Even before its highly-anticipated premiere on Netflix, Squid Game season 2 has already been nominated for a Golden Globe—so yeah, we're pretty excited. The second season is set three years after the first, and follows reigning champion Player 456 AKA Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) as he, once again, enters the Squid Game with the goal of taking down the sinister organization behind the games. It's a revenge plot and we can't wait!
But before diving into the exciting whole new season, it's important to go back and remember all the important happenings from season 1. Sure, we all generally remember the brutal games and Young-hee the animatronic doll. But after a three-year wait, it's easy to forget some of the finer details of the plot and rules of the game.
You could decide to relive the traumatic (yet thrilling) events with a full rewatch... or you could just read the recap below. Your choice, really. Nevertheless, here's everything you need to know before watching Squid Game season 2.
What happened in Squid Game season one?
Gi-hun gets recruited by the Salesman.
A devilishly dashing salesman (Gong Yoo) encounters Gi-hun in a subway station in Seoul, and asks him to play a game of ddakji—a traditional Korean game played with folded paper tiles where players take turns flipping each other's tiles—for money. After Gi-hun wins, he gets offered a spot to join the Squid Game. This is how the recruitment process works, with the Salesman specifically targetting vulnerable people like Gi-hun, who are on the outskirts of society and desperate for life-changing money. It'll be interesting to see how Gi-hun makes his way back as a contestant, given the huge pot of money he just won last time.
It's not just the game that's deadly—it's the players, too.
The official challenges set by the powers-that-be are already deadly in themselves, but we find out in the first season that players can kill other players as well. The guards, known as the Masked Men, make it clear during the deadly riot in the dormitories that they are not there to protect the players. They're only there to preserve the "sanctity" (if you can even call it that) of the game and its rules.
We find out that Player 001 is the mastermind behind the Squid Game.
We find out that the frail old man named Oh Il-nam (Oh Yeong-su), who many of us were probably rooting for in the beginning, was the wealthy mastermind behind Squid Game. He and his other wealthy friends fund the cruel games and watch it as a twisted form of entertainment.
Il-nam decided to join the game himself because he is on the brink of death with his terminal illness, and he wanted to relive the games of his youth one last time. Though he doesn't actually die upon elimination during the marbles game, he later dies from a brain tumor.
A lot of the characters we've grown to love are dead.
This might be an obvious one, given that the basic premise of the game is that one person lives and wins it all. But just want to make sure that no one's expecting these faves to come back in season 2. We won't be seeing badass, top 3 finalist Kang Sae-byeok (Jung Ho-yeon), nor will we be seeing the sweet, innocent, and gullible Abdul Ali (Anupam Tripathi).
Police detective Hwang Jun-ho successfully infiltrates the Squid Game.
Let's not forget the very important brothers storyline that simultaneously occurs during the games. Police detective Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-jun) was on a mission to locate his missing older brother, who was a participant in the Squid Game prior to the one we follow in the first season. He's able to infiltrate the games, disguising himself as one of the guards, and successfully documents everything there is to know—from the inner-workings of the organization to hierarchy of the masked members.
The Front Man's identity is revealed.
At the end of his mission, Jun-ho gets what he was searching for all along. He finds his lost brother Hwang In-ho (Lee Byung-hun), who turns out to be the leader of the Masked Men known as the Front Man. And though he asks Jun-ho to join him, his younger brother refuses which leads him to shoot Jun-ho in the shoulder, sending him off a cliff and into the ocean.
Gi-hun kind of abandons his daughter... for now.
After his divorce, Gi-hun's ex-wife got custody of their daughter. And having remarried, she decided to leave South Korea and move to the America. Gi-hun's initial plan was to win the games, then use some of the money to see his daughter in the U.S. But, clearly, that's not happening. Since finding out everything he has about the nature of the Squid Game, he decides to stay in the country to try and take the organization behind the games down. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why we've got season 2.
