Squid Game season 2 marks the return of Netflix's global phenomenon. Season 1 winner, Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), may have proven victorious, but now he wants revenge.
Despite the 45.6 billion won prize, he instead decides to track down the people behind the game in a bid to take them down and end the games forever. The cliffhanger ending of season 1 saw Gi-hun about to board a flight, but when he spots the businessman who recruited him at the airport, he decides he can't leave. And this is where Squid Game season 2 returns.
Here's a recap of everything that happened in Squid Game season 2 episode 2.
The second episode opens on Jun-ho hearing the gunshot of the salesman shooting himself from outside the motel. He runs in and looks for Gi-hun. Instead, he finds the boss’s partner, gagged and tied up on a bed. He frees him. Meanwhile, Gi-hun searches the salesman's body for answers, retrieving a little black envelope with a pink ribbon from his pocket. Jun-ho comes in and points a gun to his head, telling him he's under arrest. Suddenly, the boss's partner comes in and knocks him out. Gi-hun looks at the card from inside the black envelope, it says, October 31st at midnight, Club HDH.
Elsewhere, a police officer approaches a car where a woman is sleeping inside. She says she works at the amusement park that she's parked up in the car park off and she’s got the morning shift. He gives her a final warning and says she can't do this.
Back at the motel, Gi-hun has tied up Jun-ho in the bath and they talk about where they’ve met before. Gi-hun speaks about his plan for the island and says he wants to stop the game by finding the Front Man. Again, Jun-ho lies and says he doesn’t know who he is. Gi-hun replies that the night Oh Il-nam died, he said he only runs it to please the clients and those are the people Gi-hun wants to meet. Jun-ho said he saw one of the faces of the VIPs and that they could work together. Gi-hun leads the Jun-ho and the boss's partner to show them all his money, stacked on a bed. He’s barely made a dent. He also has a lot of weapons and he asks the boss's partner to build a team for him to exact his revenge.
The following morning at the amusement park, the woman from the car is one of the parade mascots. A little girl brings her a picture and the other mascots tell the woman that the girl was in the hospital, with blood cancer, and that her dad is one of the other workers at the park. She needs a bone marrow transplant.
Undercover, Gi-hun watches the mother and younger brother of his friends from the last game, Sang-woo and Sae-byeok. Gi-hun meets with a broker to see if he can track down Sae-beyok's mother. He tells her she was recently released from a prison camp. He says she's contracted tuberculosis and moving her isn't feasible, but he begs him to get her out. The broker says he owes her, so he'll try and make it happen. Gi-hun gives the broker of Sae-byeok's little brother’s number and says to call him if anything happens to Gi-hun.
As he’s leaving, the woman from the amusement park comes in. She tells the broker she's looking for her child, but she says everyone else she's asked for help have said she’s dead. The broker says the chances of finding a one-year-old in North Korea without her parents after her mum shot a superior officer and ran away to the South are very slim. That night, a man approaches her car and hands her a card inviting her to the game.
Jun-ho visits his brother’s wife’s grave, the man who is now Front Man. It’s been five years since her death and he wonders if he'll see him there. He doesn't and instead he has dinner with his mum. She says his brother left because he resents her for everything and especially the fact that she wasn’t his birth mother. He even gave Jun-ho a kidney. But, he accepted a bribe to help with his wife's care and that got him in a lot of trouble.
At the amusement park, the woman quits her job. As she’s leaving, the poorly little girl from before is being taken away by an ambulance. She drops her strawberry hat.
That evening, at the motel, a man pulls out one of Gi-hun’s teeth and replaces it with a fake tooth concealing a tracking device. They begin to assemble the team for the meet at Club HDH. He tries to call his daughter, Seong Ga-yeong. she answers, “Dad? Dad, is that you?” He won’t say anything, so he hangs up. Meanwhile, the woman from the amusement park calls the number from the card she was given and signs up from the games.
At Club HDH, there’s a huge halloween party. They put on masks to blend in and figure that's why the others want to meet there. Jun-ho waits outside, and Gi-hun walks in with the boss’s partner. Though outside on watch, Jun-ho spots men dressed like the guards in the game and follows them into the club. Inside, Gi-hun is approached by one of the guards while the other tasers the boss's partner. They lead Gi-hun out of the back of the club. As the rest of the team wait outside with guns, Gi-hun is led to a limo and it drives away. They tail it.
A golden piggy bank, resembling the one from inside the game, sits inside the limo and talks to Gi-hun. Again, he's told he should’ve gotten on the plane. He says I wanted to meet you. He says, “What do you want from me?” Gi-hun asks him to stop the game, but the piggy bank argues that the players joined with free will and that players lose and they’re trash anyway. He says, “If the world doesn’t change, the game doesn’t end.”
The men tailing the limo say it keeps driving in circles, so they try to stop it. Suddenly, someone blows one of their tires, a sniper. Swiftly, all the cars are taken out. The pig says, "Did you really think you could end the game like this?" and the limo driver refuses to stop.
Gi-hun asks to play the game again. Pleading that the VIPs would love it. When Oh Il-Nam died, Gi-hun could tell he finally realised he’d lost. The piggy bank questions whether Gi-hun truly believes he can change the world. He says he’ll prove that he can. The piggy bank continues to question Gi-hun and says, "The world isn’t always going to work like you think it should." Finally, it's agreed that Gi-hun will return to the games and gas starts to release in the back of the limo, knocking Gi-hun out. The passenger in the front pulls down the privacy screen and turns around, it’s Front Man. He says, “Player 456, welcome back to the game.” Jun-ho tells the team that plan B is now in effect.
Meanwhile, players are turning up, including the parade mascot, and entering the lockers in the back of huge cargo lorries to put on their outfits for the game. In a twist, the woman pulls on the pink jumpsuit and mask of a guard, not a player.
