Mild spoilers for Squid Game Season 2 follow.

In season 1 of "Squid Game" there was a brain-breaking reference that understandably made some viewers' heads explode. One of the unlucky contestants caught up in these games of life and death talks about famous Korean actor Lee Byung Hun, only for Lee Byung Hun himself to play the masked front man who manages the games all along. It then makes us wonder, given the arrival of a new competitor named Thanos in Season 2 of the show, if the final episode will feature the Mad Titan as a huge plot twist and reveal that The Squid Game is actually all part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Probably not, but stranger things have happened.

However, in the case of this particular Thanos, the name is an absolute reference to Marvel's fearsome world destroyer and Josh Brolin's ribald villain, who was seen ripped out of existence by Tony Stark in Avengers: Endgame. In homage to the bad-guy-shaking Marvel universe, this Thanos even has purple hair to match Thanos' skin color and has fingernails painted to match the color of the Infinity Stones - a set of stones that would certainly be a bit of a game-changer if they were available right now. Unfortunately, Thanos in The Squid Game Season 2 and the rest of the hapless challengers have to depend on their wits to get out alive. And if the latest batch of players is anything to go by, backstabbing is, dare we say, inevitable.

In the world of Squid Game, Thanos is a rapper who has fallen on hard times after investing in cryptocurrencies and lost it all, thanks to the advice of financial YouTuber Amazing Myung-gi (Yim Si-wan), who also finds himself and in games. In an effort to get back on top, Thanos joins the Squid Game to get his career back, and like everyone else, his bank account. It doesn't take much for the actor behind the Marvel-obsessed character to get into the mindset of a huge Korean rap star, given that he's been one for years.

In addition the four original characters returning for Season 2 of The Squid Game, Choi Seung-Hyun, also known as TOP, is one of the newcomers to the show and has been in the music industry since 2006 where he was the lead rapper for BigBang. In 2007, he tried his hand at acting, delivering critical performances in both television and film, with his turn in the Korean war film 71: Into the Fire, which earned him an Asian Film Awards nomination. The Squid Game would mark the star's first acting appearance in seven years, and while we don't want to call it too soon, we wonder if he'll live long enough to see it the third and final season. Well, the universe still needs balance.

Season 2 of The Squid Game is now streaming on Netflix.