The second season of Netflix’s Squid Game brings back a forgotten character in a starring role

This article contains spoilers for Season 2 of The Squid Game.

“The Squid Game” is by design a performance with a large cast. Well, at least that’s how it all starts – as fans I remember season 1 of The Squid Game well. the deadly playgrounds in the series tend to reduce the cast of something evil as the plot progresses. Knowing this, it’s only natural that some of the show’s more obscure characters fail to hold the viewer’s attention. This actually works in Season 2’s favor when it comes to Jung Bae (Lee Seo Hwan), who has such a minor presence in The Squid Game Season 1 that he’s almost considered a brand new character in Season 2… while having a convenient, pre-set story with the series’ main character, Song Gi-hoon (Lee Jung-jae).

Jung Bae is a good friend of Gi Hoon who appears several times in the first two episodes of Season 1 – “Red Light, Green Light” and “Hell” – and signs up to play the game in Season 2. still wasn’t tense enough for Gi-hoon, the discovery of what may have been his closest human contact other than his daughter, Gae-young (Jo Ah-in), now wearing a green jumpsuit is just the thing to raise the stakes (and level of Gi Hong’s stress) to the sky.

You’d be forgiven if you didn’t think of Jung Bae at first, since his name isn’t actually mentioned in the first season of The Squid Game. He is a goofy and childish bar owner that Gi-hoon likes to hang out with in his “civilian” life. Since he’s only present in obscure early scenes that take place outside of the game, he’s relatively easy to miss and only appears in the first two episodes. However, he is actually present quite early in Gi-hoon’s character development, being his gambling partner-in-crime and later having a heart-to-heart with Jung-bae at a bar before his wife (Kim Yeon-sung) puts a stop to it .

While Jung Bae owns a business and thus appears to have more of a life together than Gi Hoon, the show’s very first episode, “Red Light Green Light,” reveals that the pair share a love of gambling — and, if anything, Jung Bae might be the more irresponsible of the pair, given Gi Hoon’s constant suffering at his inability to be a better person. Since Jung Bae joins another four returning characters from season 1 and becomes the last Player 390 for the death game Squid game season 2his newfound status as a major character marks a very dramatic—not to mention tragic—shift in his fortunes.

The Squid Game Season 2 is now streaming on Netflix.