Squid Game Season 1 Episode 2 Recap

Who's in the cast:
Lee Jung-jae as Seong Gi-hun (Player 456)
Park Hae-soo as Cho Sang-woo (Player 218)
O Yeong-su as Oh Il-nam (Player 001)
Jung Ho-yeon as Kang Sae-byeok (Player 067)
Heo Sung-tae as Jang Deok-su (Player 101)
Anupam Tripathi as Ali Abdul (Player 199)
Wi Ha-jun as Hwang Jun-ho
Kim Young-ok as Oh Mal-soon
Kang Mal-geum as Ga-yeong's mother
Park Hye-jin as Sang-woo's mother
Park Si-wan as Kang Cheol
Lee Seo-hwan as Park Jung-bae

Gi-hun thanks Sang-woo and Player 199 for helping him survive the first game. The results are grim: 255 of the 456 players were killed, and 201 are left. Terrified survivors beg the guards to let them go home. The guards insist they only want to give the players a chance, and remind everyone of the consent form. Sang-woo points out the third rule: if a majority agrees, the games can end. Before the vote, the guards reveal what is at stake. Every dead player adds 100 million won to the prize, so 25.5 billion won now hangs in a giant glass piggy bank above the room. If all six games are played, the winner takes 45.6 billion won. If they stop now, the money goes to the families of the dead.

Players vote one at a time, starting from the highest player number, so Gi-hun votes first and Player 001 votes last. Gi-hun votes to leave. Others, including Sang-woo, vote to stay, arguing that life on the outside is no better. The first 200 votes end in a 100-100 tie, so the deciding vote falls to Player 001, the old man with the brain tumor. He votes to stop, and the players are knocked out and dumped back on the streets of Seoul. The guards promise the games will start again if a majority wants them to.

Gi-hun wakes up tied up in the back of a van next to the pickpocket. She wriggles free first and only unties him after he swears on his mother to forget the money, a promise he breaks the second he's loose. She gets away anyway. Sang-woo lends Player 199 bus fare home to Ansan. Gi-hun goes to the police, but the officers treat his story about deadly children's games as drunken nonsense, and the number on his card now goes to a random woman. Back home, Gi-hun runs into Sang-woo on the street in Ssangmun-dong. Sang-woo is too afraid to face his mother and watches her fish stall from a distance. He admits he lost about 6 billion won in bad futures trades and put her store up as collateral. Then Gi-hun's mother lands in the hospital. Her diabetes has gone untreated, and the doctors warn she could lose a foot. Gi-hun has no insurance and no money to pay for surgery.

The episode then follows the others back into their lives. Detective Hwang Jun-ho searches the apartment of his missing brother, Hwang In-ho, and finds the same business card. He tracks down Gi-hun's name and address from the station's report. Player 199, a Pakistani migrant worker, confronts his boss over six months of unpaid wages and a badly injured hand. The fight turns violent, and he takes the money and tells his wife to fly home with their baby. Player 067 visits her little brother, Kang Cheol, at an orphanage and promises they'll be together soon. She learns the broker she paid to get her mother out of North Korea vanished with her money, and getting her out will now cost tens of millions of won. Sang-woo calls his proud mother at her fish stall and pretends to be on a business trip in the US, and shortly afterwards police come to tell her there's a warrant out for his arrest.

Gi-hun begs his friend Jung-bae for a loan, then bumps into Player 001 drinking outside the bar. The old man says he plans to go back. He would rather risk it in there than sit around waiting to die. Meanwhile, Player 101 turns out to be Jang Deok-su, a gangster who lost a fortune at a casino in the Philippines. He plans to rob the game with his crew, until one of his own men turns on him and he has to fight his way out of an ambush.

In desperation, Gi-hun goes to his ex-wife's apartment to ask for money for his mother's surgery. She has nothing to give, and the argument turns ugly. Her new husband comes home and offers Gi-hun an envelope of cash, but only if he stays away from the family. Gi-hun takes it as an insult and lashes out, right in front of Ga-yeong. Outside, Jun-ho introduces himself and asks about the game, but Gi-hun claims he made it up. Then new invitations arrive. One by one, Gi-hun, Sang-woo, Deok-su, Player 067 and Player 199 decide that the game is their only way out.

Player tracker

Eliminated this episode

• ❌ No one is killed this episode. The 201 survivors vote to go home.

Still standing

• ✅ Gi-hun (Player 456)
• ✅ Sang-woo (Player 218)
• ✅ Oh Il-nam (Player 001)
• ✅ Sae-byeok (Player 067)
• ✅ Deok-su (Player 101)
• ✅ Ali (Player 199)

Up next: Squid Game Season 1 Episode 3 Recap. Missed the last one? Read the Squid Game Season 1 Episode 1 Recap. See every episode in the Squid Game Season 1 episode guide or browse all Squid Game recaps.