Squid Game Season 2’s Best New Characters, Ranked

Tread carefully and only move forward if you get a green light: this article contains spoilers for “Squid Game” season 2.

If you’re even just a little bit familiar with the concept of writer-director Hwang Dong-hyuk’s hit Netflix series “Squid Game,” you probably know why the show features a ton of new characters in its second season. During the first season, which became one of the streamer’s biggest shows ever when it premiered in late 2021, we follow Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae, who won an Emmy for the role), a man who’s seriously down on his luck and owes a ton of money over some unpaid gamblings debts. When he’s offered the chance to participate in a mysterious competition, he basically has no other choice but to accept … and when he’s taken to the mysterious location, he realizes that anyone who loses the game is killed on the spot, narrowing the field until (presumably) just one person wins the grand prize of 4.56 billion won. 

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

Thanos is only on this list because I want to talk about how annoying he is. Played by Choi Seung-Hyun, Thanos — no, really, that’s his character’s name — is, according to the reactions of other players when they first meet him, a pretty 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 T.O.P.), but he’s just as desperate as everybody else there after investing in a crypto company run by Player 333, Myung-gi (Im Si-wan), a YouTuber who ended up scamming his investors. Thanos’ whole deal is that he’s a jerk. Somehow, he smuggles drugs into the games in a cross necklace — and while this feels like a huge plot hole considering that Gi-hun enters the game with a tracker in a false tooth that the guards remove before he starts playing, but they somehow don’t check an enormous cross necklace for contraband — and uses those drugs as leverage with other players. But that’s not even the shadiest thing about Thanos. During the very first game — “Red Light, Green Light,” just like the first season — he shoves multiple players to the ground so that they’re killed, and when a deadly fight breaks out in the player’s quarters, Thanos is positively gleeful over the violence.

There’s no point to Thanos, ultimately — he meets a grisly end in the player’s communal bathroom — and his total disregard for human life and the well-being of those around him just provides a depressing contrast to the other players, who actually like one another. Thanos sucks and he’s boring. The real guy from the MCU played by Josh Brolin is actually better, in that he’s at least interesting.

The (morally corrupt and bankrupt) Netflix reality show based on “Squid Game,” subtitled “The Challenge,” featured a mother and a son playing in the game together in a bid to take home a large cash prize — and while season 2 of “Squid Game” does feature a mother and a son who end up in the game together, it doesn’t seem like it’s directly inspired by the “actual” game show. At the beginning of season 2 of “Squid Game,” player 007, whose real name is Park Yong-sik (Yang Dong-geun), is shocked to realize that his elderly mother Jang Geum-ja (Kang Ae-shim) is player 149. Yong-sik is riddled with gambling debts, which is why they’re both in the games, and throughout the early days of the game, they mostly stick together.

When Geum-ja and Yong-sik branch out and start making inroads with other contestants, though, they really blossom. Yong-sik is relatively unserious but unfailingly kind, but it’s Geum-ja, who survived the Korean War under considerable duress, who really grows throughout the season. While putting Yong-sik’s well being ahead of her own, Geum-ja also shows comfort and kindness to other players — including the timid Player 095 (Kim Si-eun) and Hyun-ju (Park Sung-hoon) — making this duo a great addition to the season. 

“Squid Game” is, if nothing else, an extremely cruel show, and one of the cruelest things it does in season 2 is introduce a pregnant player into the game. The player in question is Kim Jun-hee (Jo Yu-ri), who bears the number 222 and has a connection with another player … the aforementioned cryptocurrency scammer Myung-gi, who is the baby’s father. Jun-hee knows she needs money to raise a child, so she risks two lives by entering the game and attempting to win but doesn’t expect to run headfirst into Myung-gi, who clearly wants her back; Jun-hee isn’t exactly thrilled by that prospect, to put it lightly (she was also the victim of Myung-gi’s scam, to add insult to injury).

Throughout season 2, Jun-hee proves herself to be a highly independent and persistent player, looking out for 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’re able to leave the game, she refuses, proving that she’s not falling for his act again. Jun-hee is great, but we don’t know yet if we’ll see more of her in season 3.

Hyun-ju — player 120, who’s played by Park Sung-hoon — marks a big step for “Squid Game” in that she’s the first transgender character to appear on the show. At first, characters like Geum-ja seem to judge Hyun-ju, which makes her understandably defensive, but as Geum-ja gets to know Hyun-ju, the two actually form a really lovely relationship (in one of the season’s more touching moments, Geum-ja tells Hyun-ju that she’s beautiful). Besides that, though, Hyun-ju is a badass.

As a former special forces soldier who lost her position after revealing that she was transgender, Hyun-ju is a natural competitor (who’s there to help fund her gender-affirming surgery) and proves quite fierce during games — but she never does that at anyone else’s expense. On the contrary, she’s the first person to offer pep talks or help other people during the games, even if it puts her directly at risk … and as the season closes, she proves invaluable in Gi-hun’s ambush against the guards (she’s particularly handy with a gun). Hyun-ju is, without question, one of the most interesting and compelling characters in “Squid Game” season 2, and I really hope she survived the finale, because I’d really love to see more of her story.

Played by Park Gyu-young, No-eul is, without question, the most fascinating new character on the second season of “Squid Game,” even though it’s not always because she’s doing the right thing. When we meet No-eul, she’s working a (truly crappy) job as a theme park mascot, but when she meets a young girl suffering from pediatric cancer who needs a bone marrow transplant, she abruptly quits her job and calls the mysterious number on the back of a card we saw in season 1 — namely, a card that gets people involved in the games. There’s an immediate twist with No-eul, though; she’s not joining the game as a competitor. She’s joining as a masked guard.

We learn a little more about No-eul — she’s a North Korean defector whose child is still there — but the most important thing she does in season 2 of “Squid Game” is try and sabotage the organization’s organ donation. As in season 1, the dead and injured players are brought to a makeshift surgical center and their organs are removed for transplant, which is easier if they’re not killed instantly; No-eul makes sure she takes out every player on sight so that it’s harder to procure organs. It’s an understatement to say that she makes a few enemies doing this, and at the end of season 2, we’re not sure what happens to the woman working as Guard 011. No-eul’s story seems far from over, so I’d be willing to bet she reappears next season.

Season 2 of “Squid Game” is streaming now.