Squid Game Season 2 Post-Credits Scene Explained

Spoilers for the end of “Squid Game” season 2 lie ahead — stop scrolling if you haven’t finished watching!

If you shut off “Squid Game” as soon as the seventh and final episode of season 2 (titled “Friend or Foe”) started rolling its credits, you missed something! So what happens in the extremely brief mid-credits sequence? Let’s break it down, although we have to add: it’s so mysterious that we’re not entirely sure what to make of it just yet.

The scene — which truly is so quick — shows several players entering a room and spotting that giant creepy doll, canonically named Young-hee, seen in both seasons of “Squid Game” during the deadly round of “Red Light, Green Light” that served as the first murderous game the players experience. But this time, as players enter the arena, Young-hee isn’t alone. There’s an entirely new giant doll — resembling a little boy — that appears to be facing her. Like Young-hee, this boy doll also appears to have sensors in its eyes, and as the camera pans away from the dolls, a traffic light is shown. As the camera lingers on the traffic light, the red light switches off and prompts a green one to switch on. And that’s it! The credits continue to roll. 

This all happens so fast, and it’s borderline impossible to make any definitive statements about Young-hee, her new friend, or who the players seeing these two dolls even are (they’re only seen from behind, and the numbers on their jumpsuits don’t match any of season 2’s main characters). Can we make any guesses, though?

Young-hee has become one of the most recognizable symbols of “Squid Game” — along with the guard uniforms and, perhaps, Dalgona candy — since she first popped up in the very first on-screen game in season 1. At that point, neither the audience nor the protagonist Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) understand the stakes when Young-hee turns her back on the contestants to play the children’s game “Red Light, Green Light,” but those stakes become apparent very, very quickly as contestants who don’t freeze in time are mercilessly gunned down right there on the field.

After Gi-hun wins the games (in season 1) and embeds himself in them once again in season 2 (in an effort to destroy them from the inside out), he finds himself playing “Red Light, Green Light” all over again — but at least this time, he knows the deal. Thanks to his experience in the game, he’s able to warn other contestants that even twitching after the light turns red is deadly, but not everybody takes him seriously; before long, they realize Gi-hun is telling the truth. While he’s able to save some contestants from certain death — by pointing out that if they hide behind him, the sensors can’t catch any movement — Young-hee claims plenty of victims during “Red Light, Green Light,” and it looks like she’ll increase her death toll in the show’s forthcoming third (and final) season. 

The fact that there are now two dolls implies even more players will be spotted and killed. But it’s also important to note that we can’t say for sure when this scene takes place. For all we know, this is a flashback to a previous earlier version of the games. It’s been established that the Front Man, aka Hwang In-ho (Lee Byung-hun) once played the games and won. Could this be a flashback to that time period, when the “Red Light, Green Light” game took on a different form? Or is this something completely different? We’ll have to wait until season 3 to find out. 

“Squid Game” season 2 is streaming on Netflix now.