Gi-hun’s quest to break the eponymous game from within by returning as a participant is off to a rather rocky start, as against a system already heavily rigged against players, there is only so much one can do even with all the resources and pre-emptive knowledge in the world. Previously, Gi-hun, Jun-ho, and Woo-seok joined hands to take down the game ring and put together a team of elite mercs to launch an ambush on Front Man. However, as Gi-hun got himself abducted by the Front Man, he decided to once again enter the game as a participant to challenge the perception of the controllers of the game and to weaken the system from within. Led by Jun-ho, the combat team opts for Plan B, which is to track his location and reach the island, as their plan calls for a covert assault on the enemy front. However, this turns out to be easier said than done, as the contingency plans of the Front Man and the controllers appear to be foolproof.
Spoilers Ahead
Misleading Tracker
As the episode begins, Jun-ho approaches Mr. Park, the fisherman who rescued him previously and had taken him patrolling across the sea in search of the game island. This time, Jun-ho has a concrete tracking location at his disposal and is not firing blanks any longer. Accompanied by Woo-seok and a number of operatives from the combat team, he ventures out into the ocean and eventually reaches the island where the tracker signal appears to be fixed. The team is bewildered to find a fisherman instead of locating the game arena or Gi-hun. As it turns out, the tracker was detected by Front Man or his lackeys during Gi-hun’s physical inspection, and it was put inside the bait of a fisherman who’d simply stopped at a nearby island. This means the team has practically no lead to follow or find Gi-hun, and it’s back to square one as the location of the island remains unknown.
Return To The Arena
Gi-hun wakes up in a familiar, dreadful setting, the large hall where all 456 participants of the game are to spend six days while participating in six different games. A mysterious participant, possibly of a spiritual background, speaks to him in a cryptic manner, indicating that he is bound by the whims of destiny and the spirits of the departed, who dragged him into this mess once again. It is unclear whether she knows Gi-hun’s true identity, but the conviction with which she warns him indicates she isn’t faking it all.
Anyway, as the masked enforcers bring the participants up to speed with the rules and regulations during induction, viewers get introduced to a number of new participants—there is a sleazy, hotheaded rapper named Thanos, a YouTuber named Myung-gi who scammed his subscribers with a cryptocurrency fraud, a transgender woman whose name hasn’t been revealed yet—the common factor binding all of them is the monumental debt they have to their names, which has made them seek desperate measures. A slacker named Yong-sik gets surprised seeing his elderly mother present there as well, as his callous attitude has prompted her to join the game out of desperation, and Gi-hun probably feels personally attacked witnessing this scenario, as he too used to mooch off his mother before participating in the game. Like in the first season, Gi-hun meets one of his friends, Jung-bae, who has participated in the game as well, which serves as a callback to Sang-woo’s predicament in the first season. Let’s hope Gi-hun doesn’t have to witness another of his friends die miserably by getting entangled in the brutal traps set by the controllers.
The Rules
The basic rules, as viewers who binged the first season are aware of, are quite simple. Participants get their only chance to leave the game during induction, after which the game will only terminate if a majority of participants refuse to continue. After each game, 100 million won will be added for each departed participant, making the total prize money a whopping 45.6 billion won. The accumulated prize money will be distributed among the survivors if the game gets terminated before its due period.
Who Is The Number One Participant?
The first game, ‘Red Light, Green Light’—with which Gi-hun and viewers are all too familiar—is about to begin, when Gi-hun realizes that his tracker has been taken out long ago—which means his cavalry isn’t arriving anytime soon, and he has to stay alive until they eventually manage to (if they even can) do so. Gi-hun tries his desperate best to warn the participants by making them aware of the regulations involved with the game, but his words aren’t taken with that much seriousness until the first body drops. After which a huddling ensues among some of the panicked contestants, resulting in more people dying at the hands of the snipers.
No-eul is seen taking down participants remorselessly, probably justifying her actions for the sake of Na-yeon, the kid she wants to save. But upon seeing her father as one of the participants, who has been compelled to join the game to pay for his daughter’s medical expenditure, she decides to spare his life despite his mess-up in the game. I feel this indicates a rift will be created between No-eul and other enforcers later on regarding her biased judgment. Anyway, Gi-hun’s constant effort to assist the participants results in the majority of them surviving, and Thanos proves himself to be an antagonistic figure of this season right from the get-go as he kills a bunch of contestants deliberately by pushing them during the game.
As happened in the first season as well, right after the completion of the first game, a sensible section of participants begins to plead with the enforcers to let them leave, and their appeal gains strength as Gi-hun calls for a vote to terminate the game. However, as the enforcers show the accumulated amount after the first game, adding the promise of the number increasing with each round, a greedy section of the contestants opposes Gi-hun’s suggestion. They want the games to continue and accuse Gi-hun of being a mole sent by the controllers, which prompts the former champion of Squid Game to disclose his true identity. Gi-hun recalls the sordid details of emerging as the only survivor as every other participant lost their lives in the game, but instead of acting as a warning, his statement motivates the greedy lot even more to carry on with the games.
Just like the first season, a vote is conducted to decide the future of the games, and after Gi-hun desperately continues to try and influence the opinion of the contestants, he is promptly threatened with consequences by the enforcers for his interference. Like the first season, it all comes down to the first contestant of the game, whose vote will decide the future of the participants, who vote for the continuation of the games—much to the disappointment of Gi-hun and his followers. The number one participant is none other than In-ho, the Front Man, who has decided to counter Gi-hun’s attempt to sabotage the game by taking part as a contestant himself. Whereas the creator of the game, the old man Il-nam, took part in the game during the first season solely for a taste of life during his final days, for In-ho, it boils down to principles, much like what happened in the case of the Recruiter. As the episode ends with the surprising reveal of the identity of the number one contestant, an engaging rivalry is promised between the duo of Gi-hun and In-ho.
