Tread carefully and advance only if you get the green light: This article contains spoilers for The Squid Game Season 2.

If you're even remotely familiar with the concept behind writer-director Hwang Dong-hyuk's hit Netflix series The Squid Game, you probably know why the show features a ton of new characters in its second season. Over the course of the first season, which has become one of the streamer's biggest series ever, premiering in late 2021, we follow Seong Gi-hoon (Lee Jung-jae, who won an Emmy for the role), a man who seriously threatens luck owes her a ton of money due to some unpaid gambling debts. When he's offered the chance to participate in a mysterious competition, he basically has no choice but to accept... and when he's taken to the mysterious location, he realizes that whoever loses the game was killed on the spotnarrowing the field until (presumably) only one person wins the 4.56 billion won top prize.

Each player is assigned a number, and with Gi-hoon as player 456, the games begin and he ultimately triumphs - but after the game's controller, Man Front (Lee Byung-hun) tries to convince him to flee South Korea and fly to America, Gi-hoon decides to skip his flight and seek out Man in Charge and his crew , revealing their many, many crimes. In the process, he reintegrates himself into the game and meets a whole new group of players desperate for a life-changing sum of money, so which new characters are great - and who's really bad?

Thanos is only on this list because I want to talk about how annoying he is. Played by Choi Seung-hyun, Thanos—no, indeedthat's his character's name - is, according to other players' reactions when they first meet him, a fairly well-known South Korean rapper (in a bit of meta-casting, the actor who plays Thanos is also a famous South Korean rapper who goes by the stage name TOP), but he's just as desperate as everyone else out there after investing in a crypto company run by Player 333, Myung-gi (Im Si-wan), a YouTuber who ended up defrauding his investors. The whole thing about Thanos is that he is jerk. Somehow, he smuggles drugs into the games in a cross necklace—and while this feels like a huge plot hole considering Gi-hoon enters the game with a tracker in a fake tooth that the guards remove before he starts playing, they somehow don't check out a huge cross necklace for smuggling - and you use those drugs as leverage with other players. But that's not even the darkest thing about Thanos. During the first game - "Red Light, Green Light", just like the first season - he pushes multiple players to the ground to be killed, and when a deadly fight breaks out in the player's quarters, Thanos positively glees over the violence.

There is none point of Thanos, in the end - he meets a grisly end in the player's shared bathroom - and his complete disregard for human life and the well-being of those around him only provides a depressing contrast to the other players, who actually like them. Thanos stinks and he is boring. The actual MCU man played by Josh Brolin is actually betterin that he is at least interesting.

Netflix's (morally corrupt and bankrupt) reality show based on The Squid Game, subtitled The Challenge, featured a mother and son playing the game together in an attempt to win a big cash prize—and while Season 2 of The Squid Game squid" does features a mother and son ending up in the game together, it doesn't seem to be directly inspired by the "real" game show. At the beginning of "Squid Game" season 2, player 007, whose real name is Park Yong-sik (Jang Dong-geun), is shocked to realize that his elderly mother Jang Geum-ya (Kang Ae-shim) is a player. 149. Jong-sik is riddled with gambling debts, which is why they are and both in games, and during the early days of the game, they mostly stick together.

However, when Geum-ya and Jong-sik branch out and start getting involved with the other contestants, they really blossom. Jong-sik is relatively light-hearted but unfailingly kind, but Geum-ya, who survived the Korean War under considerable pressure, really grows throughout the season. While putting Jong-sik's well-being before her own, Geum-ya shows comfort and kindness to the other players—including the timid Player 095 (Kim Si-eun) and Hyun-ju (Park Sung-hoon)—which makes this a duo. a great addition to the season.

The Squid Game is, if nothing else, an extremely cruel show, and one of the cruelest things it does in season two is introduce pregnant player in the game. It's player Kim Yun-hee (Jo Yu-ri), who wears the number 222 and has a relationship with another player ... the aforementioned crypto-currency scammer Myung-gi, who is the baby's father. Joon-hee knows she needs money to raise a child, so she risks two lives by entering the game and trying to win, but she doesn't expect to run head-on into Myung-gi, who clearly wants to come back; Joon-hee isn't exactly thrilled at the prospect, to put it mildly (she was also a victim of Myung-gi's deception, to add insult to injury).

Throughout Season 2, Joon-hee proves to be a very independent and persistent player who takes care of herself while also forming bonds with other players - even in her moments of weakness, she manages to form real relationships with the people around her. Most notably, when Myung-gi begs her to get back together if they can leave the game, she refuses, proving she's not falling for his act again. Joon-hee is great, but we still don't know if we'll see more of her in season 3.

Hyun-joo - Player 120, played by Park Sung-hoon - marks a big step for "The Squid Game" by being the first transgender character to appear on the show. At first, characters like Geum-ja seem to judge Hyun-joo, which makes her understandably defensive, but as Geum-ja gets to know Hyun-joo, the two actually form a truly wonderful bond (in one of the more touching moments of the season , Geum-ja tells Hyun-joo that she is beautiful). Beyond that, however, Hyun-joo is bad.

As a former special forces soldier who lost his position after revealing that he was transgender, Hyun-joo is a natural competitor (who is there to help fund her gender reassignment surgery) and proves quite fierce during the games - but she never he does it at someone else's expense. On the contrary, she's the first person to offer frequent chats or help other people during matches, even if it directly puts her at risk... and as the season closes, she proves invaluable in Gi-hoon's ambush against the guards (she is especially handy with a gun). Hyun-joo is without a doubt one of the most interesting and engaging characters in The Squid Game Season 2, and I indeed I hope she survives the finale because I'd really like to see more of her story.

Played by Park Gyu-young, No-eul is without a doubt the most fascinating new character in the second season of The Squid Game, though it's not always because she does right something. When we meet No-Eul, she's working a (really crappy) job as a theme park mascot, but when she meets a young girl with pediatric cancer who needs a bone marrow transplant, she abruptly quits her job and calls the mysterious number on the back of the card we saw in season 1 - namely, a card that gets people into the games. However, there is a momentary twist with No-Eul; she does not join the game as a competitor. She joins as a masked security guard.

We learn a little more about No-Eul — she's a defector from North Korea whose child is still there — but the most important thing she does in "Squid Game" Season 2 is try to sabotage the organ donation of the organization. As in season 1, dead and injured players are taken to a makeshift surgery center and have their organs removed for transplant, which is easier if they are not killed immediately; No-eul made sure to take out everyone player in sight to make it harder to get organs. To say she makes a few enemies doing this is an understatement, and at the end of season 2, we're not sure what will happen to the woman who works as security guard 011. No-Eul's story seems far from over, so I would be willing to bet she'll show up again next season.

Squid Game Season 2 is streaming now.