Squid Game episode 2 secretly revealed one of the biggest deaths in the finale. The Netflix K-drama about 456 contestants competing in deadly children's games for a life-changing sum of money has become the streaming giant's most popular series yet. As the premise would suggest, the majority of the characters perish by the show's finale, but one death may have come as a shock unless viewers were paying very close attention to Squid Game episode 2.
After the majority of the contestants vote to suspend the competition, the players are tied up and dumped onto the street in pairs. Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) ends up alongside the unlucky Kang Sae-byeok (Jung Hoyeon) who pickpocketed him in the previous episode. After demanding his money back, Gi-hun helps to untie Sae-byeok, but she starts to leave him tied and stranded in the road.
To convince her to help him, Gi-hun swears on his mother that he won't seek retribution, but as soon as his hands are free, he starts hopping after her shouting about his money once again. As she walks away, Sae-byeok comments about how little his mother must mean to him, and by the end of the finale, Gi-hun returns home to find his mother has succumbed to her untreated diabetes. The scene is a subtle clue to the Squid Game finale twist, which sees Gi-hun's motivation for rejoining the games become meaningless. It's a tragic ending for the flawed son who, despite his shortcomings, clearly cares for his mother deeply.
Gi-hun has a complicated relationship with his mother. At the start of the show, he mooches off her and shows no remorse at stealing her money and using it to gamble on horse races. Despite that, however, when he earns a fair sum of cash from the Salesman (Gong Yoo) by getting slapped, one of the first things he does is share it with his mom. In the absence of a father, Squid Game's Gi-hun doesn't have any family except his mother and his daughter who primarily stays with his estranged ex-wife. Even though he vainly swears on her life at the start of episode 2, his mother's illness devastates Gi-hun and provides a tipping point of motivation for him to risk his life returning to the games. It can be difficult at times for audiences to believe in Gi-hun's affection for his mom since some of his actions are so unkind, but underneath a lifetime of bad habits, he truly loves her; a realization which makes the finale twist all the more tragic.
The foreshadowing also highlights Gi-hun's fatal flaw; he always has the best intentions, but never goes about it quite right. From the beginning, he gambles his mom's money in the hope of giving his daughter a great birthday, and this Gi-hun trope continues to Squid Game's finale. He chooses to rejoin the game in episode 2 so he can pay for the treatment his mom needs, but in doing so, he leaves her home alone for days. By the time he returns, she has passed away, and Gi-hun simply continues his pattern of trying to do the right thing the wrong way.
Squid Game episode 2 foreshadowing the death of Gi-hun's mom in the finale casts something of a dark shadow over the show. Once the audience realizes that her destiny was determined as early as the second episode, the result almost feels inevitable. It creates a sense of hopelessness that the characters' fates are sealed, especially considering that the episode also foreshadows most of the other players' deaths too. It's simply another layer to the dark social commentary that all of Squid Game's cast of hopeful characters are doomed.