With “Squid Game” Season 3, one of the biggest shows in TV history comes to a close. Back in 2021, the juggernaut Korean Netflix series first introduced audiences to its semi-dystopian but far too relatable death game, and the world clamored for more. Creator Hwang Dong-hyuk originally planned for a limited series, but after “Squid Game” broke global records, he returned to the table for more, filming Season 2 and Season 3 back-to-back as a two-part ending for the series.
As a result, Season 3 is a lot more directly related to Season 2 than Season 2 was to Season 1. It’s set within the same games as Season 2, picking up directly after the finale, and features the same cast of players. So if you need a refresher before you dig into Season 3, here’s a comprehensive “Squid Game” Season 2 recap with all the details you might have forgotten.
Out of the frying pan, into the fire
In the first season of “Squid Game,” the episode titled “Hell” is actually the one where the contestants get a reprieve and vote their way out of the games, only to find it so miserable and hopeless that a whopping 187 players willingly decide to return to the games, knowing full well what measure of carnage awaits them. That carnage, at least, comes with the chance of riches.
Season 2 frontloads that perspective, taking its time building up to the games, and emphasizing the bleak world that awaits any player who wins. The first two episodes of “Squid Game” Season 2 are set entirely on the outside, following Gi-hun (Lee Jung‑jae) and Jun-ho’s (Wi Ha-joon) overlapping investigations into the games. Eventually, those paths intersect, but not before some death and extreme trauma courtesy of the recruiter (Gong Yoo).
On the way to his flight to America (the red hair scene glimpsed at the end of Season 1), Gi-hun witnessed the Recruiter playing his slap game with another desperate person and turned around, got a threatening call from the Front Man, and vowed to find and destroy the games. When we catch up with him, he’s spent the years since his first games (and the the riches he earned there) hunting for the Recruiter with the help of his former loan shark, Kim Jeong-rae and his longtime employee (and friend), Choi Woo-seok.
After years of striking out, the pair finally find the Recruiter, playing one of his slap games with a young man we will come to know as failed crypto bro Lee Myung-gi (Im Si‑wan). Afterward, they follow the Recruiter while he torments homeless people with the choice between bread and a lottery ticket — destroying all the leftover food with glee when he’s done, right in front of the hungry.
With Gi-hun racing to meet them, the pair tries to physically take the Recruiter down in an alley. He quickly gets the upper hand, knocks them out and stages a twisted game all his own, forcing Mr. Kim and Woo-seok to play a hybrid of rock-paper-scissors and Russian roulette. In the end, Mr. Kim realizes he has the upper hand, but he refuses to play it, choosing to die rather than cause his friend’s death.
Gi-hun speeds toward them and gets pulled over by Jun-ho, who, in short turn, realizes Gi-hun is connected to the games, and before long, they all wind up at Gi-hun’s place at the Pink Motel. There, we get another round of Russian roulette between Gi-hun and the Recruiter, who explains he used to work the Games, where he put a bullet in the head of his own father. They have a life-or-death philosophical standoff as they trade rounds of Russian Roulette, and ultimately, The Recruiter chooses to pull the trigger knowing it’s loaded rather than admit he’s a pawn for the people who run the games.
Jun-ho hears the shot and rushes in, finding the grisly scene, but when he tries to arrest Gi-hun on suspicion of murder, Woo-seok knocks him out. Once they have some time to talk, they realize they’re all on the same mission — and indeed, they previously met when Jun-ho infiltrated the games in Season 1. After that, they team up to try to bring the games down together, setting a plan for Gi-hun to go back into the games (with a tracker lodged in a fake tooth) while Jun-ho and Woo-seok will come in guns blazing with the help of the Captain’s boat.
A new perspective
Season 2 also offered audiences a new way into the games, bringing us into the perspective of the guards through the character of No-eul (Park Gyu-young); a North Korean defector who sleeps in her car outside the amusement park where she works as a costumed mascot. There, she meets a young girl suffering from bone cancer and feels an intense connection to the child, who depends on the care of her father, Park Gyeong-seok (Lee Jin-wook), an artist who also works at the park.
Before too long, we get some context for why their sweet, simple interactions presage such a transformative reaction in No-eul. When she escaped from North Korea, she had to leave her daughter behind. She’s hired an investigator to try to find the girl but he’s coming up empty.
But that doesn’t mean she’s going to give up — on her daughter, or on the sick young girl. After all, as we learn throughout the season, No-eul is fearless and capable of extraordinary feats. In her past, she was a soldier and when she left North Korea, she got out by killing her superior officer — and then the pursuit team that tried to chase her down, too.
At the end of Episode 2, we see No-eul make her way into the lockers and suit up as a guard in the games, where she’s disturbed to find Gyeong-seok is a player. She becomes an unknown ally to him behind the scenes throughout the season while sabotaging the black market organ harvesting operation happening inside the games.
Meet the new players
Naturally, since Gi-hun was the only survivor from the Season 1 games, Season 2 has a massive new ensemble to know. It’s a lot of characters with a lot more pre-existing interpersonal relationships that take center stage.
Season 1 toyed with that element — most notably in the husband-wife duo who had to play each other in the emotionally brutal Marbles game — but Season 2 really amplifies it. Dong-hyuk confirmed it’s an intentional choice by the Host and Front Man to “deliberately bring close people together within the same game to put them in a test and see what happens to them in these extreme circumstances.”
Here’s a quick breakdown of all the key characters, their allies, enemies and relationships. If you’re looking for a more in-depth guide to the Season 2 characters (with photos), you’ll find that here.
- Seong Gi‑hun (Lee Jung‑jae), Player 456: Gi‑hun was the sole survivor of the first game and returns to the arena, aiming to dismantle the operation from within.
- Hwang In-ho, aka the Front Man, aka Young-il, Player 001, formerly player 132 (Lee Byung-hun): The cruel Front Man oversees the games, and in Season 2, he got in on them too. He’s a previous winner who took over as Front Man at some point, and in Season 2, he joins the games and befriends Gi-hun using the fake identity of Young-il, using his prowess to influence the games and, ultimately, destroy Gi-hun’s rebellion from the inside.
- Park Jung‑bae (Lee Seo‑hwan), Player 390: Gi‑hun’s gambling buddy from Season 1 (who couldn’t lend Gi-hun money at the time because of his own financial woes with his business) makes an unexpected return inside the games in Season 2. He’s a former marine with a good sense of humor, who is Gi-hun’s right-hand man in Season 2.
- Lee Myung‑gi aka “MG Coin” (Im Si‑wan), Player 333: A crypto-influencer who didn’t just tank his own finances with bad investments — he brought down a lot of his followers. That includes Thanos, a significant but short-lived Season 2 antagonist, and Nam-gyu, as well as Myung-gi’s ex-girlfriend Jun-hee, who is also in the game due to that crypto crash.
- Kim Jun‑hee (Jo Yu‑ri), Player 222: Pregnant, desperate and broke, Jun-hee entered the games after going under on her ex-boyfriend (and father of her unborn child) Myung-gi’s bad crypto investing advice. She quickly aligns with Gi-hun’s group and keeps her relationship with Myung-gi to herself.
- Cho Hyun‑ju (Park Sung‑hoon), Player 120: Kindhearted but kickass, Hyun-ju is a transgender ex-special-forces soldier who entered the games to pay for gender-affirming surgery and a new life in Thailand. She quickly aligns with Gi-hun’s group, and strikes up a sisterly bond with the kind but short-lived Yong-mi. She’s a key player in Gun-hi’s armed rebellion.
- Park Yong‑sik (Yang Dong‑geun), Player 007: A gambling addict drowning in debt, Yong-sik is immature and impulsive, and he gets the surprise of his life when he enters the games and finds his elderly mother is there too.
- Jang Geum‑ja (Kang Ae‑shim), Player 149: A tough but compassionate woman who survived the Korean war and a bad marriage, Geum-ja is Yong-sik’s mother, who also strikes up a bond with Jun-hee and Hyun-ju.
- Kang Dae‑ho (Kang Ha‑neul), Player 388: A young man who grew up with four sisters, Dae-ho buddies up with Park Jung‑bae after they connect over being in the military. Dae-ho enthusiastically joins Gi-hun’s rebellion, but he also brings it crashing down when he’s tasked with retrieving more ammunition, but can’t bring himself to rejoin the fight when he makes it to safety.
- Park Gyeong‑seok (Lee Jin‑wook), Player 246: Gyeong-seok is a devoted father who plays to pay for his daughter’s cancer treatment. Still, he fights alongside Gi-hun in the rebellion. Unbeknownst to him, he’s also the subject of fixation for one of the guards, No-eul, who bonded with his daughter at her job outside of the games and was horrified to see him in the competition.
- Thanos (Choi Seung-hyun), Player 230: Moving to the more antagonistic players, Thanos is a pill-popping menace who relishes in the violence and chaos of the games. He’s in the games because he went broke on Myung-gi’s bad crypto investing guidance and he holds a big grudge — right up until the moment Myung-gi stabbed him to death in a bathroom brawl.
- Nam-gyu (Roh Jae-won), Player 124: Every bit as unpredictable and blood-thirsty as Thanos, a former drug addict and eager killer, Nam-gyu was always by Thanos’ side in Season 2 and looks poised to uphold his troublemaker legacy now that he’s gone.
- Min-su (Lee Da-wit), Player 125: Min-su was an unlikely ally of Thanos’ group for a time who took a liking to Se-mi, but timid and cowardly, he made no effort to save her when Nam-gyu brutally murdered her during the lights-out attack from the “O” faction.
- Im Jeong-dae (Song Young-chang), Player 100: Stubborn, brusque, loud and selfish, Jeong-dae is in the deepest debt of all, a former big-timer who took out a 10 billion won loan. That means he’s committed to staying in the game no matter how horrific it gets, and he’s always encouraging other players to do the same.
- Seon‑nyeo (Chae Kook‑hee), Player 044: A veteran shaman with an arrogant and erratic personality, Seon-nyo is bit of a wildcard with a taste for vengeance who’s prone to freaking people out with her intense prophecies.
The games begin: Red light, green light 2.0
Gi-hun very quickly realized he’s stuck in the game again for real, with no help on the way, when he discovers the tracker in his false tooth has been removed. Instead, he pivots strategy to trying to organize the contestants to give them the best chance at survival.
At first, things begin in a familiar way, though with some new quirks and revelations. For instance, they once again begin by humiliating the contestants, revealing their debt tally (including a particularly impressive 10 billion won owed by contestant 100) and videos of them getting slapped around during their recruitment Ddakji games. But this time, there’s a new twist — the players will vote and decide whether or not to continue after each game.
As in Season 1, the games begin with a round of Red Light, Green Light. This time, we get a better understanding of how it works — and with a survivor on the field, the players have a better chance at making it through. Gi-hun warns everybody that they will be shot if they move a muscle during a red light.
They don’t believe him, but they’re unnerved enough to follow his command — until a bee lands on one of the players. She screams, gets shot, and suddenly they realize he’s telling the truth. Gi-hun then guides the players to fall into lines, shorter people behind the taller people, to help work as a group and shield any movements from the detectors. He can’t save them all, but it’s far from the chaos and carnage of the Red Light, Green Light game in Season 1, and his intervention saves dozens of lives.
Unfortunately, nothing is so simple; there are some more twists at play. For one thing, we get a behind-the-scenes look at how the game operates. It’s not quite a mechanical and high-tech as you might have thought from Season 1 — from No-eul’s perspective, we see that it’s human snipers who are eliminating the players, including her. When Gi-hun and Hyun-ju return to the field to save the life of a man who was shot through the leg, dragging him over the finish line just in time, she shoots him in the head, ending their brief victory. But there’s also danger from the players themselves, especially the purple-haired wildcard Thanos, who loads up on drugs and then uses the line formation to knock down all the players in front of him with a blissed-out grin.
All the same, Gi-hun’s guidance makes a significant difference. 91 players die during the game, compared to the 250+ who died in the Season 1 bloodbath. Though his plans immediately went off the rails, Gi-hun continues to prove his ability, not just to play the game, but to organize his fellow players toward a better outcome.
Two-party polarization and the illusion of choice
Unfortunately, this game is constructed to test him in new ways, and it’s got a significant new dynamic that didn’t exist in the previous game: the vote. Specifically, a vote that allows everyone to go home with a split share of the piggy bank cash accrued so far (rather than nothing, which is what they got when they voted out last season). It’s a first-time offer for players in the game, and it sounds like a better deal, right? Not so much.
The table is tilted, the game is rigged. Several factors are at play that prevent the vote from swinging toward an early exit, and not just human nature. What the vote really does is formalize an us-vs-them dynamic within the game, crystallizing a two-party binary that puts the players at odds with each other, fighting for an outcome that’s already predetermined by the massive systems and powerful figures behind the game. As we saw in Season 1, there’s already a natural inclination for the strong and/or cruel to target the kinder, weaker players, but by slapping badges on their suits, they start to identify as warring factions of Xs and Os; a conflict that eventually boils over into a bloody battle.
At every turn, the vote is manipulated in some way, from psychological tactics like the money count that precedes every vote to the overnight pause in proceedings after a tie vote, which results in a massacre that completely tips the scales. But perhaps the most direct interference of all is the arrival of 001.
Second ‘001’, same as the first — a little bit deadlier and a whole lot worse
Once again, “Squid Game” gives us a manipulative Player 001, an inside man who shows up just in time to prevent what would have been a tie vote out of the gate.
After the first game, the vote is perfectly split with one player left: 001 walks up and presses the blue circle, a final vote that sways the tide. And who should it be but In-ho, aka the ruthless Front Man (and brother to Jun-ho) from Season 1?
Of course, in Season 1, it was Oh Il-nam who played as 001, the old man whom Gi-hun befriended and betrayed in Season 1, only to later discover that Il-nam was the creator and host of the games all along. A dying tycoon who decided to take his creation for a spin before his time was up and had a genuine blast doing it (though, notably, he played without real peril of death, which probably helped).
You might think that would make Gi-hun instantly suspicious of the new 001. You would be wrong. In-ho, assuming the fake identity of Young-il, charms the rest of the players out of the gate, possessing an impressive quiet strength and a convincing but illusory veneer of integrity. He becomes a seeming confidant and ally to Gi-hun, while in reality, he’s steering the game from the inside, covertly sabotaging Gi-hun’s resistance efforts as they unfold.
Jun-ho’s hunt for the island
While Gi-hun is working to bring down the games from the inside, In-ho’s brother Jun-ho searches for the island where they’re taking place with the help of Woo-seok, a team of armed men and the boat captain who pulled him out of the water after his brother shot him in Season 1.
That search immediately runs into trouble when they realize that Gi-hun’s tooth implant tracker was removed and placed on the wrong island as a decoy. From then on, they only have Jun-ho’s memory, maps, drones and the boat captain’s knowledge of the region to go off of — which turns out to be a real problem when it’s revealed that the captain is a saboteur. When one of Jun-ho’s men catches him tampering with the drone, the captain stabs him to death and drops the man’s body overboard.
Not much happens here otherwise. They fall for a bombed trap, which leads to some injury, but mostly they just try and fail to find the island.
The games continue: Six-Legged pentathalon and mingle
Gi-hun immediately starts feeling the pressure of trying to keep his fellow contestants alive, which manifests in the form of a nightmare. As they ready for the second game, Gi-hun dreams that he guides everyone to select the triangle in Dalgona, only to discover that it’s been redesigned with an impossible, absurdly intricate geometric pattern. The game is rigged even in his dreams.
But Gi-hun need not have worried about that, his advantages in the games are over — there are new games in store this time around. First up is the Six-Legged Pentathalon, which requires five contestants to strap their legs together and make their way around a course while beating five unique mini-games, one per person, reaching the finish line before the five-minute timer goes off. The games are: Ddakji, Biseokchigi, Gonggi, Paengi Chigi and Jegi.
Thanos assembles his unusual crew, including Nam-gyu, Min-su, Se-mi and Gyeong-su. Gi-hun teams up with Jung-bae, In-ho, Dae-ho and Jun-hee, while Hyun-ju, Young-mi, Yong-sik, Geum-ja and Seon-nyeo make another team. They all make it across the finish line, but 110 players are eliminated in the second game.
Next up is Mingle, which requires the players to instantaneously create groups of different numbers from round to round, from as big as 10 people to as little as two people. Those left without a group of the correct number, or who can’t make it into one of the safe rooms in time, are eliminated.
That includes Gyeong-su, whom Thanos quite literally kicks to the curb in a drug-addled frenzy. In a heartbreaking moment of last-minute misfortune, sweet Young-mi gets knocked over just before she reaches her room. Myung-gi swoops in just in time to replace her, stopping Hyung-ju from running after Young-mi and locking in the safe room just as the final seconds count down. Yong-sik gets separated from his mother and abandons her in a panic, but In-ho and Gi-hun swoop in just in time. Most players weren’t so lucky. In total, 155 contestants are eliminated in the third game.
Jung-bae also gets a glimpse of the real In-ho during Mingle. They wind up paired together during the 2-man round — a mass elimination round by design, since there are not enough safe rooms for all of the players — but when they reach the safe room, someone is already in there. With seconds counting down, In-ho snaps the other man’s neck, killing him on the spot, to ensure they are the only two living players in the room by the time the clock stops. Jung-bae later very nearly voices his newfound suspicion of In-ho to the rest of the group, but doubts himself before he tells anyone what he saw.
The bathroom brawl and the lights out massacre
The introduction of the post-game vote polarizes the players against each other, a tension that grows with each round as the body count and prize money grow in tandem, and as the players begin to internalize their status as Xs and Os as a part of their identity.
It all boils over after Mingle, a game which forced the players to betray and doom their fellow players in a way the previous games hadn’t. Naturally, a few more folks are ready to call it after that experience — and after Mingle’s huge body count significantly increases the prize money — and a few former O voters make the switch, leading to a literal 50-50 tie. As per the game rules, that means a second vote will take place — but critically, it won’t take place until the following day, leaving plenty of time for unrest to foment.
Naturally, it’s the unruly drug addict Thanos who lights the spark — picking a fight with Min-su in the bathroom and spinning it as an outright attack between factions when Myung-gi steps up to protect the timid, smaller man. No doubt in an effort to further incite violence between the players, the game organizers included a metal fork with the dinner that night (kimbap, not famous for being eaten with a fork), which Myung-gi uses to defend himself, stabbing Thanos in the throat and killing him. After that, the bathroom spirals into an all-out kill-or-be-killed brawl, leading to the death of 5 players — 3 from Team O and 2 from Team X.
That upsets the balance of the vote, something the O-Team takes as a declaration of war, especially when Nam-gyu comes bellowing back into the living quarters claiming the Os attacked outright and killed his friend.
That night, in a mirror to the Season 1 lights-out massacre, the Xs violently attack the Os. Min-su has a particularly disturbing and cowardly experience, witnessing Se-mi’s gruesome murder at the hands of Nam-gyu and doing nothing to stop it. Both sides take losses, with 26 players eliminated in the devastation. But the X casualties outnumber the Os by double, firmly and likely irrevocably swinging the balance of the vote for the final three games.
However, Gi-hun knew what to expect and saw it as an opportunity…
A tragic, momentarily triumphant rebellion
Gi-hun lived through the lights-out chaos in Season 1, so he anticipates the bloodshed to come and rallies his allies to seize the opportunity and stage an armed revolt against the games. The plan: Stay safe and hidden during the massacre, opting to lay in wait rather than defending their fellow Os, and surprise attack the guards who come to break up the fighting, seizing their weapons. They’ll take the compound, seize the Front Man (who Gi-hun saw masked up in Season 1 and doesn’t realize is now plotting his doom right by his side) in the hopes of getting to the VIPs.
Jung-bae, Hyung-ju, In-ho, Dae-ho, Gyeong-seok and several background players join Gi-hun. Both Myung-gi and Yong-sik seem to consider joining, but they are discouraged by Jun-hee and Geum-ja, respectively. Still, the first stages go surprisingly well. Once they’ve got the guns, they are quite effective, led by Gi-hun, bolstered by the military competence of Hyun-ju and Jung-bae. They make good progress and manage to capture a manager, but ultimately, there are a few factors that bring the rebellion to its knees.
For one thing, most of the rebels end up in an extended stairwell shootout that quickly drains their ammo. With their resources drying up, they send young Dae-ho to retrieve magazines from the fallen guards and bring them back as reinforcements. He seems eager and up to the challenge, but when he makes it back to safety, he’s overcome by fear and can’t bring himself to re-enter the fray, leaving the rest of his fellow fighters with no means to defend themselves.
And then, of course, there is In-ho, player 001, who finally truly betrays Gi-hun in the cruelest of ways. He leads some of the rebels away from the main group, kills them, and stages his own death over the radio before suiting back up as the Front Man and delivering the killing blow. Not just to the rebellion, but to poor Jung-bae.
“Did you have fun playing the hero?” In-ho taunts Gi-hun, “Look closely at the consequences of your little hero game.” Then he turns the gun on Jung-bae and shoots him in the heart, letting him bleed out in front of a screaming Gi-hun.
And … that’s it! “Squid Game” Season 2 ends on a truly brutal cliffhanger. The season cuts to credits as Jung-bae’s player square is removed from the board.
“Squid Game” Season 3 is now streaming on Netflix.
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