List of Squid Game characters
Squid Game is a South Korean survival drama series created by Hwang Dong-hyuk for Netflix. The series revolves around a secret contest where 456 players, all of whom are in deep financial hardship, risk their lives to play a series of deadly children's games for the chance to win a billion won prize.
The first season of the series features an ensemble cast including Lee Jung-jae, Park Hae-soo, Jung Ho-yeon, Wi Ha-joon, O Yeong-su, Heo Sung-tae, Anupam Tripathi, Kim Joo-ryoung, Lee Byung-hun and Lee Seo-hwan. For the second season, a new ensemble cast is introduced including Yim Si-wan, Kang Ha-neul, Lee Jin-wook, Park Sung-hoon, Choi Seung-hyun, Yang Dong-geun, Jo Yu-ri, Kang Ae-shim and Park Gyu-young with Lee Jung-jae, Wi Ha-joon, Lee Byung-hun and Lee Seo-hwan reprising their roles from season one.
Overview
Main characters
Central characters
Seong Gi-hun
Seong Gi-hun, also known as Player 456, is the main protagonist of Squid Game. He is portrayed by Lee Jung-jae. Gi-hun is a gambler down on his luck who gets recruited to play in the Squid Game, a series of deadly childhood games, for a high cash prize, which he ultimately wins. In the second season, he returns to the game to end it. Gi-hun was based on one of the childhood friends of series creator Hwang Dong-hyuk. Gi-hun and Cho Sang-woo were based on Hwang's own personal experiences and represented "two sides" of himself; Gi-hun shared the same aspects of being raised by an economically disadvantaged single mother in the Ssangmun district of Seoul, while Sang-woo reflected on Hwang having attended Seoul National University with high expectations from his family and neighborhood. Hwang said he chose to cast Lee as Gi-hun as to "destroy his charismatic image portrayed in his previous roles".Gi-hun and his portrayal by Lee Jung-jae has received critical acclaim. The New York Times named him their breakout star of 2021; stating: "As the protagonist Seong Gi-hun, a gambling addict who is deeply in debt, he gives a wrenching and surprisingly subtle performance as he battles his way through unspeakable horrors." For his performance in the first season, he was nominated for numerous accolades, including the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actor in a Drama Series, the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Drama, and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series, making him the first male actor from Asia and Korea to receive individual nominations in those categories across all three awards shows with his win for the latter and co-star Jung Ho-yeon winning the respective female award making history for the show becoming the first non-English language television series to win at the SAG Awards. He was also nominated along with his costars for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series.
Born on October 31, 1974, Gi-hun is a resident from the Ssangmun-dong neighborhood in the city of Seoul, the capital of South Korea. 10 years after losing his job at an automobile manufacturing plant run by Dragon Motors, he is a divorced father, who besides working as a chauffeur, continuously gambles for the purpose of earning money. Living with his diabetic mother, and upon learning that his daughter Seong Ga-yeong, who along with her mother and stepdad, will be moving to America, Gi-hun desperately wants to gain custody. Gi-hun often borrows money from his mother, the bank, as well as from loan sharks. Due to his excessive gambling and other different factors, Gi-hun is millions of won in debt, and constantly evades paying back the money he owes to the bank and loan sharks.
One day after winning 100.000 won playing Ddakji with a salesman, Gi-hun gets invited to the Squid Game, an offer he accepts in hopes of winning a large amount of money, paying back his large debts, paying his mother's hospital bills, gaining back custody of his daughter and overall securing a good life for him and his family. Throughout the game, Gi-hun forms an alliance with Cho Sang-woo, a childhood friend of his, Kang Sae-byeok, a North Korean defector, Ali Abdul and Oh Il-nam, an elderly man. However, due to Cho Sang-woo's willingness to let other players die to further advance in the game, he and Gi-hun become rivals, competing against each other in the final, eponymous squid game. Gi-hun beats Sang-woo in the final game but refuses to kill him, offering him a chance to use the game's third clause to save his friend's life. However, Sang-woo commits suicide by stabbing himself in the neck, allowing Gi-hun to win the competition. As a final request before his death, Sang-woo asks Gi-hun to use some of the prize winnings to help his mother. Gi-hun is heartbroken at Sang-woo's death.
As the winner, Gi-hun receives the prize money and returns to Seoul, but discovers his mother had died and mourns over her body. Gi-hun is left emotionally traumatized from what he went through during the game, living out his old life and not spending any of his winnings. A year later, in December 2021, Gi-hun receives a card from "his gganbu" instructing him to visit a skyscraper. Gi-hun comes upon Il-nam, thought to have died in the games, alive but lying in his deathbed, and is horrified and disgusted at Il-nam's revelation that he created the Squid Game. After Gi-hun wins Il-nam's bet regarding a homeless man outside, Il-nam passes away. Following this, Gi-hun dyes his hair red, puts Sae-byeok's brother in the care of Sang-woo's mother and gives her a suitcase containing a large portion of the prize money. Gi-hun then decides to board a flight to Los Angeles to see his daughter but notices the same salesman he originally encountered at the subway playing ddakji with another player. Gi-hun runs to the other side of the platform and takes the invitation card from the player, then calls the number himself, stating that he cannot forgive the organizers for everything they have done. After the Front Man tells him to "just get on that plane", Gi-hun turns around and walks away to try and take down the game's organizers.
Two years later, Gi-hun has been searching for the Recruiter relentlessly. They eventually meet and play a game of Russian Roulette, in which the Recruiter dies and Gi-hun finds a card in his jacket. The card leads him to a party where a pink guard takes him to a limo where he talks to the Front Man, asking him to return to the game. Gi-hun returns to the game and warns the players in the "Red Light, Green Light" game, helping most of them survive. He then plays a six-legged pentathlon, which Gi-hun and his team Park Jung-bae, another best friend of Gi-hun, Kim Jun-hee, a pregnant girl who needed money on the job, Kang Dae-ho, an ex-marine, and Oh Young-il, who is Hwang In-ho in disguise narrowly win, and a pairs game, which he also survives. Before a fight breaks out between players wanting to continue the games and those trying to end them early, Gi-hun and his team come up with a plan to end the game, starting a riot. Despite initial success, the plan fails and he is captured and confronted by the Front Man, who asks him if it was worth it and kills Jung-bae, leaving Gi-hun devastated once again.
He starts off in season 3 chained to one of the bunk beds and forced to abstain from voting, staring Dae-ho down and blaming him for the rebellion's failure. In the fourth game, Keys and Knives, Gi-hun is assigned the role of a seeker, and spends the entire game hunting Dae-ho down. He moves on to the next round by strangling Dae-ho and killing him, but not before being struck by regret moments after taking Dae-ho's life and attempting to commit suicide only to be physically restrained by the guards.
Between games four and five, Geum-ja asks him to protect and take care of Jun-hee and her baby. Despite his initial refusal, he becomes determined to do it as Geum-ja hangs herself that very night. In the fifth game, Jump Rope, Gi-hun is the second person to cross the bridge with Jun-hee's baby in hand. After successfully crossing the bridge, he tells Jun-hee that he'll come back for her, but Jun-hee convinces him not to as not only does she want him to guarantee her newborn daughter's survival, her injury prevents her from surviving the game.
With Jun-hee dead, Gi-hun becomes one of the nine finalists of the second season, protecting the baby from the other finalists who desire to kill her in order to win even more money. The night before the final game, Gi-hun is called in by the Frontman, who offers him a knife to kill the other finalists and guarantee his and the baby's survival. He plans to do it, but a hallucination of Sae-byeok stops him from harming anyone.
During the sixth game, Sky Squid Game, he, the baby and Min-su are the three obvious targets for the rest of the finalists, but he gives it all to protect the baby from them. He carries on until it's just him, the baby and Myung-gi. After the latter threatens to kill his own daughter, he and Gi-hun face off. Myung-gi dies, but the button hadn't been pressed, meaning he died in vain and either he or the baby would have to die. Gi-hun then decides to sacrifice himself and throws himself off the giant pillar, declaring the baby as the victor of the games.
The Front Man / Hwang In-ho
Hwang In-ho, also known as the Front Man and later posing as Player 001 in the second season, is the main antagonist of the Squid Game series. He is portrayed by Lee Byung-hun.The Front Man is the initially mysterious overseer of the games. He wears a black mask and clothing and is seen watching the games unfold in lavish quarters, enjoying music and entering the game arenas only when absolutely necessary. In the 2020 games, he executes a guard for revealing his face at gunpoint. He later discovers that Jun-ho, an officer with the Korean National Police, has infiltrated the island where the games are held and impersonated a guard.
When the VIPs arrive on the island to watch the games, the Front Man stands in for the unseen "host" of the games. During the fifth game, which challenges players to cross a bridge made of regular glass and tempered glass, In-ho notices a player using his previous knowledge of glass manufacturing to inspect the panels. The Front Man turns out the lights to remove the advantage. Shortly afterward, he notices a VIP is missing and orders a search. The VIP is found unconscious, and the Front Man realizes the intruder has impersonated a waiter.
He pursues Jun-ho through the games' archives and sends several soldiers after him, eventually confronting him on a cliff, where Jun-ho reveals he is a police officer and has sent evidence of the games to his superior. The Front Man responds with skepticism, since the island is out of reach of cell phone towers, and offers to spare Jun-ho's life if he surrenders and deletes the evidence. Jun-ho refuses and shoots the Front Man in the shoulder, who then reveals himself to be In-ho, Jun-ho's older brother who had disappeared years ago after joining the games. Jun-ho assumed he had been killed, but recently discovered In-ho was actually the victor of his games.
In-ho again asks Jun-ho to come with him, but the younger brother refuses and In-ho shoots him. Jun-ho says, "
"In-ho... why?" before falling off the cliff and into the sea. Afterwards, In-ho is haunted by a vision of his brother in the mirror of his apartment, repeating the question.
When the 2020 games conclude, In-ho is next seen in a limousine with the victor, Seong Gi-hun. He congratulates Gi-hun on his victory and explains the game is essentially a horse race, then tells Gi-hun to think of the game like a dream. On December 25, 2021, following the death of the Host, Oh Il-nam, In-ho pays his respects and likely takes over his role as the Host. Some time later, Gi-hun is preparing to go to the U.S. to be with his daughter but encounters the salesman who had recruited him to the games and uses his calling card to contact the Front Man. In-ho tells him to get on the plane for his own good, but Gi-hun refuses and declares his intention to find and destroy him.
Two years later, the Front Man has become aware of Gi-hun's determined efforts to find the salesman who recruited him. He eventually confronts Gi-hun and accepts his challenge to re-enter the games in order to stop the game from the inside by proving humanity's true nature isn't toxic like what he claimed. After observing the first game where Gi-Hun directs players to survive the Red-Light Green-Light round, In-Ho eventually decides to infiltrate the games as Player 001 so that he can more easily manipulate the players and prove Gi-hun wrong.
To create warring factions among the players, the Front Man introduces voting after each game. As Player 001, he casts the deciding vote in favor of continuing, but still manages to befriend Gi-hun and join his team. He fabricates a story, based in truth, about his reason for being in the games—his pregnant wife is desperately ill, and they are deeply in debt due to her medical bills. In the second game, In-ho fails at one of the team's tasks, seemingly on purpose to toy with the others, but still helps them to succeed by completing the task just in time. In the third game, Jung-bae witnesses In-ho savagely kill another player to save the two of them.
Before the next game begins, In-ho and Gi-hun agree not to attempt to persuade more players to their side to avoid any violence among the groups. He agrees to join Gi-hun's rebellion against the games, aiding his group in overpowering the guards and using their weapons to try to reach the control room for the games. In-ho ultimately turns on them, however, killing two other players and faking his own death, then appearing as the Front Man before Gi-hun and Jung-bae. He asks Gi-hun if he enjoyed playing the hero before executing Jung-bae.