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

This article contains major spoilers for "Squid Game" season 2. 

The ending of "Squid Game" season 1 makes it abundantly that the show's seven-episode season 2 will feature a wealthy and revitalized Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), who's on a quest to bring the titular game down once and for all. Unfortunately, the mission is struggling even after a two-year time skip, and he ultimately decides to personally re-enter the deadly game. 

Even more unfortunately, Gi-hun severely underestimates the Front Man (Lee Byung-Hun), who appears to wield the highest authority over the Squid Game after Oh Il-nam's (O Yeong-su) death. This time, the masked overseer — whose true identity is disgraced cop Hwang Jun-ho's (Wi Ha-joon) stepbrother In-ho — isn't content with his usual cephalopod-themed social disparity murder hustle. Instead, he's either fascinated by Gi-hun's struggle or adamant on personally sabotaging it, so he decides to play the game himself after the protagonist declares his own intention to wear the emerald tracksuit once more. The nail-biting (and from Gi-hun's point of view, completely unwitting) team-up of the two former Squid Game winners lasts several episodes, and culminates in the players' violent rebellion against the guards ... which is ultimately a failure and earns Gi-hun's poor friend Jung-bae (Lee Seo-hwan) a bullet to the head. 

With the sophomore season's steadily increasing stakes and cliffhanger finale, creator Hwang Dong-hyuk pushes the pedal so close to the metal that it's easy to see why "Squid Game" is ending with season 3; there's 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 greatest and bloodiest game on Netflix. 

Gi-hun starts "Squid Game" season 2 strong. In episode 1, "Bread and Lottery," we find that he's located a tracker device the organizers implanted in him. He's also used his wealth to organize a manhunt for the Recruiter (Gong Yoo), and eventually defeats the smirking Squid Game recruiter in a Russian roulette-themed game. After joining forces with fellow season 1 survivor Jun-ho, he follows the breadcrumbs to a Halloween-themed party, has a tense speaker conversation with the Front Man, and decides to get back in the game — armed with a secret tracker implant of his own, no less.

Alas, the house isn't accustomed to losing. When Gi-hun once again wakes up as Player 456 in episode 3, "001," his tracker has been removed and his team on the outside has no reliable way of finding him. Unbeknownst to Gi-hun, the new Player 001 is the Front Man himself, who soon weasels his way into the protagonist's inner circle. The games after "Red Light, Green Light" are also different from the ones Gi-hun played, which undermines his reliability. Despite all this, the protagonist manages to gain a following, and the struggle between his "X"- marked game-leaving enthusiasts and the "O"-marked players who vote to stay comes to symbolize the philosophical tug-of-war between him and the Front Man.  

Joining the main players is a robust cast of new Squid Game contestants, marching toward a near-certain doom in hopes of a life-changing win. Notably, the season also devotes plenty of time to people working for the game, from North Korean guard No-eul (Park Gyu-young) to the Masked Officer (Park Hee-soon) leading 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 "Squid Game" season 1 and wondered why the players never try to overpower the guards, the season 2  finale, "Friend or Foe," addresses your concerns. Episode 6, "O X," features the hectic "Mingle" game and a fight that kills several players, including rapper Thanos (Choi Seung-hyun). "Friend or Foe" continues the mayhem by bringing the season's voting theme to a head with a variation of season 1's dorm room "special game" — this time with the two voter groups specifically engineered to attack each other in the dead of night. Gi-hun, who's anticipated another deadly dorm room battle, finally gets what he braced for and forms a very different attack plan than the organizers anticipated. 

Instead of fighting other players, he and his crew pretend to be dead in the aftermath of the inevitable mayhem, and ambush the armed guards when they draw near. This leads to a surprisingly efficient rebellion where Gi-hun's freshly-armed faction fights the guards in familiar Squid Game locations. Lamentably, however, they run out of both bullets and luck.

The mutiny forces the Front Man to abandon his disguise as Player 001 and fake his death before resuming his familiar organizer role. It's clear that he's not exactly delighted with the way things play out, seeing as he punishes Gi-hun by personally shooting his best friend, Jung-bae. Still, it appears that the game organizer emerges on top despite the turbulence. The episode's many deaths suggest that the "leave" faction is now a clear minority and that the game is destined to play out in full ... and thanks to Captain Park actively sabotaging Jun-ho and Gi-hun's mercenaries as they attempt to locate the island, help seems very 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, Gi-hun's elderly friend Oh Il-nam — the season's supposedly dead Player 001 — turns out to be the game's ultra-wealthy creator, and the pair's conversation on Il-nam's deathbed establishes their opposing views of humanity. Gi-hun's optimism prevails over the rich thrill-seeker's nihilistic views when the protagonist wins their final wager over whether passersby 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 on humanity, and readily shoulders the old man's duties — both as the Squid Game leader and the new, secretly villainous Player 001. What's more, he shares a personal connection with Gi-hun as a fellow Squid Game winner, and even has touches of the first season's Cho Sang-woo (Park Hae-soo) as a capable but opportunistic and duplicitous ally. Apart from Gi-hun, the Front Man 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 season 1 VIPs return and considerably up their game, the Front Man seems destined to serve as the show's ultimate adversary. However, many unanswered questions linger, as many parts of his backstory remain shrouded in mystery and it often seems that he's genuinely struggling to survive — notably, he breaks a fellow contestant's neck in his desperation to survive the "Mingle" game. Expect the character to continue his role as the show's shadowy centerpiece in season 3, which will hopefully finally reveal his whole deal. 

Where "Squid Game" season 1 focuses on the game itself and the downtrodden people trying to survive it, much of the sophomore season revolves around two Squid Game winners and their diametrically opposed philosophies. Still, that doesn't mean the game isn't afoot on many other fronts, as well ... and thanks to the fact that the season ends in a cliffhanger after the Front Man and the guards subdue Gi-hun's rebellion, most of these plot threads are left hanging in a way that makes it very clear that a third season is on its way.  

Apart from the main storyline within the game and its cliffhanger rebellion, No-eul's organ harvester storyline with the Masked Officer and his co-conspirators falls by the wayside with the implication that she's been bullied into submission. Likewise, Jun-ho's long-winded quest to find the game island doesn't really go anywhere, though it does get a promising last-minute boost when a mercenary finds out that Captain Park is a saboteur and gets stabbed and thrown into the sea for his troubles. Both plot lines will likely receive their payoffs during season 3 — and in case of a surprise third-act Front Man redemption arc, they may even provide the show with handy backup villains.  

Despite the season's comparatively abrupt end, fans have no reason to be frustrated. "Squid Game" season 3 is slated to drop in 2025, so the wait to see how things pan out 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 with two creepy giant dolls and a genuine traffic light. After all, it indicates that the final season of "Squid Game" intends to pull out all the stops ... and then some.