‘Squid Game’ Season 2 Ending Explained: Player 001’s Betrayal

Well, it’s that time of year again, time for one… more … game.

Netflix’s hit show “Squid Game” released its highly anticipated second season on Dec. 26, which consisted of seven episodes.

The second season flashes forward a few years after Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), a.k.a. Player 456, won the games. The trauma of everyone’s death from Season 1 still weighs heavily on Gi-hun’s conscience, causing him to devote himself and the $45.6 billion won (about $31 million dollars) he won to finding and ending the games once and for all.

However, Gi-hun’s plans go astray, causing him to be thrown back into the games once more with an entire new set of players.

This time, the twist is that the Front Man (Lee Byung-hun) who orchestrated all the games during Season 1 decided to enter the games himself, posing as Young-il, Player 001. The Front Man, whose real name is In-Ho, is a former winner of the games.

Gi-hun, who once again plays as Player 456, makes his way through the games, beginning (like Season 1) with Red Light, Green Light, but adding in two new games afterwards: Pentathlon and Mingle.

This season adds the twist that after each round, all players vote to decide if they want to continue the games or end them there.

As the season progresses, Young-il (the Front Man in disguise) befriends Gi-hun, gaining his trust by explaining his own tragic backstory. He says his pregnant wife is dying and he joined the games to get the money to save her and his unborn child. However, viewers know the Front Man’s wife already has died.

This duo forms an alliance with other characters, including Gi-hun’s best friend from Season 1 Park Jung-bae (Lee Seo-hwan) who is also a competitor this season and ex-marine Dae-ho (Kang Ha-neul).

Season 2 also introduces new players like mother and son duo Park Yong-sik (Yang Dong-geun) and Jang Geum-ja (Kang Ae-sim), crypto currency influencer Lee Myung-gi (Yim Si-wan), pregnant player Kim Jun-hee (Jo Yu-ri) and rapper Thanos (Choi Seung-hyun), amongst others.

Outside of the games, Detective Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-jun), who Front Man seemingly shot and killed in the Season 1 finale, is actually alive. He’s recovered and now independently searching for the island with the help of the boat captain who rescued him as the police don’t believe his story about the games being real.

How does the season end and where is the third, and what seems to be the final, season headed?

Season 2’s ending explained

As Gi-hun fights within the games to end them and keep as many people alive as possible, Jun-ho searches for the island with the help of allies Gi-hun enlisted before entering the games a second time.

However, the captain of the boat who has been assisting Jun-ho in finding the island is revealed to be secretly tampering with their search.

By the end of the season, Jun-ho has no luck finding the island and has yet to realize that the boat’s captain is actually working to keep the games hidden.

Within the games, the finale begins in the middle of a bloody fight between players. At this point, voting has split the remaining 100 players in half, with half wanting to stay and keep playing the games and half wanting to end the games. With a second vote scheduled for the next day, participants have resorted to killing other players who don’t agree with their vote to strengthen their chances of the vote going their way.

Gi-hun, meanwhile, has devised a plan to infiltrate the masked spectators’ headquarters to put a stop to the games altogether and, in his words, “make them pay.”

His convinces his friends to hide during the chaos instead of fighting to defend others on their side — which, as Young-il makes him say, shows he’s willing to “sacrifice a few for the good of the rest.”

While this is a new side to Gi-hun’s character, whose goal has been to shed as little blood as possible, he decides a few more lives lost is worth it to end the games once and for all.

When the guards come in to break up the fight, Gi-hun and his friends, who were playing dead, jump the guards and grab their guns, killing all but one in the process.

Gi-hun instructs the surviving guard to bring them to his captain. The rebel crew shoot out the cameras before continuing on through the island fortress.

The Front Man, still pretending to be the friendly Young-il, joins the riot and follows Gi-hun.

The group is intercepted by gun fire before they can reach the game makers. Most of the final episode includes Gi-hun and his rebels fighting back against the pink-suited workers.

Sadly, the rebellion fails, despite some moments of bravery from Hyun-ju who reveals she was in Special Forces before joining the games. They have too little ammo and end up being outnumbered.

While Gi-hun and Jung-bae make it further than most of their crew, they ultimately end up failing when Young-il turns on them.

Young-il splits up from Gi-hun, claiming he saw another way up to where the masked men are shooting down as Gi-hun and Jung-bae. However, when he goes that way, he ends up killing the two players he brought with him and sends a final radio message to Gi-hun pretending that he failed and died.

He then dons the Front Man’s classic outfit from Season 1, a long gray coat and black mask. As Gi-hun and Jung-bae surrender (clearly outnumbered), the Front Man slowly descends down the steps to them and, through a voice modulator, asks Gi-hun, “Did you have fun playing the hero?”

“Look closely at the consequences of your little hero game,” he says as he turns his loaded gun towards Jung-bae, killing him instantly.

Gi-hun tries to fight back but is wrestled to the ground by pink suited workers as the Front Man (whom Gi-hun still doesn’t know is Young-il) walks away.

The show fades to black on Gi-hun screaming with grief as his head is pushed into the ground, forcing him to look at Jung-bae and the pool of blood spilling from him.

What does the post-credit scene mean for Season 3?

The post-credit scene is a brief clip of players walking up to the motion sensor doll from Red Light, Green Light. This time, there’s a second gigantic doll across from the original one.

The quick scene ends as the light turns from red to green, hinting that the games continue in some form after the failed coup.

Show creator Hwang Dong-hyuk “originally envisioned seasons 2 and 3 as a single story,” he told Entertainment Weekly.

“That’s how I wrote it,” he told the outlet. “But in the process, it came out to be too many episodes. So, I thought it’d be better to divide it into two.”

Dong-hyuk shared a letter that noted that Season 3 will be the show’s final season and can be expected to air sometime in 2025, according to Netflix’s companion site Tudum.