fact that the season largely ends on a cliffhanger after the frontman and guards put down Gi-hun’s rebellion, those storylines remain that way hang that it becomes clear that a third season is on the way.

Aside from the game’s main story and its cliffhanger rebellion, the plot of No-eul’s organ harvesting with the masked officer and his co-conspirators falls by the wayside, with the implication that she was forced into submission. Jun-ho’s lengthy search for the Wild Island also leads to no real result, but gets a promising boost at the last minute when a mercenary finds out that Captain Park is a saboteur, is stabbed and thrown into the sea for his troubles. Both storylines will likely pay off in Season 3 – and in the event of a surprise Front Man redemption arc in the third act, they could even provide the series with handy replacement villains.

Despite the relatively abrupt end to the season, fans have no reason to be frustrated. The third season of “Squid Game” is scheduled to release in 2025, so the wait for what happens next won’t be unbearably long. For now, viewers can console themselves with the post-credits scene of a new, even more ominous-looking Red Light, Green Light game featuring two scary giant puppets and a real traffic light. At least it suggests that the final season of “Squid Game” pulls out all the stops… and then some.