I would like to preface that I also absolutely love the season one characters. But something about the characters in season two of Squid Game really stuck out to me. This season was filled with a lot more drama than last season because it was focused on the main character, Seong Gihun, played by Lee Jungjae, trying to survive the game. Season two still has that element of survival but also Gihun’s goal of ending the game for good.

I think that the main critique that I’ve seen fans say about the characters in season two was that they weren’t as fleshed out as the characters in season one, and I can totally agree with that. In season two we get a little bit of backstory from each character but it’s mostly just the players talking about it with other players while in season one we would actually get to see a bit of the important characters’ lives in episodes. However, I could argue that this is because in the first season, the players had originally voted to end the game after playing red light green light, giving them the chance to leave and the chance for viewers to get a peek into their lives outside of the game. In the second season, the people who want to leave are continuously being outvoted by players who wish to continue the game, giving us no chance to see their actual home lives.

Now let’s get into the characters themselves. Personally, the characters who stuck out the most were Hyunju, Daeho and Gyeongseok. I’m choosing to focus on the characters who are still alive (or hopefully still alive in Gyeongseok’s case) as well as moving past characters such as Gihun and Inho as they are already well-established in the series because I believe these listed characters have more of a chance of being more fleshed out in the upcoming season two.

Starting with Hyunju. This character was one that meant a lot to me as an LGBTQ+ person. When I heard that they had added a trans character into the show I was very nervous, especially with finding out that it would be a man playing the part rather than a trans woman. However, Park Sunghoon did an amazing job portraying Hyunju. We get a little bit of her story when she’s explaining herself to Geumja on why she didn’t want anyone to watch her while she played jegi in the second game, displaying the dysphoria she feels as she didn’t want anyone to watch her because she wasn’t finished with the surgical part of her transition yet. We also see more of this when she’s explaining to Geumja why she chose to stay in the game, telling her about how her life had gotten so difficult once she told everyone around her that she was going to continue her life as a woman. Explaining that she needed the money in order to finish her transition and start her new life in Thailand. We also get to see little bits of her dysphoria come out in scenes such as when she’s in the bathroom with Geumja and Junhee, staring at herself in the mirror while touching and examining her face.

I’ve seen many fans of the show comparing Hyunju and Ali from season one, showing the parallels between the two characters. They are both characters from marginalized groups, judged for their identities. We see this happen to Hyunju during the second game when she’s attempting to find a team and many people brush her off because of how she identifies. We see this happen with Ali when Minyeo joins up with his team and she starts berating him for being in Korea and attempting to get the other players to kick him out of the group. Both of these characters however prove to be some of the bravest and most loyal characters in the entire show. In the first episode of season one, Ali saves Gihun from falling during red light green light. While playing red light green light in season two, Gihun is again saved from falling in the game, but this time by Hyunju. Ali stuck with everyone he teamed up with to the very end, even when his undying trust for Sangwoo led him to his death. Hyunju led the players who chose to fight into battle, even while knowing the odds were stacked against them.

Moving on to my personal favorite character, Daeho. I found Daeho to be an extremely interesting character, as we met him as a very confident, almost carefree man. He’s introduced as an ex-marine, something he and Jungbae could bond over, and seemed to be very proud of that part of his personality. But as the show goes on, we start to see little cracks in his confident persona. In the second game when Jungbae starts to express that he’s a little nervous, as they’ll be the only ones without an audience to cheer them on. He gestures to Daeho to see how he’s feeling, to which Daeho confidently tells him that it’ll help them to focus, exclaiming loudly, “Victory at all cost.” A marine saying that Daeho used often throughout the game. After the second game, Daeho mentions how it was his father who made him join the Marines. When Jungbae attempted to ask more about Daeho’s father he quickly changed the subject, alluding to the idea that Daeho had never wanted to join the Marines in the first place, and possibly even resented his father for making him. In the third game we see these cracks again, often being the first person to offer to go with a group into a room to escape death. Never wanting to be part of the group that needs to find more people.

We see the facade fully shatter when the battle between the players and guards breaks out. He’s very clearly terrified, not even peeking his head out to properly aim his gun, choosing to instead shoot at random and waste his ammunition. He’s visibly shaking throughout the fight, and when told that they needed more ammunition for Gihun and Jungbae, he offered himself up to retrieve it rather than letting Hyunju go herself. While running back to the players’ dorm, he’s very obviously stressed, especially while seeing the bodies of the guards that were killed on his way back. When getting back to the dorm he’s frantic, all he’s saying is “magazines.” The only full sentence he could form was when he was telling Yongsik to help him collect them from the guards’ pockets. While walking back to where his teammates were with the magazines he had collected, he heard more gunfire. Afterward, he hears Hyunju calling for him on the radio, telling him that they desperately needed the ammunition and soon. We don’t see Daeho again after that, until Hyunju makes her way to the dorm looking for Daeho. When she finds him he’s on a bed, holding his head between his hands with his knees pulled up to his chest. When Hyunju approaches him, all he can say is “I’m sorry”, even flinching when Hyunju goes to grab the ammunition from next to him.

Now I won’t even entertain the theory that Daeho was faking being a marine. What I and many other fans believe, is that Daeho has PTSD from being in the Marines. He never wanted to go into it, but was forced by his father who wanted him to be more manly after Daeho had grown up with four older sisters. He was even embarrassed to admit that he knew how to play gonggi during the second game, as it’s traditionally a women’s game in Korea. But because of his sisters, he ended up being really good at it. There’s also a theory that I personally believe that Daeho may have never witnessed any real combat while in the Marines, but rather that he had witnessed a shooting where he had been placed. Fans did some research and found out that the class of marines that Daeho had been a part of had experienced a mass shooting, and many people believe that his reaction to the gunfire during the battle was a reaction to what he had experienced then. If this is true, Daeho’s reaction would make so much more sense to the people who doubted him.

Now lastly, there’s Gyeongseok. It may be a little confusing for me to have included him in this list, as he’s one of the only characters from this season that we actually do get to see a little backstory on. Having joined the game due to his daughter being very sick. I find Gyeongseok to be very interesting due to the relationship between him and Noeul, a triangle armed guard. Clearly, Gyeongseok doesn’t know that it’s Noeul. But there’s a chance that Gyeongseok does know Noeul outside of the game, having worked at the same place before joining the game on opposing sides. To me personally, it seems that Noeul doesn’t want Gyeongseok to die. Before either of them joined the game, Gyeongseok’s daughter had collapsed and was rushed to the hospital. Noeul found her hat on the ground and delivered it to her room. We also get to see a bit of Noeul’s backstory as well, finding out that she is a North Korean defector who had to leave her young daughter behind when fleeing the country. Many believe that Gyeongseok’s daughter reminded Noeul of her own daughter, and due to that, she wants to make sure that Gyeongseok gets out alive to be able to make it back to her.

We see an example of this when Noeul first sees Gyeongseok in the game during red light green light. She pauses for a moment, immediately recognizing who he was. We see this again during the third game when she’s watching him as he comes out of the room alive. Now is when we get into some gray areas. We see Gyeongseok get shot in the last episode of season two. And for many viewers, they believed that that was it. We’ll never see Gyeongseok again. But watching closely, we can see that he wasn’t shot fatally, the guard having aimed their gun lower than normal. It’s widely believed that the guard who shot Gyeongseok was Noeul and that she did this on purpose so as to not seem like a traitor, but still be able to save him. This theory is a little more tricky than other ones in Squid Game because as of right now we don’t know who it was that shot Gyeongseok. But I, along with many other fans, are hoping to see him alive and, mostly, well in season three.

I could’ve gone on much longer in this. Talking about how I hope to see more of Namgyu’s backstory, how Junhee’s pregnancy will develop the storyline in season three, if Myunggi will stop being a loser and own up to his role as a future father, etc. The reason that I like the characters in this season more is because even though we don’t have their full story, they still catch our attention. The audience is on the edge of their seats waiting for season three so that we can see what becomes of the remaining characters. We don’t need the full backstory to be able to see who they are, but hopefully, we get to see more in season three.