Note: There are no "Squid Game" Season 2 spoiler details in this post, only information that Netflix has already made public ahead of the premiere. However, if you managed to avoid all that and want to watch the new season completely fresh, maybe come back now!

Netflix's massive South Korean hit series The Squid Game is back for its second season, and fans should expect plenty of new faces. Only four characters from the first season will reappear in the second, meaning there will be a whole new mess of players to meet, love and grieve over the course of this season's games. Among them are mother and son, Jong-sik (Yang Dong-geun) and Geum-ja (Kang Ae-sim), who end up playing the games together by chance after both characters independently sign up to pay out to Jong- substantial sik gambling debts.

By featuring a mother-son duo in The Squid Game, the show (perhaps accidentally) mirrors its Absolutely tone deaf game show spin-off reality series"Squid Game: Challenge." In that series, the eliminated players were simply sent home instead of being executed, making the competition a little lower-stakes but also significantly less immoral, and mother and son Leanne Wilcox Plutnicky and Trey Plutnicky did quite well for themselves, both they did that. passed the halfway mark. Unfortunately, Lin was eliminated in episode six during the Marbles game, while Trey was eliminated during episode seven, Glass Bridge, but they seemed to have a pretty good time overall. Somehow, I get the feeling that won't be the case for the fictional mother-son duo and Jong-sik and Geum-ya are in for a seriously bad time.

In the reality series, LeAnn ended up pairing up with her son Trey for the marble game, similar to how Oh Il-nam (Oh Yeong-soo) and Seong Gi-hoon (Lee Jung-jae) ended up together in the first season of the fictional series, which led to the apparent death of O Il-nam. (I don't quite remember are they from season 1? Don't worry, we've got you.) Luckily for everyone, LeAnn didn't end up being executed, just returned to New Jersey. In an interview with TodayTrey revealed that he was actually given the opportunity to choose someone to bring with him on the Netflix series, and ended up choosing his mother after she asked to join, saying: “I'm retired. I have nothing better to do." .

It ended with LeAnn and Trey discovering the marbles at the bottom of the picnic basket in episode 6, condemning them to play against each other. Trey eventually took out his mother, only to be eliminated in the next episode. Luckily, that gave them a chance to have a proper goodbye, as LeAnn told People that while she was waiting at the hotel to fly home, she got a knock on the door from her recently eliminated son, who was happy to see her off. before returning to his home in Chicago, instead of being upset about his elimination and losing a A potential jackpot of $4.5 million for the record. It's a great ending for the real-life mother and son team, but the circumstances behind the drama couple mean things are about to get a lot more tragic.

On Netflix promo video introducing some of the new players in "Squid Game" Season 2, Jang Dong-geun and Kang Ae-sim, who play the mother-son duo of Jong-sik and Geum-ya, explained their characters a bit. Young shared that the son, Jong-sik, is an "immature, shameless gambler buried in debt" who never planned to see his mother in the games (unlike Trey), but entered them himself in an attempt to pay off his debts. However, once they both find each other, he realizes that "just having Geum-ya had a safety net, a godsend." He further elaborated, saying:

"The idea of ​​mother and son entering the game together is fascinating. Somehow, having Geum-ya and Jong-sik as a duo on screen gives me a sense of ease. Amidst all the horror, his mother is his anchor. She is his mother, his rock."

It's kind of sweet in a depressing way when you remember that one or both of them could probably die before the end of the season. It's even more tragic because Geum-ya also didn't know her son was signing up when she joined the game hoping to pay off his debts. Kang described her as a "resilient mother with a deep commitment to providing for her family." Even though Jong-sik gets into "a lot of trouble," he's still clearly the center of Geum-ya's world if she's willing to put her life on the line to pay off his debts. In the end, Kang says, "in the face of life and death, she continues the game, always putting him before herself." It's a beautiful kind of selflessness out of love for one's child, but Geum-ya and Jong-sik should never have been playing with their lives in the first place.

"Squid Game" season 2 airs on Netflix on December 26, 2024, while "Squid Game: The Challenge” season 2 is kind of on the way on the streamer soon.