Note: there are no spoiler details for “Squid Game” season 2 in this post, just information Netflix has already made public ahead of the premiere. Still, if you’ve managed to avoid all of that and want to watch the new season completely fresh, maybe turn back now!
Netflix’s massive South Korean hit series “Squid Game” is back for its second season, and fans should expect a lot 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 get to know, love, and grieve over the course of this season’s games. Among them are a mother and son, Yong-sik (Yang Dong-geun) and Geum-ja (Kang Ae-sim), who end up playing the games together by accident after both characters independently sign up in order to pay off Yong-sik’s significant gambling debts.
By including a mother and son duo in “Squid Game,” the series is (perhaps coincidentally) mirroring its absolutely tone deaf game show spin-off reality series, “Squid Game: The Challenge.” On that series, players who were eliminated were simply sent home instead of being executed, which made the competition a little lower stakes but also significantly less immoral, and mother and son Leann Wilcox Plutnicki and Trey Plutnicki did quite well for themselves, both making it past the halfway point. Leann was unfortunately eliminated in episode six during the “Marbles” game, while Trey was eliminated during episode seven’s “Glass Bridge,” but they seemed to have a pretty good time overall. Somehow, I get the feeling that’s not going to be the case for the fictional mother-son duo and Yong-sik and Geum-ja are in for a seriously bad time.
The mother and son Plutnicki duo ended up against one another
In the reality series, LeAnn ended up paired with her son Trey for the marbles game, much like Oh Il-nam (Oh Yeong-su) and Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) ended up paired together in the first season of the fictional series, leading to Oh Il-nam’s apparent death. (Don’t quite remember everything from season 1? Don’t worry, we’ve got you.) Thankfully for everyone, LeAnn didn’t end up executed but just sent back to New Jersey. In an interview with Today, Trey revealed that he actually was given the opportunity to choose someone to bring with him in the Netflix series, and he ended up picking his mom after she asked to join, saying, “I’m retired. I have nothing better to do’.”
It ended up that LeAnn and Trey discovered the marbles in the bottom of their picnic basket in episode 6, dooming them to play against one another. Trey ended up taking his mother out, only to be eliminated in the next episode. Thankfully, it gave them a chance to have a decent farewell, as LeAnn told People that while she was waiting in the hotel to fly home, she got a knock on the door from her freshly-eliminated son, who was happy to see her off before heading back to his own home in Chicago, instead of being upset about his elimination and loss of a record-setting potential $4.5 million jackpot. That’s a great ending for the real-life mother-son team, but the circumstances behind the drama series’ pair mean things are going to be much more tragic.
Yong-sik and Geum-ja are destined for tragedy on Squid Game
In a Netflix promo video introducing some of the new players in “Squid Game” season 2, Yang Dong-geun and Kang Ae-sim, who play the mother and son duo of Yong-sik and Geum-ja, explained their characters a bit. Yang shared that the son, Yong-sik, is “an immature, shameless gambler buried in debt” who had never planned to see his mother in the games (unlike Trey) but entered them himself in an attempt to pay off his debts. Once they’re both there, however, he realizes that “simply having Geum-ja there was a safety net, a godsend.” He elaborated further, saying:
“The idea of a mother and son entering the game together is fascinating. Somehow, having Geum-ja and Yong-sik as a duo onscreen just gives me a sense of ease. Amidst all the terror, his mother is his anchor. She is his mom, his rock.”
That’s kind of sweet in a depressing sort of 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-ja also didn’t know that 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 Yong-sik gets into “a lot of trouble” he’s still clearly the center of Geum-ja’s world if she’s willing to put her life on the line to get his debts paid off. In the end, Kang says, “faced with life and death she continues the game, always putting him before herself.” That’s a beautiful kind of selflessness because of the love for one’s child, but Geum-ja and Yong-sik should never have had to play with their lives in the first place.
“Squid Game” season 2 is streaming on Netflix December 26, 2024, while “Squid Game: The Challenge” season 2 is somehow on the way on the streamer sometime soon.
