At some point in life, every one of us is bound to make a choice between principle and survival—and what we end up choosing is a fair indicator of our mettle. This is the core of Netflix’s most popular survival thriller drama, Squid Game, and as the series returns with its second season, the very first episode reiterates the thematic significance of this realization. The end of the first season saw Seong Gi-hun winning the latest installment of Squid Game—at the cost of losing everything—and having a chance encounter with the mysterious recruiter who introduced him to Squid Game in the first place, he planned to take down the heinous organization. On the other hand, Detective Jun-ho, who had infiltrated the island where the game was being hosted in search of his missing brother In-ho, had found out that not only had his brother won the game back in 2015, he had also become Front Man—the chief game overseer. The first episode of the second season, titled “Bread and Lottery,” resumes things in a fantastic way by building on these two plot threads while retaining the familiar elements of manipulation, mind games, and violence—all of which made the series unique in the first place.
Spoilers Ahead
Seong Gi-hun Begins His Search
The episode picks up right where the first season finale of Squid Game ended; ignoring Front Man’s warning, Gi-hun refuses to catch the flight to the States where he would have met his daughter; thereby, he turns back on the prospect of having a safer, better life and becomes determined to expose the game ring. Heading to Seoul, Gi-hun, who by now has realized that his movements were being tracked even after he departed the island, manages to remove the microchip injected into the back of his ear.
Over the next couple of years, Gi-hun becomes maniacally driven in his goal of finding the Recruiter—the only link to the game whom he knows by face—and, assuming the Recruiter still targets potential victims of the game at subway stations, he begins a widespread manhunt across them. In order to do that, Gi-hun employs the local moneylender/gangster Mr. Kim, the same guy who was beating Gi-hun up previously (pilot episode) back when he owed him a lot of money. However, things have changed as Gi-hun has won Squid Game and is sitting on top of the prize money of 46 billion won, which he is using to investigate the gaming ring itself—Mr. Kim and his dozens of lackeys are now working as Gi-hun’s errand boys, watching over subway stations across the country all day long, but so far, to no avail. Gi-hun announces a billion won as a reward for nabbing the recruiter, and Mr. Kim doubles down on the search. It should be mentioned that the trauma of the iincidents witnessed by Gi-hun during his stay in the island hasn’t left him still, as he continues getting haunted by the visions of departed finalists of the game – Sae-byeok and Sang-woo.
Hwang Jun-ho’s Search
On the other hand, after falling off a cliff into the sea, Detective Hwang Jun-ho was rescued by a fisherman, Mr. Park, and upon returning to the mainland, he had realized he had no credible evidence at his disposal to prove the existence of the island. The photos he had taken never reached the police chief, and there was nothing to support his claim that a bunch of filthy rich guys were conducting deadly games by exploiting and manipulating a bunch of people for their personal entertainment. Additionally, the most important question that popped up in Jun-ho’s mind was why his brother, In-ho, took the role of Front Man in the dastardly game ring and ended up shooting him as well? An emotionally broken Jun-ho left the major crimes department in utter despondency and helplessness and took a job as traffic police. However, he continued to look for the island by going on regular nautical patrols with Mr. Park.
Bread And Lottery Game: What Was The Significance?
On one occasion, Mr. Kim and his second-in-command, Woo-seok, are able to identify the recruiter as he is spotted enlisting a luckless victim at a subway station by playing the game of Ddakji with him. Informing Gi-hun at once, the duo decide to secretly tail him, and after following the recruiter to a park, they see him engaging in a bizarre activity. The recruiter buys a hundred bread rolls and a hundred lottery scratch cards and presents both of them to a number of homeless persons/beggars, with the option to choose either one of the two. As all of the beggars end up choosing the lottery tickets and gain nothing, he tramples over all the bread rolls into the ground, blaming the beggars for wasting the food by choosing the lottery ticket instead. Whether or not this is a part of Squid Game remains unknown—but as later viewers learn about the Recruiter’s twisted sense of morality, they realize the significance of the game. The Recruiter has been brainwashed into believing people who are at the lower of the social and financial strata, the desperate ones who choose to play the heinous game to escape their lives of poverty and misery, are veritable trash—none of their lives matter; hence they can be butchered and exploited at the will of the controllers of the game. The recruiter genuinely believes the falsification spread by the controllers that it’s the choice of the people involved to participate in the game, and it’s their greed that ends up bringing them misery. By making them choose between short-term resources like bread and long-term sustenance like the proposition of gaining money through lottery tickets, the recruiter is trying to strengthen his conviction—being completely unaware of who actually is at the controls and just how much freedom of choice the people are given.
Anyway, Mr. Kim and Woo-seok eventually get caught by the recruiter, who forces the duo to play a game of Stone, Paper, Scissors minus one combined with Russian Roulette, which ends with Mr. Kim’s death. What happened with Woo-seok later on remains a mystery, but he too met a similar fate, is my best guess.
How Did The Recruiter Die?
Gi-hun rushes to the location of Mr. Kim, having a chance at apprehending the recruiter after a prolonged wait of two years. En route, he is stopped for speeding, and coincidentally enough, Jun-ho turns out to be one of the traffic police present at the spot, who only recognizes Gi-hun after he leaves in a rush.
Reaching the location where Mr. Kim and Woo-seok had a fight with the recruiter, Gi-hun realizes things have gone wrong, and as he returns to his motel room at night, he finds the recruiter already waiting for him. Gi-hun doesn’t hold from expressing his disgust for the recruiter, mocking him for being a lapdog—a naïve puppet of the controllers of the place. Like the participants of the game, the enforcers are exploitable, faceless figures as well, and no matter how special the recruiter might think himself to be, he is as expendable as the luckless participants are. The Recruiter equates Gi-hun with the rest of the ‘trash,’ except he got lucky and won the game, while Gi-hun maintains that a deluded lapdog like the Recruiter won’t be able to understand what the participants had to go through to survive at the game. The recruiter’s own confession reveals he was so misguided and manipulated into believing that he was worth something to the controllers that he ended up taking his own father’s life while doing their bidding. The recruiter offers Gi-hun to play a round of Russian roulette, with the twist of not spinning the barrel of the gun—which means with each blank chamber fired, the chance of the single bullet being fired increases. In the end, it turns out to be a duel of principles—after four rounds of blank firing, it’s Gi-hun’s turn, and as the mortal fear creeps into his mind, the Recruiter mocks him: if he decides to act upon the chance and fire the gun at his opponent instead, he will prove the Recruiter’s assessment to be true. That Gi-hun was indeed just a lucky bastard among the 456 participants. Gi-hun takes a gamble of his life, and as he pulls the trigger, the gun fires another blank. Which means the chance of the next round being a live one is extremely high.
Now it’s Gi-hun’s turn to mock the recruiter, that if he chooses to shoot Gi-hun, knowing the next shot could kill him, he will prove himself to be a lapdog. Despite knowing the risks, the recruiter shoots himself to death—and there are multiple probable reasons for that. With a psychotic, somewhat deranged mindset, the recruiter suffered from a sense of denial that in the hierarchy of the game ring, he meant nothing to the controllers. Deep down, he too had his doubts about how ethical his actions were, despite all the brainwashing and twisted mindset about the destitute kind deserving such a fate, and as Gi-hun directly challenged his perceptive, the recruiter would rather accept death than challenge the principles that had made him the person he is. As the episode ends, Jun-ho is able to locate Gi-hun’s motel, and the next episode probably focuses on the duo trying to work together to learn much more about the gaming ring. The late recruiter might have had intel at his disposal, which could guide the duo to the right track.
