Squid Game currently consists of two seasons with nine and seven episodes, respectively.
The first season contains nine episodes with runtimes of between 32 and 63 minutes (the penultimate episode is much shorter than the rest). The series was released in its entirety on all Netflix worldwide markets on September 17, 2021.
The second season, which contains seven episodes, was released in its entirety on December 26, 2024.
Season One[]
Red Light, Green Light[]
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Seong Gi-hun is down on his luck, having accumulated enormous debts with loan sharks while becoming estranged from his daughter and ex-wife. At a train station, a well-dressed man asks him to play a game of ddakji for money, and offers an opportunity to play more games with much higher stakes. Gi-hun accepts and later on waits by the side of the road to be picked up by a worker for the games via van. He is knocked unconscious during the ride, and awakens in a dormitory with 455 others, identified only by numbers on their tracksuits. A group of masked staff in pink jumpsuits arrive and explain that the players are all in dire financial straits, but will be given billions of won in prize money if they can win six games over six days. The games are overseen by the Front Man, who is masked and dressed in black. Gi-hun befriends Player 001, an elderly man suffering from a brain tumor. He also recognizes two other players: Cho Sang-woo, a childhood classmate who became an investment broker, and Player 067, a pickpocket who stole Gi-hun's money after he won a horse race wager. The first game is a deadly iteration of Red Light, Green Light, where anyone caught moving is shot dead on the spot. With help from Sang-woo and Player 199, Gi-hun finishes the game alive.
Hell[]
With over half of the players killed in the first game, many survivors demand to be released. Using the game's third clause, they successfully vote to cancel the game and send everyone home, but without any prize money. Back in Seoul, Gi-hun goes to the police in an attempt to report the deadly game organization, but no one believes him except Detective Hwang Jun-ho, whose brother received the same invitation card and has recently disappeared. The players are invited to re-enter the game, and many return out of desperation. This includes Gi-hun, whose mother desperatly needs surgery; Sang-woo, who is about to be arrested for financial fraud; Player 001, who does not wish to die in the outside world; Player 067, who wishes to rescue her parents from North Korea and get her little brother out of an orphanage; Player 199, a Pakistani migrant worker who attacked and gravely injured his boss for withholding his wages; and Player 101, named Jang Deok-su, a gangster on the run from gambling debts. Jun-ho secretly follows Gi-hun when he is picked up by the game staff.
The Man with the Umbrella[]
Jun-ho successfully infiltrates the games by disguising himself as a masked worker, and it is revealed that the location is in a remote island. The players are now more prepared and start forming alliances. Gi-hun, Sang-woo, Player 001, and Player 199 team up. Player 067 and 212 explores an air vent and witnesses workers melting pots of sugar. The second game is revealed to be Ppopgi, where each player must perfectly extract a stamped shape from a dalgona (honeycomb candy) under a 10-minute time limit. Sang-woo learns of Player 067's discovery and recognizes the game beforehand, but does not warn his teammates and chooses the simplest shape for himself. Gi-hun ends up picking the most difficult shape, an umbrella, but is able to complete the game by licking the back of the honeycomb to easily melt the perimeter of the shape. Player 212, a rowdy and manipulative woman, helps Deok-su complete the game with a smuggled lighter. A scared player who is about to be executed takes a staff member hostage and forces him to unmask. Shocked that the staff member is a young man, the player commits suicide and the staff member is killed by the Front Man for revealing his identity.
Stick to the Team[]
Player 111, a disgraced doctor, secretly works with a handful of staff to harvest organs from dead players to sell on the black market, in return for information about the upcoming games. When Deok-su kills a player accusing him of taking extra food, the staff does nothing to stop him, and the prize money's value is increased. After lights out, a riot erupts in the dormitory as players attack each other. Gi-hun's group survives and exchange names to build trust: Player 199 is Ali Abdul, and Player 067 is Kang Sae-byeok. Player 001, because of his brain tumor, has trouble remembering his name. Player 212, named Han Mi-nyeo, has sex with Deok-su. Before the third game, players are told to form groups of ten. For Gi-hun's team, Sae-byeok recruits Player 240, a girl close to her age, and Ali recruits Player 276. The game is revealed to be tug of war on two raised platforms, where a team wins by dragging the opposing team off the platform to their deaths. Deok-su, having learned of the game from Player 111 beforehand, picks only strong men and rejects Mi-nyeo, who had resort into joining Gi-hun's team. After Deok-su's team wins their match, Gi-hun's team struggles against another all-male team.
A Fair World[]
Gi-hun's team wins their tug-of-war match with Player 001's strategy and Sang-woo's quick thinking. Anticipating another riot, they build a barricade and spend the night taking turns on guard, but Deok-su's team does not attack. Gi-hun reminisces on a similar situation from ten years ago, when he and many other workers from an automobile factory protested a mass lay-off, which caused the failed trajectory of Gi-hun's life. Jun-ho witnesses the organ harvesting racket, as the staff member whose identity he stole took part in it. Except Jun-ho, everyone involved in the racket is eventually killed, including Player 111. The Front Man begins a facility-wide manhunt for Jun-ho, who breaks into the Front Man's office. Jun-ho learns that the game has been running for over 30 years, and that his elder brother Hwang In-ho was the winner in 2015.
Gganbu[]
The players see the bodies of Player 111 and his co-conspirators strung up for cheating, and are assured that the games are designed to give every player a fair chance without discrimination. For the fourth game, players are told to pair up, but discover that instead of working as a team, they will have to play against their partner in a marble game of their choice. Whoever gets all their partner's marbles within 30 minutes will win and survive. Sae-byeok and Player 240, named Ji-yeong, share their life stories; Ji-yeong sees Sae-byeok has more to live for and sacrifices herself. Sang-woo tricks Ali into giving up his marbles and wins, which results in Ali's death. Deok-su wins against his partner and henchman, Ja-hyoung. Gi-hun exploits Player 001's dementia to defeat him, only to discover that Player 001 had been aware of the deception the entire time. Player 001, who remembers his name to be Oh Il-nam, allows Gi-hun to win anyway, as he is his gganbu (trusted friend). Gi-hun, Sang-woo and Sae-byeok are traumatized by the deaths of their friends.
VIPS[]
The players return to find Mi-nyeo, who did not have a partner for the marbles game, still alive. Foreign VIPs, who had been wagering on the games remotely, arrive to watch and wager on the next rounds live. Jun-ho, posing as one of the masked servants, is sexually propositioned by one of them. In a private room, he attacks the VIP, records his confession, and escapes the island. Meanwhile, the fifth game has players crossing a two-panel wide bridge, where the panels are each made of either tempered or regular glass, the latter of which cannot support their weight. The players at the front of the line fall to their deaths as they progressively test the panels. Deok-su refuses to move despite the clock ticking, daring others to pass him. Mi-nyeo grabs him and, as revenge for betraying her, pulls him down with her to their deaths. Player 017, a seasoned ex-glass worker, is able to determine which panels are safe until the Front Man turns off the lights, removing his advantage. With time running out, Sang-woo pushes Player 017 to his death, revealing the last trick panel. Only Gi-hun, Sang-woo, and Sae-byeok complete the game; at its conclusion, explosions shatter the remaining panels and injure the three players.
Front Man[]
As finalists, Gi-hun, Sang-woo, and Sae-byeok are given a change of formal clothes. Sae-byeok hides a severe stab wound she received from the glass bridge explosion. After eating dinner, each player is left with a steak knife. Gi-hun suggests to Sae-byeok that they should ally against Sang-woo, realizing he will go to any length to win. Sae-byeok instead begs Gi-hun to promise that whoever wins the game will look after the other's loved ones. Gi-hun goes to kill Sang-woo when he falls asleep, but Sae-byeok stops him, telling him he is not a murderer. Sae-byeok's injury worsens, prompting Gi-hun to call for help. When Gi-hun is away, Sang-woo kills Sae-byeok and the staff arrive only to collect her corpse. Furious and heartbroken, Gi-hun tries to attack Sang-woo but is prevented by the staff. Meanwhile, Jun-ho makes it to another island but is quickly tracked down by the Front Man and the staff. To Jun-ho's shock, the Front Man reveals himself to be his brother, In-ho, who tries to recruit him. When he refuses, In-ho shoots Jun-ho in the shoulder, causing him to fall back over a cliff edge into the sea.
One Lucky Day[]
In the final eponymous Squid game, Gi-hun defeats Sang-woo after a brutal fight but refuses to kill him; he begs Sang-Woo to stop the game using the third clause. Sang-woo instead stabs himself in the neck, and asks Gi-hun to take care of his mother before dying. Gi-hun is returned to Seoul with a bank card to access the prize money, but discovers his own mother has died. A year later, Gi-hun remains traumatized and has not touched his prize money. He receives an invitation card from his gganbu, and finds Oh Il-nam on his deathbed. Il-nam reveals he created the game to entertain bored ultra-rich people like himself. He chose games he played as a child, and participated in Gi-hun's group out of nostalgia. As they talk, Il-nam wagers with Gi-hun on whether an unconscious man lying on a street corner will be helped before midnight. The man is saved, and Il-nam dies shortly after. Gi-hun retrieves Sae-byeok's brother and has him looked after by Sang-woo's mother, also giving them a share of the prize money. As Gi-hun travels to the airport to reconnect with his daughter in Los Angeles, he sees the same game recruiter playing ddakji with another desperate player, but manages only to get that player's invitation card. He calls the card's number before boarding his plane, demanding to know who is running the games. The Front Man answers, ordering Gi-hun to board his flight, but Gi-hun ends the call and returns to the terminal.
Season Two[]
Bread and Lottery[]
Seong Gi-hun leaves the terminal determined to confront the Front Man behind the games. Realizing he is being monitored, he removes a tracking device implanted behind his ear. Hwang Jun-ho survives his fall from the cliff. Two years later, Gi-hun works with Kim, his former loan shark, and his lackeys to track down the games' recruiter in Seoul. Kim and his associate, Choi Woo-seok, eventually locate the recruiter and watch him offer vagrants bread or a lottery ticket; most choose the ticket, and the recruiter destroys the rejected bread in front of them. The recruiter abducts Kim and Woo-seok and forces them to play a deadly game of rock paper scissors combined with Russian roulette, resulting in Kim's death. Jun-ho investigates Gi-hun and locates his operational base. The recruiter confronts Gi-hun there, revealing he was once a soldier in the games who killed his own father, a player, and justifies the games' cruelty by vilifying the participants as scum. He challenges Gi-hun into a round of Russian roulette, resulting in his own death.
Halloween Party[]
Gi-hun, Jun-ho, and Woo-seok discover a lead from the recruiter's jacket pointing to a Halloween party. Woo-seok recruits a team of mercenaries, Gi-hun implants a tracker in himself, and the three devise a plan to locate the Front Man. Meanwhile, Gi-hun continues to look after Sang-woo's mother and Cheol. He works with a broker to reunite Cheol with his mother from the North, and places a silent call to his estranged daughter. The team infiltrates the Halloween party, where Gi-hun is escorted by one of the game's pink-clad soldiers into a limousine, with his team in pursuit. He confronts the Front Man via speaker, demanding an end to the games. When the vehicles following him are shot down, Gi-hun requests to be returned to the games as a player. Kang No-eul, a North Korean defector who seeks to extract her daughter from the North, enters the game as a soldier.
001[]
Gi-hun wakes in the game's dormitory with 455 other players. A manager announces a new clause: after each game, the players will vote, and if the majority agrees to leave the games, the accumulated prize money will be divided among them. Jun-ho and his team lose track of the island as Gi-hun's tracker has been removed. Gi-hun recognizes Player 390 as his friend Jung-bae and advises him to stay close. The first game is Red Light, Green Light; Gi-hun warns the players that elimination will result in death, though many dismiss him. Despite the chaos, Gi-hun's cautions help reduce casualties. Player 230, known as the rapper "Thanos," is under the influence of drugs and pushes others to eliminate them. Gi-hun and Player 120, named Hyun-ju, attempt to save an eliminated player who was only non-fatally shot, but No-eul shoots the player dead. After the game, Gi-hun urges the players to vote the game's end and reveals he is the sole winner of a previous iteration. Players voting to continue are labeled "O," while those voting to leave are labeled "X." The Front Man, posing as Player 001, casts the deciding vote to continue.
Six Legs[]
Player 001 feigns an alliance with Gi-hun and fabricates a story, based in truth, about his reason for joining the game. Player 333, named Myung-gi, is attacked by Thanos and Player 124, named Nam-gyu; Player 001 intervenes and stops the altercation easily. Player 222, named Kim Jun-hee and Myung-gi's pregnant ex-girlfriend, reveals herself to him. Meanwhile, a group of soldiers, led by the Officer, begin harvesting organs to sell on the black market. The Officer orders No-eul to ignore the activities, but she refuses. Jun-ho attempts to enlist police assistance but is unsuccessful. To Gi-hun's surprise, the second game requires players to form teams of five for a six-legged pentathlon consisting of five children's games: ddakji, biseokchigi, gong-gi, jegi, and spinning top, to be completed under a five-minute time limit. No-eul continues her sabotage of the soldiers' organ trade by shooting living eliminated players dead.
One More Game[]
After Hyun-ju's team manages to win through mutual support, many other teams are inspired and succeed. Gi-hun allies with Jung-bae, Jun-hee, and Players 001 and 388 (Kang Dae-ho); they succeed and exchange names after the game, though Player 001 falsely introduces himself as Oh Young-il. No-eul is attacked by two soldiers involved in the organ trade, who warn her to stop interfering. During the following vote, Player 001 seems to encourage the players to vote against continuing the game, but a larger majority opts to proceed, believing the prize pool remains too small. Gi-hun confides in Jung-bae about his growing uncertainty in rescuing everyone. Meanwhile, Jun-ho and Woo-seok, now with an expanded mercenary team, continue their search for the island. The third game, titled "Mingle", requires players to enter designated rooms after forming groups based on an announced number.
O X[]
During "Mingle", players struggle to fit their alliances into rooms, causing tension, betrayal, and deaths of allies. In the final round, Jung-bae witnesses Player 001 kill another player to secure a room for themselves. After the game, Gi-hun and Player 001 argue over whether to persuade other players to vote to end the games, and ultimately decide against it to avoid a physical fight. During the vote, several players, including Player 125, who has been subservient to Thanos and Nam-gyu, change their votes to leave. The deciding vote again falls to Player 001, resulting in a tie; the players are given a day before re-voting. In the bathroom, Thanos and Nam-gyu pressure Player 125, named Min-su, into changing his vote to continue, but Myung-gi and other players that voted to end the games intervene to defend him. A fight ensues, with Thanos strangling Myung-gi, who fatally stabs him with a fork. Meanwhile, Jun-ho's team locates a possible entrance on an island, only to discover it is a decoy rigged with explosives, killing one of the mercenaries.
Friend or Foe[]
Captain Park of Jun-ho's team is revealed to be a double agent, having sabotaged their drone. Following the bathroom brawl, players realize they can kill others to raise the prize pool and weaken the opposing voters. Gi-hun convinces a small group of "X" players to avoid attacking, arguing that the true enemies are the game's creators. During a violent dorm massacre, Gi-hun's group players stay hidden, leading to heavy losses on their side, and emerge only when soldiers arrive. Gi-hun's group baits the soldiers, killing all but one and taking their firearms. They start a rebellion and force the surviving soldier to lead them to the control room. However, more soldiers open fire en route, and the rebellion starts to falter when the group runs out of ammunition; Dae-ho, tasked with retrieving more ammo, suffers a panic attack and is unable to return. Player 001 betrays the group, killing two players, and fakes his death, while other surrendering players are executed. Gi-hun and Jung-bae are taken captive; In-ho, now masked as the Front Man, kills Jung-bae in front of a horrified Gi-hun.