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

This article contains major… Spoilers For the second season of “Squid Game”.

The end of the first season of the Squid Game series Makes this offer abundant The second season has seven episodes It will feature the wealthy and energized Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), who seeks to bring down the titular game once and for all. Unfortunately, the mission struggles even after the two-year time skip, and he eventually decides to personally return to the deadly game.

Unfortunately, Ji Hoon severely underestimates his front man (Lee Byung Hun), who seems to have the highest authority in the squid game after the death of Oh Il Nam (O Young Soo). This time, the masked supervisor — whose real identity is policeman Hwang Joon-ho’s (Wei Ha-jun) In-ho’s half-brother — isn’t content with the usual cephalopod-themed murder. Instead, he is either fascinated by Ji-hoon’s struggle or determined to sabotage him personally, so he decides to play the game himself after the protagonist announces his intention to wear the emerald tracksuit again. The exciting (and from Ji-hoon’s view, completely unintentional) team-up between the former Squid Game winners continues for several episodes, culminating in the players’ violent rebellion against the guards… which is ultimately a failure. Ji Hoon’s poor friend Jung Bae (Lee Seo Hwan) earns a bullet in the head.

With the stakes steadily rising for Season 2 and the exciting finale, creator Hwang Dong-hyuk pushes the pedal so close to the metal that it’s easy to see why. “The Squid Game” ends with Season 3; There is no reasonable way to raise the stakes any further without reaching the endgame zone. So, what happens at the end of “Squid Game” Season 2, and how did poor Ji Hoon fare in the massacre? Let’s take a moment to analyze the greatest and deadliest game on Netflix.

Ji Hoon starts off the second season of “Squid Game” with a bang. In the first episode, “Bread and the Lottery,” we find that he finds a tracking device that the organizers planted in him. He also used his wealth to organize a hunt for a recruiter (Gong Yoo), eventually defeating the smiling recruiter Squid Game in a Russian roulette-themed game. After joining forces with fellow survivor from Season 1, Joon-ho, he follows Breadcrumbs to a Halloween-themed party, has a tense conversation with Front Man, and decides to get back in the game – armed with his own secret implanted tracking device. Private, no less.

Unfortunately, the house is not used to losing. When Ji Hoon wakes up again as Player 456 in Episode 3, “001”, his tracking device has been removed and his team abroad has no reliable way to find him. Unbeknownst to Ji Hoon, the new 001 is the front man himself, who soon works his way into the hero’s inner circle. The games after “Red Light, Green Light” are also different from those played by Ji Hoon, which undermines his reliability. Despite all this, the protagonist manages to gain a following, and the conflict between the leave-the-game fans marked with an “X” and the players marked with an “O” who vote to remain symbolizes a philosophical tug-of-war between him and the front man.

The main players are joined by a strong group of new contestants in the Squid Game, who are walking towards almost certain doom in hopes of achieving a life-changing victory. It’s worth noting that the season also devotes a lot of time to the people who work in the game, from North Korean vigilante No Eul (Park Gyu-young) to the masked officer (Park Hae-sun) who leads the vigilantes’ organ-smuggling network — and, of course, Captain Park. The trickster, who secretly sabotages Joon Ho’s mission to find the island.

If you watched the first season of “Squid Game” and wondered why players never tried to beat the guards, the season 2 finale, “Friend or Foe,” addresses your concerns. Episode 6, “OX,” showcases Mingle’s frenetic gameplay and combat that kills several players, including rapper Thanos (Choi Seung-hyun). “Friend or Foe” continues the mayhem by bringing this season’s voting theme to the forefront with a variation on the first season’s bedroom “private game” — this time with the two groups of voters specifically designed to attack each other in the dead of night. Ji Hoon, who expected another deadly bedroom battle, finally got what he prepared for and formed a completely different plan of attack than what the organizers expected.

Instead of fighting other players, he and his crew pretend to be dead in the inevitable chaos, and ambush armed guards when they approach. This leads to a surprisingly effective mutiny as Ji-hoon’s newly armed faction fights the guards in familiar Squid Game locations. Unfortunately, they ran out of both bullets and luck.

The mutiny forces the front man to abandon his disguise as 001 and fake his death before resuming his familiar organizer role. He’s clearly not entirely happy with the way things are going, seeing as he’s punishing Ji Hoon by personally shooting his best friend, Jung Bae. However, the game’s organizer appears to be coming out on top despite the turmoil. The episode’s numerous deaths indicate that the Leave faction is now a clear minority and the game is destined to end entirely… thanks to Captain Park actively sabotaging Joon Ho and Ji Hoon’s mercenaries as they attempt to locate them. Island, help seems so far away.

To fully appreciate the ending of “Squid Game” Season 2, we must first remember the Season 1 finale, “One Lucky Day.” In that episode, Ji-hoon’s elderly friend Oh Il-nam – the season’s deceased Player 001 – turns out to be the extremely wealthy game maker, and the duo’s conversation on Il-nam’s deathbed establishes their opposing views on humanity. Ji-hoon’s optimism prevails over the rich thrill-seeker’s nihilistic views when the protagonist wins his final bet on whether passers-by will help a man in need, but Il-nam perishes before any real lessons can be learned or put to use.

As Il-nam’s protégé, the front man shares his negative view of humanity, and easily takes on the old man’s duties – as the leader of the Squid Game and the new villain 001. What’s more, he shares a personal relationship with Gi-nam. Hoon as a fellow Squid Game winner, and he also has touches of Season 1’s Cho Sang-woo (Park Hae-soo) as a capable but opportunistic and duplicitous person. ally. Aside from Gi-hun, Front Man also has a complicated history with Jun-ho, thanks to their familial relationship and opposing sides in the Squid Game’s larger conflict.

Unless a new threat emerges or the bigwigs from Season 1 return and dramatically up their game, it looks like the front man will serve as the series’ final antagonist. However, there are still many unanswered questions, as many parts of his background remain shrouded in mystery and he often appears to be truly struggling to survive – particularly having broken the neck of a fellow racer in his desperation to survive in a game. “Mingle”. Expect the character to continue his role as the mysterious linchpin of the series in Season 3, which will hopefully finally reveal his whole deal.

Where the first season of “Squid Game” focused on the game itself and the downtrodden people trying to survive it, most of the sophomore season revolves around the two Squid Game winners and their diametrically opposed philosophies. However, that doesn’t mean the game isn’t afoot on many other fronts as well… and thanks to the fact that the season ends on a cliffhanger after the front man and the guards subdue Ji-hoon’s rebellion, most of these plot threads are left hanging in a way that makes it quite clear that Season 3 is on its way.

Aside from the main in-game story and her suspenseful rebellion, No-eul’s organ harvester storyline with the masked officer and his co-conspirators falls by the wayside with the implication being that she was bullied into submission. Likewise, Jun-ho’s long quest to find the game’s island never really leads anywhere, though he does get a promising last-minute boost when one of the mercenaries discovers that Captain Park is a saboteur and is stabbed and thrown into the sea. For his problems. Both plotlines will likely get their payoffs during Season 3 – and in the event of a surprise third-act redemption arc for Front Man, they could provide the show with useful backup villains.

Despite the relatively abrupt end to the season, fans have no reason to be disappointed. Season 3 of “Squid Game” is scheduled to begin in 2025, so the wait to see how things play out won’t be unbearably long. For now, viewers can console themselves with a post-credits scene of the new ominous-looking “Red Light, Green Light” ride with two giant, creepy dolls and a real traffic light. After all, it indicates that the final season of “Squid Game” intends to pull out all the stops… and then some.