We Rewatched Squid Game Season 2 And It’s Completely Different Now

“Squid Game” took over the cultural consciousness when the South Korean drama’s first season hit Netflix in 2021, inspiring TikTok trends and sparking conversations over the way capitalism forces individuals into positions they’d rather not be in. But more than anything, it created entertaining television by showcasing a group of heavily in-debt individuals who agree to play a series of children’s games for the chance to win more money than any of them could ever hope to spend in one lifetime. But in the final moments of “Squid Game” Season 1, it’s made abundantly clear that the victor, Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), desires something money can’t buy: he wants to destroy the games once and for all.

It took three years for “Squid Game” Season 2 to arrive, but it was worth the wait. In the second season, Gi-hun enters a new version of the competition, once again putting his life in jeopardy alongside hundreds of other hopefuls. Watching “Squid Game” Season 2, you probably picked up on various small details connecting it to the first batch of episodes. However, it can be a subtle show at times.

Thanks to hindsight, we’ve picked up on even more Easter eggs and hidden details that may have flown past you the first time you watched the second season. Here, we break down some of the more hidden layers to “Squid Game” Season 2 that prove why it’s one of the most bingeworthy shows of all time.

The first episode of “Squid Game” Season 2, “Bread and Lottery,” contains a dream sequence where Gi-hun confronts the Front Man (Lee Byung-hun), who is holding a pair of severed heads. It shows how Gi-hun’s life revolves around finding the Front Man and stopping the games, but there’s a little problem with this sequence. Namely, the Front Man is seen in his typical black outfit and signature mask — but Gi-hun never saw the mask. So how could he have dreamed it?

If you rewatch “Squid Game” Season 1, you’ll notice that Gi-hun never sees the Front Man, let alone his mask. The two do share a limo ride together, but Gi-hun was blindfolded the entire time and never had the chance to get a good look at the Front Man. Even if he did, he wasn’t wearing the mask that disguises his voice, which raises a whole other question as to why Gi-hun doesn’t realize the Front Man and Oh Young-il have the same voice. Lee Jung-jae at least explained that away in a Netflix interview where he said Gi-hun wouldn’t have recognized the similar voices because he’s too busy “blaming himself for everything that happened.”

That’s a fine explanation as to why Gi-hun didn’t put two and two together on that front, but there’s still the matter of the dream. The answer to that is undoubtedly that it was for the audience’s benefit. It lets us know that Gi-hun is after the one in charge of the games, and having him dream of a guy with a blurred-out face might have been confusing. It’s a bit of creative liberty that’s ultimately harmless but may have caught some viewers off guard.

Cho Sang-woo (Park Hae-soo) is Gi-hun’s biggest ally throughout Season 1, but that’s not enough to save him. But though he’s gone, he’s not forgotten, as seen in a small shoutout in the first episode of Season 2 that shows just how far his mother (Park Hye-jin) has come since his death.

As we learned in Season 1, Sang-woo’s mother runs a store called “Sang-woo’s Fish Store,” named after her son. You can tell she’s incredibly proud of all he’s done by the pictures she keeps of him in the shop. By the end of the first season, however, his mother no longer has a proper storefront; instead, she’s operating out of a small cart. This implies that she didn’t have the funds to keep the store going. It’s even possible that Sang-woo’s bad investments forced her to sell the shop to pay off his creditors.

But things have obviously turned around for her, as “Squid Game” Season 2, Episode 2 — “Halloween Party” — sees her back with a full storefront. This makes sense considering the ending to “Squid Game” Season 1 has Gi-hun send her a suitcase full of money, saying it’s what he owed Sang-woo. She apparently used the funds to reopen her shop, and even though she doesn’t fully know what happened to Sang-woo, she keeps his memory alive by continuing to have the store named after him.

The colors red and blue are used frequently throughout “Squid Game.” The hues are brought into play when prospective contestants are approached by The Salesman (Gong Yoo) and presented with red and blue ddakji to try to win some money and receive an invitation. In Season 2, the colors also come up during each voting round. Players can select the red “X” button to indicate they want to divide the money accumulated so far and leave the game, while the blue “O” button signifies they want to risk their lives and continue playing. In a sense, red and blue indicate the choices presented to the players, a theme that comes up before Gi-hun even enters the game.

In the early moments of Season 2, Gi-hun once again finds himself in a limo speaking with the Front Man through a speaker. Gi-hun makes it clear that he wants the games to end, but he’s only presented with the option to rejoin them. He has a decision to make at that moment — walk away from everything or endanger his life once more to try to save as many people as possible. That choice is reflected in the lighting, which shrouds half of Gi-hun’s face in blue and the other half in red.

According to an interview with series creator Hwang Dong-hyuk, the use of these colors comes from a Korean urban legend, where victims encounter a ghost in a restroom who offers them blue and red toilet paper. The truth is that no matter which one you pick, the ghost kills you. The only way to win is not to play at all, but Gi-hun, undeterred, decides to play once again.

To be fair, Gi-hun didn’t re-enter the games on a whim. He thought he had things covered by having a tracker placed within a false tooth, which was supposed to let Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon) and his associates locate the island where the games are held. However, Gi-hun is dismayed upon discovering that the guards removed the tracker when he was unconscious, leaving Jun-ho no way to find him. But while the guards take great care to ensure none of the participants smuggle in any items that could pose a threat to the games, they let a couple of things slide.

Thanos (Choi Seung-hyun, aka rapper T.O.P.) is allowed to keep his cross necklace containing drugs, which would impair his thinking and wouldn’t provide much of an advantage. Plus, Jang Geum-ja (Kang Ae-shim) has a hairpin that conceals a knife, which you would think would raise some alarms. Those items would’ve been much easier to locate than a tracker hidden inside a tooth, but this isn’t a plot hole. It shows how the guards have twisted ideas on how to make the games more fun.

While a tracker could expose the games’ location, Thanos’ drugs wouldn’t do that — but they would make him loopy and more volatile. In other words, he would become more entertaining to watch for the VIPs. The same holds true for Geum-ja’s knife. If she stabs someone with it, that’s just more bloodshed, and the VIPs get their money’s worth. Regardless of the guards’ insistence that the games are fair, they’re more than happy to give some players an advantage if it makes things more exciting to watch.

“Squid Game” Season 2 begins with the same game as the first competition: Red Light, Green Light. This time, the first contestant to get killed off is Player 196 (Kang Mi-na), who gets flustered by a bee and is promptly shot in the head. After she dies, we see that the Front Man is watching everything from his lair. If you’re not really paying attention, you’d only notice the large swatch of people playing the game, but if you dig a little deeper, you might see that more people are dead than should be. 

On the left-hand side of the screen, you can see a cluster of three people already on the ground. This doesn’t make sense chronologically because, at this point, there’s only been one shot — and it killed Player 196. It takes a beat for the next person to die, but, despite Gi-hun’s best efforts to tell people to remain still, many fail to listen and lose their lives in the process.

More than likely, this is a simple editing error, because it just doesn’t make sense. After Player 196 dies, another woman screams and is promptly shot. Two other men near her react similarly and get shot as well. That means four people in that vicinity would’ve been shot in rapid succession as opposed to the three seen on the Front Man’s screen. No matter which way you slice it, he’s seeing a scene that doesn’t exist. 

Red Light, Green Light may have kicked off the first and second seasons of “Squid Game,” but the follow-up needed to mix things up for the audience. However, Gi-hun is unaware that the games would change, so he assumes dalgona (the game where players carve a shape out of a cookie) is the second challenge. While this doesn’t end up being the case, that doesn’t stop Gi-hun from having a dream about the game where the shapes are far more complex — a dream with a hidden detail that should’ve signaled to viewers that they were seeing a nightmare.

In Gi-hun’s dream, everyone lines up for whatever dalgona shape they want — circle, triangle, star, or umbrella. While the umbrella is naturally the most difficult to carve out, if you go back and watch “Squid Game” Season 1, you’ll see that the umbrella on the wall had a simpler design than the one in Gi-hun’s dream. The bottom part of the game’s umbrella is a straight line, but Gi-hun’s subconscious adds additional curves to the design. Gi-hun is misremembering the event because he knows how much more difficult those curves make the game.

When the games begin, there are 456 players in a room along with multiple guards. In practical terms, that’s a lot of extras to keep eyes on while filming, and it’s possible not everyone will stay in character during each and every shot. In fact, many eagle-eyed fans noticed a player doing something a bit odd in Episode 3, “001.”

The guards tell everyone they need to sign paperwork to indicate they’re willing to proceed with the games, so the contestants all line up in rows. At one point, the camera lingers on Player 333, aka Lee Myung-gi (Im Si-wan), for a beat — but if you look directly to his right, you’ll notice a woman, Player 152, walking up while doing something to her jawline. Some online have noted that she appears to be “mewing,” which is an unfounded beauty “hack” where a person presses their tongue flatly against their mouth’s roof for several minutes. Many claim this can help improve jawline definition, but there’s no actual evidence that it’s truly effective. It’s mostly a weird beauty thing that went viral on TikTok.

It’s possible this extra merely wanted to look her best in front of the cameras and thought she’d try to make her jaw look better. In the end, she did stand out, though maybe not in the way she intended. 

The “Squid Game” Season 2 finale sees Gi-hun formulate his plans to end the games while there are still a good number of people alive. He convinces his allies that they can steal guns from the guards and shoot their way to the control room to take out the Front Man. But while he lays out this plan, he’s completely unaware that the Front Man is sitting in the circle with them, ready to undermine him at every turn. If Gi-hun had his eyes trained on Oh Young-il, maybe he would’ve realized he wasn’t reacting the same as everyone else.

When Gi-hun mentions that the Front Man and VIPs are watching them from above, everyone looks toward the ceiling except Young-il. He barely moves his head, keeping his eyes trained on Gi-hun the whole time. He knows precisely where his control room is. He knows where the VIPs are kept to watch the games. But, since none of that matters to him, he doesn’t experience any sense of foreboding dread like everyone else. Instead, he just sits there ominously.

“Squid Game” Season 2 ends with a heartbreaking moment where Park Jung-bae (Lee Seo-hwan) is killed right in front of Gi-hun. His rebellion has failed, and many of his fellow rebels lost their lives in the process, including his best friend in the games. After he’s murdered, the scene cuts to a tile with his face and number that goes dark. There’s only one problem with this: Next to Jung-bae is Player 389, who already died in the games — so why is his tile still lit up, indicating that he’s alive?

After Red Light, Green Light, the players vote on whether to continue going. Jung-bae, aka Player 390, votes to end them and receives a red patch. After he votes, one of the guards calls up Player 388, skipping over Player 389. This indicates that he died during Red Light, Green Light, yet his picture is still there, clear as day, at the end of Season 2. 

It must be a tough job being a continuity supervisor or editor on “Squid Game.” There are hundreds of characters to keep track of, even though most of them don’t matter much in terms of plot. It’s likely a simple oversight, but it opens up a slew of questions as to why Player 389 didn’t get a vote if it’s eventually revealed that he’s been alive all this time. 

“Squid Game” is an inherently dark show. It’s about hundreds of people competing in deadly games and sometimes killing one another to win an absurd amount of money. It’s hard to imagine how to make that premise even darker going forward, but somehow, Season 2 accomplishes exactly that by revealing a dark truth about our real world.

Season 1 features a diverse collection of players, people who come from different backgrounds and cover a large swath of ages. But if you pay attention to the competitors in Season 2, you’ll notice that many of them are far younger than the first group. Thanos, Kim Jun-hee (Jo Yu-ri), Park Min-su (Lee David), Nam-gyu (Roh Jae-won), and Lee Myung-gi all have prominent roles this season, and they all look to be in their 20s. That’s young to already have amassed an intense amount of debt, but it’s a reality of modern society. As “Squid Game” creator Hwang Dong-hyuk explained to The Wrap, “There are a lot of younger generations who are already neck deep in debt. Because [this season’s players] are younger, it led to the increase of diversity within the games and also a sense of wildness. They have a lot of adrenaline and energy. This took the craziness of the games to another level.”

Of course, young people drowning in massive debt isn’t exclusively a Korean problem. Many around the world are finding it difficult to get out from under their student loans and medical debts in the face of stagnating wages and weakening job markets. The fact that so many young people would rather risk their lives and die than face such an exploitative economic system might be the darkest commentary “Squid Game” has to offer.