Summary
- Gi-hun evolves from a warm and naive character to a serious, driven figure in Squid Game season 2.
- Season 2 focuses on Gi-hun returning to the games to shut them down and save lives, facing tougher challenges.
- The upcoming season promises a tone change with more character depth and progress for Gi-hun in the series.
Excitement is building for the second season of Squid Game to be released on Netflix on December 26, which will once again follow the character of Seong Gi-hun, who is played by Lee Jung-jae. The gambling addict was thrown into the Squid Game in the show’s first season, but Player 456 managed to escape the odds and leave with his life, unlike everyone else.
However, he’s now set to be thrust back into that world, this time under very different circumstances. Gi-hun isn’t the same person he was at the start of Squid Game because the events of the first season have completely impacted his life. He was put into a traumatic scenario, so it’s likely he will be different when the show returns, which is exactly what has been teased.
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Squid Game creator and director Hwang Dong-hyuk spoke about the show’s second season and how his lead character is set to evolve. He revealed to Variety, “The thing we focused a lot more on and invested conversations and time into was how, in season one, a lot of what the people loved about Gi-hun was he was this kind of naïve, at times childish and playful and at times immature kind of character. And he had held this warmth and goodness of heart, and that was what a lot of people loved about this character. But now you meet him at a point where he is a lot more focused and almost completely dominated or consumed by his drive to achieve what he has set out to do.”
Gi-hun might have won the cash prize at the end of the first season, but he ultimately failed to help his mother, which is likely to be a defining factor in his change in personality. Hwang has teased that Gi-hun will be more serious in the second season, and that will provide the necessary change to ensure that the character feels different.
Season two is set to focus on Gi-hun returning to the games, this time knowing in advance exactly what he’s walking into. He will attempt to shut them down in a bid to get revenge and also save the lives of those who are trapped this time around. However, convincing people who are in financial ruin to stop participating with so much cash on the line is expected to be harder than it first seems.
The fact that Gi-hun is going to be in a different place as a character will be important because it will demand a tone change in comparison to the first series. There is less surprising about the actual Squid Game element heading into this season. Therefore, the decision to ramp things up from a character perspective makes more sense as it will provide the same level of intensity but from a different perspective. It is also going to be important to provide character progression for Gi-hun heading into the third season of Squid Game, which has already been confirmed as the story is set to continue.