‘Squid Game’ Season 2 Finale Recap: The Rebel Alliance

In the end, it’s both beautiful and brutal. All-out mass murder in a blue-and-red darkness. Muzzle flashes erupting from dozens of crevices in a vast pastel cavern. Desperate men and women fighting to the last bullet. Lovable characters cracking under pressure. A final betrayal in the royal purple corridors of power. The season finale of Squid Game is everything you’d want from a season finale of Squid Game…except for the “finale” bit. There’s nothing final about this episode at all. 

Creator Hwang Dong-hyuk, who sounds like he has a bad case of Squid Game fatigue himself, has already written the show’s third season, though he’d never planned to make so much as a second. So in practical terms, ending this outing on an Empire Strikes Back moment of defeat in order to follow up in the final installment of the trilogy makes sense. Whether it makes for a satisfying viewing experience overall is up in the air. The antidote to the feeling that the action has been artificially cut short is the same antidote to the feeling that the entire second season is a bit superfluous: the great skill with which it’s being executed.

Other than a brief visit to the surface world in which the murderous treachery of Captain Park is revealed (to the viewer, not his crewmates) once and for all, this episode focuses solely on the genesis, launch, and ultimate defeat of an armed rebellion against the Game and its soldiers, led by Gi-hun. 

The initial formulation of the plan by Gi-hun seems uncontroversial enough: It’s better to fight the power than to fight each other for their entertainment. (If only!) But to do so means conserving his forces, which in turn means refusing to defend their fellow O’s — those who voted to end the games in the evening’s tie vote, scheduled to be re-run the next morning. Hopelessly outnumbered, the O’s — including Se-mi, who is murdered by Nam-gyu while Min-su looks on in impotent terror — are largely slaughtered by the X’s. Eventually, the soldiers rush in to break things up; as much fun as this nocturnal “Special Game” is for the still-unseen VIPs, the subsequent games will run out of players if things get out of hand.

Gi-hun’s counting on this move. He and his unwounded forces — this includes his buddy Jung-bae; Jung-bae’s buddy Dae-ho; player 246, the amusement-park caricaturist; Hyun-ju, whose experience in Special Forces prior to coming out as trans comes in handy; and “Young-il,” secretly the Front Man — play possum, then jump the unprepared guards, killing all but one. With the use of his knowledge, and the mask he uses for entry into high-security zones, they can find their way up to the control room, capture the man in the black mask, and get to the VIPs who are the real power behind the Game. No more killing each other. Time to fight the real enemy.

The result is like a first person shooter staged in a level from a Super Mario game. A massive gun battle breaks out between the seemingly inexhaustible pink-suited soldiers and Gi-hun’s handful of rebels, who split up in various ways to accomplish various things to support the rebellion. Dae-ho heads back to the dorm to gather ammo from the corpses of the slain soldiers. Gi-hun and Jun-bae lead an advance team to find the control room and hold until backup arrives. Young-il leads that backup, offering to find a way to outflank the gunmen holding Gi-hun and Jung-bae back and attack them from behind.

Only it all goes to shit. Dae-ho, who already froze when the fighting erupted, has a nervous breakdown upon hearing nearby gunfire and fails to return with the ammo he collected. Hyung-ju, the rebels’ best soldier, gets caught on the dorm retrieving the ammo from Dae-ho when additional soldiers come in to pacify the remaining players. Player 246 is killed upon surrendering, implicitly by No-eul, the woman who’s trying to raise money for his daughter just as he was. Young-il betrays his team and resumes his role as the black-masked Front Man. He leads the soldiers to subdue Gi-hun, taunts him over his attempt at heroics, then kills Jung-bae right in front of him as punishment for his hubris. The episode ends with Gi-hun sobbing and screaming, and Jung-bae’s avatar vanishing from the big board.

It’s fair to say the seams are starting to show on this project, which for the obvious reason that games aren’t over yet alone feels like one season artificially stretched out into two. As gorgeous and surreal as the gunfight in the candy-colored canyon looks in Hwang’s stunning wide shots, it drags on for long enough that you start to notice the time. Why Young-il waited until the last minute to betray Gi-hun when he could have done so at any time before, saving dozens of his employees’ lives without recklessly risking his own, is never explained or even hinted at. 

I’m sure we’ll get there next season, but I’m not sure we should have to. There’s a weird mini-trend this year of finales that don’t so much end on a cliffhanger as simply kick the can down the road a bit. (House of the Dragon and Shōgun come to mind.) I can practically hear the groans of “Awwww, that’s it???” echoing around the globe already. Hwang is so good at doing what he does that I don’t mind getting bait-and-switched here all that much myself, but it puts that much more pressure on Season 3 to justify the existence of everything that’s happened since Gi-hun turned and walked away from that plane in the Season 1 finale. Right now, the vote on whether or not his continued adventures were a good idea to concoct remains tied. It’s anybody’s game.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.