Netflix’s Squid Sport Season 2 Provides Gong Yoo’s Recruiter a Brutal Backstory

Main spoilers for “Squid Sport” Season 2 comply with.

One of the vital memorable characters From the surprising first season of “Squid Sport” was a mysterious and nameless character performed by Gong Yoo. Some folks colloquially name this man The Salesman, however the official subtitles for the sequence name him The Recruiter, so that is what we’ll name him right here.

The Recruiter is the person who seeks out folks to play lethal video games that might earn them thousands and thousands of {dollars} or result in their violent demise. To search out gamers, the Recruiter hangs across the subway and challenges strangers to a recreation of dakjiwhich entails making an attempt to flip one thick, colourful envelope with one other. The Recruiter tells the gamers that in the event that they handle to return his envelope, he’ll give them 100,000 received. In the event that they lose, they’ve to provide him 100,000 received. If they do not have the cash (which they definitely do not), he can slap them. Nonetheless, if a participant wins, they not solely obtain the 100,000 received: they’re additionally supplied an opportunity to play lethal video games and win a a lot greater prize (or, you recognize, die horribly).

Performed by Gong Yoo, the Recruiter is an unforgettable character: a tall, well-dressed man with a creepy smile on his face and a vaguely menacing aura. He was solely a minor participant within the first season, however he made a giant impression. Successfully, The Recruiter returns for the first episode of season 2 of “Squid Game”and this time we study extra about him, together with a darkish, disturbing and tragic backstory.

Season 2 of “Squid Sport” takes place two years after the primary season, and we study that in these two years, Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), the winner of the games of season 1tried to seek out the recruiter. Gi-hun desires to make use of the Recruiter to discover a option to attain the folks operating the video games and cease them as soon as and for all, besides Gi-hun has an entire workforce of individuals working for him making an attempt to find the Recruiter . , the Recruiter turned out to be illusory. Finally, nevertheless, the Recruiter surfaces, resulting in a giant showdown on the climax of the primary episode of season 2, titled “Bread and the Lottery.”

Gi-hun used a number of the cash he earned to purchase a motel, which he now makes use of as his base of operations. Because the episode attracts to a detailed, Gi-hun finds the recruiter ready for him in one of many motel rooms, with a gun in his hand. After just a few discussions, the recruiter reveals his personal story. He explains that earlier than touchdown the project to recruit folks to play the video games, he labored on the video games himself. He was one of many folks chargeable for burning the our bodies of deceased gamers. He mentioned that as he burned the our bodies, he considered the useless gamers: “These items aren’t human. They’re simply trash…ineffective…They don’t have any function on this world.”

Finally, the recruiter labored his approach as much as grow to be one of many masked armed guards on the video games. The Recruiter reveals that one yr through the matches, he went to shoot one of many gamers who misplaced, and one thing stunning occurred. “I acknowledged his face. Guess who it was? My father,” he mentioned. “I used to be pointing a gun at my very own father, and he begged me with tears in his eyes to spare his life. So you recognize what I did? I shot him, bang, proper within the center from the entrance. That is once I knew: “Ah, I am actually made for this.”

It is a darkish and twisted story, and it implies that the Recruiter is a full-blown psychopath. Possibly you possibly can argue that years of engaged on video games, burning our bodies and capturing folks, turned him right into a psychopath. Or maybe you possibly can argue that it has all the time been this fashion. In reality, we do not study rather more about him, and that is superb: if we discovered extra, it might deprive the character of a few of his energy. And though it’s a tragic story, the tragedy is the demise of the recruiter’s father. The Recruiter himself appears completely perplexed as to having dedicated this act. He continues to smile as he tells the story, a lot to Gi-hun’s discomfort.

Finally, this scene is impactful as a result of though it reveals extra concerning the recruiter’s story, it would not demoralize him and even make him sympathetic. If something, it makes him much more disturbing and off-putting than he was in Season 1.

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