All the New ‘Squid Game: The Challenge’ Games in Season 2

[Warning: The following post contains spoilers for Squid Game: The Challenge Season 2 Episodes 1 through 4.]

Squid Game: The Challenge is back. The Squid Game-themed competition series returned on Wednesday (November 5) with the first four episodes of Season 2.

In them, we meet an eclectic group of new players, some of whom have deep connections with one another — there’s a pair of twins, for instance, a father-daughter duo, and more.

As the executive producers promised, several of the games stemmed from the most recent seasons of the hit drama, while at least one was completely new to the spinoff.

Here’s a look at all of the games played on Squid Game: The Challenge Season 2 (so far).

Counting

The contestants had barely stepped foot in their shared dorm before the first challenge began, with a call for two volunteers. While some were understandably hesitant to step up, the twins — that is, Players 431 (Raul) and 432 (Jacob) — decided to go for it. They were then given the job of leading the X and O teams as the other players divided themselves equally between the two symbols.

The teams were then separated and challenged to count to a set number of seconds and then press a button. This again required someone to volunteer for the job. Raul’s team had a nurse who had to use counting to do compressions on patients, and Jacob’s had a musician who stepped up. In the end, it was Jacob’s team that came closest to counting the correct number of seconds, leading to the elimination of a whopping half of the contestants on Raul’s squad. Raul, however, got to return … on one condition.

Choose your victims

Upon returning to the dorms, Raul was tasked with choosing three people to eliminate and marking them with the phrase, “Good luck in the game.” So he set about getting to know some of the other players as quickly as he could, judging them by what they intended to do with their winnings if they prevailed in the game.

The pentathlon

The next game required folks to split into groups of 10 … and then into two pairs of five to play the following five games: ball-and-cup, flying stone, gong-gi, house of cards, and jegi. This resulted in another half of the players being eliminated. No showdown was more dramatic, though, than the one where the loving dad 370 (Curt) watched his daughter 369 (Zoe) struggle with her set as the guards broadcast most of the event for him and everyone else to watch. (And he found out the results of the match when she and her teammates walked back in.)

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Save vote

The five slowest players in their respective pentathlon games — 180, 89, 40, 344, and 289 — were called up to the front of the dorm, and the guards gave the rest of the players a choice whether to save or eliminate them all … and they chose to send them all home in a landslide.

Catch

The remaining players were separated into four differently colored quadrants, save for three players who were escorted into an adjoining room to watch the game unfold from a distance. In the game, they then had to line up in the four parts of a giant X and play a simple game of catch — with the twist being that the catcher had to start by standing wherever they were in line, no matter how far they might be from the thrower’s center spot. To win, a player had to both catch their ball and choose a catcher who wouldn’t drop it. Meanwhile, the three players in the other room had to choose a player each to tie their fates to.

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The doll

In the dorm, the players were surprised to see a big Russian doll placed in the middle of the room with the words, “Open me.” The players were already starting to side-eye one another before this, but tensions really spiked over this, especially once people realized they’d have to pick other people to open the smaller doll inside and receive things either an advantage or a disadvantage. Prizes included things like cake, immunity in the next game, and the ability to choose another player to eliminate; disadvantages included being locked together in the next game…

Mingle

The next game was another social one: Mingle. Just like in Squid Game, the players had to wait in the center of a merry-go-round until they were given a number of players that they had to group up into and go into rooms with. Just like in the fictional version of events, this game resulted in some betrayals. However, the game ended in a unique way when the players all held hands and refused to continue. Episode 4 concluded with the players being split into groups of two as the guards — and Front Man! — arrived to end the game … and start the next one by gifting the pairs with a bag of marbles.

Squid Game: The Challenge, Tuesdays, Netflix