How the Big Cliffhanger of Season 2 of The Squid Game Sets Up Season 3

Be careful; “Squid Game” season 2 finale spoilers ahead.

The second season of writer-director Hwang Donghyuk's acclaimed and incredibly popular Netflix series Squid Game is officially here, and the third season, according to Hwang, it will premiere in 2025. Based on the season finale “Friend or Foe,” what viewers can expect… and what about array cliffhanger?

Let's go back for a moment. At the beginning of Season 2, the winner of the on-screen games of Season 1, Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), remains in South Korea despite the game's front man Hwang In-ho (Lee Byung-hun), urging him to go to America and leave his time in the game behind. He doesn't — and as the series jumps forward two years, we learn that Gi-hun has spent all that time trying to root out Front Man and end the games once and for all (for all the murder involved). After his plan involving a GPS tracker inside a fake tooth goes awry, Gi-hun is simply stuck in the games, but he has one advantage: he has done it before.

As in Season 1, there are many petty squabbles among the 456 contestants over the huge amount of prize money, but Gi-hun is able to inspire a small and loyal group of players to rebel against the guards and the process, the Front Man himself. As the players split into two factions—those who want to keep playing and those who want the game to end—Gi-hun and a few others think they've outrun a handful of guards, only for the entire mission to end in total disaster. . So where does Gi-hun end up, and how does that define the show's third season?

In the end Season 2 of “Squid Game” consists of seven episodes — in the players' quarters, chaos breaks out between the “X” faction (which wants to leave the game and includes Gi-hun) and the “O” faction, which wants to stay and finish … and here, “pandemonium” means that they all start fighting until to death. (This is partly out of anger and partly because each the player knows that reducing the number of contestants increases the prize pool.) Gi-hun and his small army hide under the beds and basically let the other players get away with it, all the while waiting for the guards to come in and break. to a massive fight. When the guards arrive, Gi-hun and his friends subdue some of the guards and steal their weapons, opening fire on the pink-suited masked oppressors.

There is one array the problem with this plan, unbeknownst to Gi-hun. One of his “allies”, masquerading as Player 001, is actually In-ho, also known as Front Man. (“Squid Game” fans will remember that the show basically did the exact same thing in Season 1, so it's… neat.) During the fight, In-ho acts like he's on Gi-hun's side, but when he breaks up. In-ho fakes his death, puts his mask back on, and kills Gihun's closest friend, Jung-bae (Lee Seo-hwan), right in front of Gi-hun. After that, the show fades to black (apart from the post-credits scene), so it's relatively safe to assume that Season 3 will pick up where Season 2 left off.

It's reasonable to assume that when “Squid Game” Season 3 begins, Gi-hun will find out that Front Man is actually the guy who has been his ally in the game itself until now. That would be mimic the Season 1 twist pretty directly (even though the show already said the twist was literal, so it feels like everything is happening), but it sure feels like Season 2 was building up to that big reveal. On the other hand, maybe Front Man finds another way to punish Gi-hun and doesn't let him know his identity — aside from Jung-bae, Gi-hun's other friends in the game are still alive (as far as we can tell) — so Front Man can staying in disguise, not revealing that he's actually Hwang In-ho, and just taking out the rest of Gi-hun's allies. (That would be really cruel to the audience, but this is The Squid Game, so it wouldn't be unprecedented.)

There's also the matter of In-ho's brother as Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon), a detective who's looking for In-ho and the specific location of the games. He doesn't get anywhere, but hopefully his lackluster storyline will see him back into the action in Season 3. At this point, one thing seems certain: Gi-hun won't be randomly joining the games as a new player. the third in time, and the series definitely feels like it will shift its conflict to a showdown between Gi-hun and Front Man.

“Squid Game” season 2 now streaming on Netflix.