Squid Game Season 2 Trailer Teases Why Player 456 Gi-hun Returned

The main trailer for Squid Game season 2 promises to "let the new games begin."

Squid Game S2 Lee Jung-jae as Seong Gi-hun in Squid Game S2
Photo: No Ju-han | Netflix

To borrow an aphorism made famous by a former U.S. president: “fool me once: shame on you; fool me twice: shame on me.” It was hard not to think of that adage when a second season of Squid Game was announced with lead character Seong Gi-hun a.k.a. Player #456 (Lee Jung-jae) returning as a contestant in another round of life-or-death games.

Sure, the Squid Game season 1 finale makes clear that Gi-hun has revenge on his mind. But is playing along with the exploitative contests of the rich and wealthy the best way to get back at them? Thankfully, Netflix has finally released the lengthy “main” trailer for Squid Game season 2 and it provides us with a better idea of what the once-and-future Player 456 is getting out enduring this ordeal for a second time. Give the full trailer a watch below.

It would appear that Gi-hun, bless him, has a plan here. After a tense conversation with his enemy the Front Man (Lee Byung-hun) via an adorable golden piglet intercom device (surely that will be coming to a Hot Topic near you soon), Gi-hun agrees to be put back in the game as Player 456 once again. There appears to be no quid pro quo here – no deal that if Gi-hun wins, the Squid Game is finished forever or anything. But surely even the Front Man understands that Gi-hun’s participation isn’t merely a straightforward rematch.

That confirmation comes a little later on when an unnamed fellow competitor asks 456 why he came back. Gi-hun simply responds “I’m trying to put an end to this game. How will he go about doing so? If the action-packed imagery of the trailer is anything to go off of, he’s simply going to kill every masked man he can find on the Squid Game campus. “Those who created this game…We should fight them,” he says.

Ad – content continues below

If you think about it, that approach is pretty perfect in its simplicity. Taking out the many rich pigs that attend and financially support Squid Game in the real world is a near-impossible task. But when they’re all together on the same turf and surrounded by 456 desperate people? That might be doable.

Both this trailer and the freshly-released poster promise that Squid Game season 2’s tagline will be “Let the new games begin,” emphasis on the new.

It’s interesting to note though that the trailer doesn’t prominently feature very many new games. There is some sort of Tic-Tac-Toe battle that follows after the players self-select into “X’s” and “O’s.” There’s also a glimpse at a demonic merry-go-round in the trailer that looms prominently in the poster. Aside from those, however, much of the action appears to go down in the dorm rooms, hallways, and other liminal spaces between the Squid Game events. If that holds true in season 2, we like Gi-hun’s odds of ending this whole thing once and for all…pending the results of the show’s third and final season, of course.

Squid Game season 2 premieres all episodes on Thursday, December 26 on Netflix.