The Biggest Unanswered Questions In Squid Game Season 2

Contains spoilers for "Squid Game" Season 2

"Squid Game" became a global sensation when it premiered in 2021, becoming the latest addition to a very specific genre of fiction going back to "The Most Dangerous Game" and continuing with the likes of "Battle Royale" and "The Hunger Games." This time around, 456 people must play children's games, with deadly consequences for losing. Out of all of them, only one can take home an unfathomable amount of money that will lift them out of poverty for good. Expanding on the first season's themes regarding the lengths people will go to for money, Season 2 has arrived over three years later.

However, "Squid Game" Season 2 should really be called "Squid Game" Season 2, Part 1, because there are still a lot of questions that remain unanswered. The ending of "Squid Game" Season 2 sees Seong Gi-hun's (Lee Jung-jae) rebellion get squashed. His friend Park Jung-bae (Lee Seo-hwan) is dead, and everyone else's fate hangs in the air. Fortunately, we won't have to wait another three years for some of these questions to get resolved, as Netflix has already made clear that Season 3 will drop sometime in 2025. For now, however, here are the "Squid Game" mysteries keeping us up at night. 

Seong Gi-hun doesn't die at the end of "Squid Game" Season 2, but things don't look great for him. The Front Man (Lee Byung-hun) and the guards have kept him alive for now, while killing almost everyone else who aided him in his rebellion. As the leader who's been trying to dismantle the games, it may appear counterintuitive to keep him alive, which is what makes his fate at the end of Season 2 all the more intriguing. What's in store for him once Season 3 rolls around? 

Netflix has already announced "Squid Game" Season 3 will be the last for the series, so we'll know whether he'll ultimately live or die pretty soon. It's possible the Front Man wants Gi-hun to suffer a fate worse than death. Perhaps he'll have him re-enter the games so that he'll have to continue this torture a little longer. Or maybe the Front Man has something more nefarious in mind. 

The Front Man, aka Hwang In-ho, is Player 001 in the "Squid Game" Season 2 competition. Gi-hun doesn't know his true identity, and one might assume he'll learn once Season 3 rolls around. In-ho actually won the games previously, before taking on the mantle of the Front Man, and it's possible he wants Gi-hun to develop the same viewpoint as him, that no good people truly exist. It's possible In-ho wants to groom Gi-hun to become the new Front Man and oversee the games after he steps down. Gi-hun dying may seem like the most tragic ending possible for "Squid Game," but Gi-hun losing his soul and continuing the games himself may be even more devastating

One of the most intriguing additions to "Squid Game" Season 2 is Kang No-eul (Park Gyu-young), who becomes Guard 011 in the games. We learn a little about her backstory, namely that she's a defector from North Korea and that she's trying to find her child, who's still in that country. In the games themselves, she's a particularly ruthless sniper and actively works against the organ harvesting operation. Some of the guards keep the players alive for the time being to take their organs later, but she kills them completely before they have a chance to do that, earning her a good amount of ire from her fellow guards. 

It's unclear why she feels so inclined to shut down the organ harvesting. Maybe she just has a stronger moral code than the other soldiers. This morality could come to a head once she realizes Park Gyeong-seok (Lee Jin-wook) — the father of the little girl No-eul bonded with when she worked in the amusement park — has died during the rebellion. His daughter was sick, so one could imagine Gyeong-seok entered the games to help pay her medical bills. No-eul may not like that the soldiers she works alongside killed him, so maybe she'll be even more of a menace in the episodes to come. 

Every time we learn something about the Front Man, two more questions arise. He was an enigmatic figure throughout the first season, and he continues to taunt Gi-hun as the latter sets out to end the games once and for all during Season 2. What's interesting is that the Front Man actually competes in the games as Player 001, much like how Oh Il-nam (O Yeong-su), the games' creator, competed the first time Gi-hun was there.

Hwang In-ho is Hwang Jun-ho's (Wi Ha-joon) stepbrother, and when In-ho befriends Gi-hun, he mentions having a sick wife as his reason for entering the games. This appears to be accurate, given that we learn on "Squid Game" Season 2 how the Front Man donated a kidney to Jun-ho years ago. Therefore, he couldn't sell one of his kidneys when his wife got sick. There are shades of the truth in what In-ho tells Gi-hun, but there could always be more to the story. 

One of the most significant lines in "Squid Game" Season 2 is when the Front Man taunts Gi-hun in the limo by saying, "Do you think you can stop the game with a pistol?" Perhaps by learning more about In-ho, Gi-hun will realize that violence isn't the proper means to end the game. There might be another solution, which could lie in uncovering more about what makes the Front Man tick. 

Mingle might be the best new game of "Squid Game" Season 2, but it wouldn't be "Squid Game" without a return to the standout from Season 1 — Red Light, Green Light. Gi-hun is the only one aware of the bloodshed that's about to ensue and tries to get everyone to follow his lead and form single-file lines to better avoid detection by the doll. However, there's a point in this game that doesn't quite make sense. It could be a simple continuity error, or it may hint at something larger. 

The rules of Red Light, Green Light are simple. Players can move when the doll says "Green Light," but they must freeze when she yells "Red Light." Anyone who moves at all is immediately shot, and this clearly doesn't apply to merely taking a step. Any movement seems to trigger the sniper, which should immediately eliminate Player 007, aka Park Yong-sik (Yang Dong-geun). He twitches pretty violently once the guns start going off, which one would imagine would be enough to trigger the doll, but he makes it through the game unscathed. 

It's possible this is a mere oversight on behalf of the snipers. With so many people running toward the exit, it's possible he goes undetected amidst the chaos. However, one somewhat implausible fan theory is that Yong-sik's mother, Jang Geum-ja (Kang Ae-shim), aka Player 149, is yet another mastermind behind the games and potentially Oh Il-nam's wife. She could be pulling some strings to prevent her son's death, but that seems like a stretch. 

With so many soldiers at the games' disposal, it's a long shot that Gi-hun's rebellion can succeed. However, they really don't have a chance when Kang Dae-ho (Kang Ha-neul) goes back to the main room to retrieve more ammunition but doesn't return. Instead, he stays behind and cowers, which doesn't really make sense for a former Marine who would seemingly have put his life on the line plenty of times in the past. 

Dae-ho joins Gi-hun's team early on, and he and Jung-bae bond over both being Marines, even showing one another their tattoos designating them as such. There's a chance Dae-ho suffers from extreme post-traumatic stress disorder, and when the guards started firing at them, he shut down completely. Maybe he can't bring himself to take back the ammunition, knowing death will surely greet him there. 

On the other hand, Dae-ho may just be a liar. You can probably get anyone to tattoo a Marine insignia on your arm if you pay them enough. Another curious aspect of Dae-ho's backstory is that he's an expert at gonggi, a Korean game typically affiliated with women. He explains that he grew up with sisters, which is why he's so good at it. Dae-ho may not have a rugged backstory and may only claim to be a Marine to attain stolen valor. Seeing as he's one of the few rebels left alive, we should learn more about his history once Season 3 comes around. 

While Gi-hun is back in the games, Hwang Jun-ho and a team of mercenaries are on a boat trying to find the island where the games take place, which winds up being the most disappointing storyline of "Squid Game" Season 2. No matter what they do, the perpetrators always seem to be one step ahead of them. And the final episode of Season 2 offers a big hint that Jun-ho's efforts have been foiled right from the beginning by someone he thought he could trust. 

Episode 7 — "Friend or Foe" — sees one of the mercenaries accost Captain Park (Oh Dal-su) when he discovers he's sabotaging the drones they're using to look at various islands. Captain Park then stabs the man and tosses him overboard. It seems clear that Captain Park is in cahoots with the gamemakers to an extent, but what exact role does he play?

Captain Park's willingness to help Jun-ho find the island always seemed too good to be true. He claims at the beginning of the season that he found Jun-ho after the latter was shot by In-ho and fell into the ocean. He's since sailed him around to numerous islands over several years. That's a big commitment to make for someone he just fished out of the water, but it's possible he took on that task to lure Jun-ho away from the actual location. But have the games always had a random sailor on the payroll? One possibility is that he ferries the organs harvested from surviving players to the mainland, which would explain his part in all of this. But fans will now go into "Squid Game" Season 3 knowing not to trust Captain Park. 

Mingle is a brutal game; players stand on a rotating platform and must rush toward rooms with the appropriate number of people for each turn. That means alliances from previous games get divvied up, forcing people to decide where their loyalties truly lay. This means Seon-nyeo (Chae Kook-hee), a neurotic shaman, gets left in the lurch for one of the rounds when everyone goes off without her into a room. She teams up with some other players and survives, but she places a curse on Cho Hyun-ju (Park Sung-hoon) and the rest of her alliance.

"Squid Game" isn't a supernatural show. There's no way Seon-nyeo is a legitimate shaman and that she mystically curses some other players, but she is developing a cult of personality. Following Mingle, players can vote on whether to end the games there, and some contestants do appear to vote to keep playing under the tutelage of Seon-nyeo. There's a possibility she could force the curse into fruition by making her disciples carry out her whims and sabotage other players. 

In a life-or-death situation, it's understandable some players would resort to praying toward higher powers to save them. Seon-nyeo is clearly taking advantage of that to an extent and has positioned herself as some all-powerful entity. But as tends to be the case with cults, it typically doesn't work out that well for any underlings. 

In the first season, Jun-ho learns that the island where the games are played is outfitted with bombs designed to detonate if anyone gets too close to discovering the truth. That way, the explosions cover up all of the evidence that the games ever existed. That seems like a pretty clear "Chekhov's gun" if we ever saw one, and Jun-ho's team does, in fact, set off one of these bombs in Season 2. 

After they open a hatch, a bomb detonates, killing one man and injuring another. We don't get much more from the boat storyline this season, so it remains to be seen if they've actually found the island or if this is a decoy explosive meant to distract anyone who comes looking for the games. What we do know is that there are a lot more bombs that stand to go off, and it would certainly make for an explosive finale if they all light up at once. 

Setting up the bomb storyline in Season 1 only for just one to detonate in Season 2 doesn't really feel like a good enough payoff. Maybe Season 3 will see Jun-ho and the rest of his team continue to explore that island to see if there are any other entrances. But remember, Captain Park will definitely be trying to throw them off the actual scent. 

The rebellion in "Friend or Foe" certainly puts a damper on the games, leaving a lot more people dead. Whether Gi-hun's fate hangs in the balance is one question we still have, but there's also the matter about where the games themselves go from here. 

Dae-ho and Hyun-ju remain alive even though they actively participated in the games. There's a chance the soldiers don't know about their roles since they make it back to the main room before Gi-hun is captured. As for everyone else, there are basically two options left on the table. First, the games may continue as though nothing happened. The alternative would seem to be starting the games from scratch. We know the Front Man is all about the players having an equal chance of winning the grand prize, so maybe he'd want to bring in more players to have everyone start on the same foot once more. 

Bringing in even more players (and inevitably more deaths) would also be a good way to torture Gi-hun further. The Front Man may want Gi-hun to witness unimaginable tragedy so that he'll be broken just like him and want to take over as the new Front Man. This is new territory for those who run the games, so maybe a new wrinkle will be added to increase Season 3's body count. 

As mentioned previously, "Squid Game" Season 2 really only feels like half of the story, and Season 3 should come a lot sooner. But Season 2 does leave us with a post-credits scene to hint at what's to come, and an interesting addition will be in the mix. The "Squid Game" Season 2 post-credits scene sees players entering an arena with the girl doll (named Young-hee) from Red Light, Green Light. However, there's also a boy doll (named Cheol-su) in the arena now, too. 

A popular fan theory online is that the remaining players will play Jack and Jill, which would involve contestants rolling dice to determine how far up a hill they can go, with the players who get up the hill first winning. The only issue with this is that the games featured on "Squid Game" have borrowed from traditional Korean childhood games, which Jack and Jill doesn't really fall under. There's a chance the survivors would need to play Red Light, Green Light yet again, but show creator Hwang Dong-hyuk has said something that makes us doubt it. 

Hwang discussed Cheol-su In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, mentioning how his game is the "most exciting game in Season 3." We've already seen Red Light, Green Light twice now, so having a different version of that doesn't sound too exciting. Plus, there's also the train signal that shifts between a green and red light to consider. Hopefully, the team behind "Squid Game" has saved a truly spectacular set piece for its next and final season.