Spoilers ahead for all episodes of “Squid Game” Season 2. No, your TV is not broken. Your Netflix account isn't skipping episodes. Season 2 of “Squid Game” ends with a truly abrupt, devastating, and infuriating cliffhanger. Isn't it fitting, in a way?” The famously bleak Netflix K-drama finally returns to its famously bleak time to kick in when we're down and out.

But let's rewind: season 2 of Squid Game finally arrived on Netflix on December 26, 2024, more than three years after the first K-drama was a surprise hit. While news of the renewal initially drew criticism for seeming unnecessary, the second season, from creator Hwang Dong-hyuk, is as deftly scripted as the first, as a dystopian death game turns into an impending commentary on greed and sectarianism that has led to the harshest of conclusions, thrilling and timely.

For those who have just finished watching all the episodes and need to sort through everything they just watched, here is a breakdown of the ending of “Squid Game” Season 2.

Episode 7, “Friend or Foe,” begins with the brutal conclusion of the X vs. O bathroom fight. (R.I.P. Thanos, 4 others, damn it.) The fight is similar to the Dox (Ho Seong-tae) lunch line murder in Season 1, suggesting that players can kill each other and profit from each other outside of the round. The evening would be another strobe-lit bloodbath, as the tension of having to get more people to vote the next morning continued to build.

However, Gi-hoon (Lee Jung-jae) steals the guard's gun and realizes it is the perfect opportunity to end the game. Gi-hoon (Lee Jung-jae) convinces X's friends to fight not with each other, but with those who created the game.12, 14 The friends hide during the carnage and pretend to be dead when it is over, ambushing the guards and taking their guns. The guards facing the camera need to assume that everything is going according to plan, so the message doesn't reach all the X players. (But my girl Semi (380), played by Won Jiang, didn't have to go down like that at the hands of Nam Kyu (124), played by Ro Jae Won, R.I.P., Queen.)

Gihoon and his team succeed in subduing the guards in red suits who have come to end the fight. The plan to fight their way to the control room proves difficult, but Jung-bae (390) (Lee So-hwan) appeals to the remnants of X to volunteer to be their last chance to escape before O hijacks their votes. Hyun-joo (120) (Park Sung-hoon) then organizes the men and teaches them mini-ballistics with his Special Forces knowledge. (The players seem to know how to use machine guns.)

As the pastel-colored stairs become blackened with bullet holes, the rebels get stuck in a firefight with the guards. Gihoon and Jungbae are forced to search for the control room and reach the purple-painted control area. They end up fighting on a giant staircase as the square masked guards of the control room swarm them. When all the rebels run out of bullets, their situation quickly becomes desperate. The front man (Lee Byung-hun) gathers three players to back up Gi-hoon and Jung-bae, while Tae-ho (388) (Kang Ha-neul), a former Marine, panics and volunteers to return to the dormitory in search of ammunition. Once he arrives at the dorm, his mental state is bad (probably an episode due to PTSD) and he freezes as soon as he gets back to Esher Scape. There may be 15 minutes left in the show, but once Tejo drops his walkie-talkie, it is clear that the rebels will fall.

Several non-game subplots, such as the identity of Captain Park, also reached shocking conclusions in the season 2 finale. (Am I the only one who thinks it was obvious from the jump that Captain Fishing was a frontman's lackey?) Before his true identity was revealed, viewers learned after the Season 1 finale that Captain Park “randomly” found and rescued a drowned Juno (Wee Ha-jung), and that Captain Park was a detective-turned-traffic officer who helped find facilities on an island. A year and a half later, he was still not found - in Korea. There are more than 3,300 islands to track down, but does Park really not remember the general location where he rescued someone? Park has been suspicious ever since he said to Juno, “Let's fish for squid together, okay?” during the search in the first episode of Season 2.

When a seasick mercenary finds Park fiddling with his drone, the soldier gets a knife to the gut. Unfortunately, he tricks Woo-suk (Jun Seok-ho) into believing that the thudding sound is the box falling. Park will continue to lead Juno and the search party in the wrong direction in Season 3. After all, “Squid Game” cannot end without a showdown between Juno and her front man. I bet now: Juno will end up on the right island.

Many questions remain over the frontman/"Yong Il. In a “Meet the Cast” featurette ahead of Season 2, actor Lee Byung-hyun said the main purpose of the frontman is to “shatter” Gi-hoon's belief that people are inherently kind, even in the most desperate situations. In that light, all the new rules for this season are specifically designed to shatter Gihoon's faith in humanity. When did the front man decide to lure Giffun back into the game and play him? When did the frontman decide to get into the game himself?” Is the Player 001 slot always left open for meta-fucks, or have the last two years been particularly strange (or particularly fun) for the VIPs?

The dramatic irony of only letting the audience know that “Yong Il” is the front man is an appealing nice twist. The attentive viewer can see, on first viewing, that the frontman makes several choices to tease Gihoon. It also adds an extra layer to his argument early in the finale that X should attack O first. Certainly, that is consistent with the brutality that only Jongbae saw on the merry-go-round, but it is also a push to see if Gihoon will attack a player he sees as innocent. One might read in the frontman's expression the smug look on his face when the other players begin to temporarily agree with him, or the satisfaction he feels when Gihoon agrees that he must sacrifice some players in order for his plan to succeed. 'The front man is evil.'

As the rebels step into the pastel hallway, the front man barely conceals his villainous face. The shot of him glaring at the unmasked guard, just before the guard is shot, is priceless, as is the beat when it is revealed that he lied about not having bullets. He asks Giffen if he is sure, when Giffen offers him what appears to be the last spare magazine. [The front man holds on to Gihoon's hope until the end, as the three backup team moves down the purple corridor to a position where they can surprise the guards, but instead the front man shoots a fellow insurgent himself. He then narrates his “death” to Gi-Hoon over the walkie-talkie, making it appear to the guards that he fired his own shot. Yeon-il puts on his mask again and tries to torment Gi-hoon.

As Gihoon kneels down and stares at the muzzle of the front man's gun, the evil mastermind says, “You're just a little hero. 'Take a good look at how your little game of hero ends.' He shoots Jung-bae. The guards hold Gihoon to the ground and watch him die next to his last remaining friend. And so, Squid Game Season 2 came to a close.

At the end of “Squid Game” Season 2, the survivors include the front man, of course, his second-in-command (a surprising role played by one of Korea's most established actors, Park Hye-sun), and the boat's crew of Juno, Woosook and Captain Park. The players we know and (some of them) love are also surprisingly alive: Myung Gi (333) (Im Siwan) and Joon Hee (222) (Cho Yuri), Yeonsik (Yang Dong-geun) (007) and Geumja (149) (Kang Aesim); Tae Ho and Hyunju ( Park Sung-hoon), Seon-hyo (044) (Choi Gook-ki) and Nam-gyu (Ro Jae-won); Min-su (125) (Lee David). As for No-ul (Park Kyu-young), he spent too much time involving her in the organ-hunting plot, so she is going nowhere and is definitely living among the guards.

Here's to the war dead: R.I.P. Recruiter (Gong Yoo), Thanos (Choi Seung-hyun), Semi (Won Jiang), Jung-bae, and Kyung-seok (Lee Jin-wook).

And Gihoon is the man who, despite being worth at least 400 billion won, continues to hit a ruinous bottom. (Because frontmen and VIPs alike will be thrilled to see him play completely broke. Six games are promised this season, and there are still three games left to watch (probably in Season 3).

The question left at the end of Season 2 is how broken he is. Will he somehow bounce back emotionally and ultimately succeed in his impossible goal? Will he die instantly in round four, senseless, and one of the other favorites will play the role of hero? Or, as many have theorized, will this be his final push and become the next front man once and for all?” only Netflix knows how many months Squid Game Season 3 will have to wait and be theorized.