Biggest Mistakes Made By Squid Game Characters

Summary

• Characters in Squid Game frequently make crucial mistakes, leading to unforgettable deaths.
• Season 3 must address the cliffhanger ending of Season 2 and resolve unanswered questions.
• Main characters like Gi-Hun and Ali Abdul made significant errors, impacting their survival in the games.

Squid Game is undoubtedly the biggest thriller TV series of the decade since this is an extremely suspenseful story in which every single decision the characters make can result in their abrupt deaths. Because of this, it’s almost impossible for everyone to come out of the titular death game alive.

Unfortunately for all these beloved characters, they often fail to make the best decisions in every situation, which often results in many unforgettable deaths. The main cast of Squid Game has made a lot of huge mistakes throughout both seasons of the show, but the following were the biggest ones so far.

Warning! Spoilers Ahead!

8

Confronting The Recruiter

Kim Jeong-rae & Choi Woo-seok’s Biggest Mistake

• Episode: Bread and Lottery (Season 2, Episode 1)

Kim Jeong-rae and Choi Woo-seok were a pair of gangsters who Seong Gi-Hun tasked with the mission of tracking down the game’s Recruiter. After days and days of fruitless efforts, the pair eventually found and observed him for an entire day. Gi-Hun ordered them to just follow the Recruiter and never engage with him, but Mr. Kim and Woo-seok ignored this order and tried to confront him instead.

They must have been misled by the Recruiter’s formal attire and relaxed attitude because he proved to be quite a strong combatant who effortlessly defeated them both. After capturing the pair of gangsters, he forced them to play a twisted game of Rock, Paper, Scissors combined with Russian Roulette, which led to the abrupt death of Mr. Kim, right in front of Woo-seok’s eyes. If they had listened to Gi-Hun, they would certainly have come out of the persecution alive.

7

Insisting On Playing Together

Players 069 and 070’s Biggest Mistake

• Episode: Gganbu (Season 1, Episode 6)

For a pair of unnamed minor characters, Players 069 and 070 still managed to become two of the most memorable players in all of Season 1. This is mainly because they were an endearing married couple who always played together and who managed to go pretty far into the game. However, their unwavering loyalty eventually forced them to make a monumental mistake.

Before the fourth game, 069 and 070 insisted that they’d play together and even rejected Han Mi-nyeo’s offer to play with one of them. Unfortunately for them, it was later revealed that the paired players would have to face each other in the game of Marbles, in one of the series’ most heartbreaking twists. It is never revealed how exactly this game went for the married couple, but 070 died in it and 069 later killed himself due to the trauma of indirectly killing his wife.

6

Leaving Kang Sae-byeok Alone For A Few Seconds

Seong Gi-Hun’s Biggest Season 1 Mistake

• Episode: Front Man (Season 1, Episode 8)

Things had gotten extremely intense between Seong Gi-Hun, Kang Sae-byeok, and Cho Sang-woo when they became the three finalists of the games. Due to an unexpected explosion at the end of Glass Stepping Stones, Sae-byeok ended up with a horrible injury that left her almost defenseless, and Sang-woo wanted to use that weakness to his advantage to get rid of her.

Gi-Hun relentlessly tried to prevent his childhood friend from murdering the wounded girl, and he even considered killing him, but Sae-byeok stopped him by reminding him that he wasn’t a murderer. At one point during the night, the girl’s injuries had gotten so bad that Gi-Hun made the mistake of leaving her alone to ask the soldiers for help. In those few seconds, Sang-woo went over to Sae-byeok and murdered her, something that Gi-Hun could have stopped if she hadn’t left her alone.

5

Betraying Han Mi-nyeo

Jang Deok-su’s Biggest Mistake

• Episodes: A Fair World (Season 1, Episode 5) and VIPs (Season 1, Episode 7)

Jang Deok-su was one of the biggest antagonists of Season 1, as this former gangster treated everyone around him like garbage and didn’t hesitate to kill someone else for his benefit, to the point that he felt no guilt when his henchman died in the game of marbles. But, unbeknownst to him, he committed the biggest mistake of his life in the previous game.

At one point, Deok-su formed his own gang, which included Han Mi-nyeo, a woman whom he had a physical and emotional relationship with. However, he didn’t have any problem with kicking her out of the gang because he didn’t think she would be strong enough for tug of war. Nevertheless, Mi-nyeo never forgot Deok-su’s betrayal, which prompted her to sacrifice herself to kill him during the fifth game, Glass Stepping Stones, in one of the most shocking but satisfying moments of the entire series.

4

Not Exposing Oh Young-il

Park Jung-bae’s Biggest Mistake

• Episodes: O X (Season 2, Episode 6) and Friend or Foe (Season 2, Episode 7)

At one point during the third game, Mingle, Park Jung-bae ended up in the same room as Oh Young-il and another player. However, as the room required having only two people in it, Young-il killed the unnamed player in cold blood, in one of the most disturbing scenes of the season. This is because he was actually the Front Man, the cruel organizer of the games who saw its players as inferior to him and, thus, never hesitated to kill them.

Witnessing this event traumatized Park Jung-bae, making him doubt if Young-il was as kind as he appeared to be. He even tried to expose him to Gi-Hun, which would have certainly helped both of them realize who Young-il actually was, but he decided not to. This would prove to be his biggest mistake, since the Front Man eventually “betrayed” all of them during the final episode’s rebellion, and killed Jung-bae in cold blood to further traumatize and demoralize Seong Gi-Hun.

3

Trusting Cho Sang-woo During Marbles

Ali Abdul’s Biggest Mistake

• Episode: Gganbu (Season 1, Episode 6)

Ali Abdul is one of the kindest characters in all of Squid Game, which resulted in him becoming one of the most popular characters among fans as well. However, his kindness eventually led to his downfall when he played marbles with Cho Sang-woo.

Ali tragically committed the mistake of trusting his “friend,” and accepted to carry a bag of marbles that contained pebbles, meaning that he didn’t have any marbles left when the game ended, so a pink soldier immediately executed him. At the end of the day, Ali forgot that he shouldn’t trust anybody in this game of death because he was way too innocent for his own good, and Sang-woo used this to his advantage to survive.

2

Failing To Collect More Ammunition During The Rebellion

Kang Dae-ho’s Biggest Mistake

• Episode: Friend or Foe (Season 2, Episode 7)

At the very end of Season 2, Seong Gi-Hun and his friends successfully took down the Pink Soldiers to confront the Front Man and finally put a stop to these games. They managed to get surprisingly close to the control room until they suddenly ran out of bullets. However, they quickly realized that the Pink Soldiers carried extra ammo in their suits, so they tasked Kang Dae-ho with going back to the dormitory to retrieve as much as possible.

The situation had gotten too big and dangerous for Dae-ho, who suffered a sudden panic attack when he reached the dormitory. This one mistake caused the group’s downfall, because they couldn’t keep fighting the guards due to their lack of ammo, and many of them eventually died, including Park Jung-bae. The only silver lining of Dae-ho’s mistake is that it forced Cho Hyun-ju – one of the best and most beloved characters in Squid Game – to go back for him, a decision that eventually saved her life.

1

Returning To The Games

Seong Gi-Hun’s Biggest Season 2 Mistake

• Episode: Halloween Party (Season 2, Episode 2)

After all the trauma of participating in the death games, Seong Gi-Hun decided to use all of his riches to find its billionaire organizers and finally put an end to their cruel schemes. At the very beginning of Season 2, he proved that he had become a serious and ruthless man, who not only had managed to collect a fair share of allies and weapons but who also used wits to defeat the infamous Recruiter. Maybe this time around, Gi-Hun could stop the games without actually having to participate in them.

Unfortunately, Gi-Hun was later tricked into getting into a limousine where he confronted the Front Man, who manipulated him into going back to the games if he even wanted to get a chance to stop them. Gi-Hun agreed, a horrible decision that caused him a lot of trauma, anguish, and regret, as he once again had to witness people dying around him throughout the rest of Season 2. With all of his money and resources, he surely could have stopped the games from the outside.