As a longtime fan of Squid Game’s first season on Netflix—and a dedicated viewer of the reality competition spin-off Squid Game: The Challenge—I was eagerly anticipating season two. However, once it dropped, the response wasn’t quite what I expected. Viewers seemed underwhelmed, with the show’s Popcornmeter score on Rotten Tomatoes stalling at a disappointing 63 percent. For a moment, I considered skipping it entirely. But I took the plunge—and I’m so glad I did.
After binging the entire second season, I found myself enjoying it far more than I expected. In fact, I even wrote, “Sorry, y’all. But you’re wrong. Squid Game season two is great,” giving it a full five-star review. Now, with the third and final season arriving on June 27, my excitement has only grown. I’ve been combing through Reddit threads, fan sites, and speculation posts in search of the most compelling theories. Some fan favorites include the idea that the series finale will zoom out to reveal a new game beginning in the United States or that the entire arena will be destroyed with explosives.
But the theory that truly captivated me—the one I keep coming back to—has nothing to do with the main protagonist, Seong Gi-hun (Player 456). Instead, it centers around a lesser-known character: Player 246, Park Gyeong-seok.
You might remember Gyeong-seok, played by Lee Jin-uk, as the desperate father who entered the games to pay for his daughter’s medical treatment. He survived multiple deadly rounds and eventually joined Gi-hun in a bold rebellion against the guards. However, things didn’t end well. He was shot during the uprising, and his fate was left ambiguous. That uncertainty has sparked a fascinating theory.
According to The Cinemaholic, there’s a real chance that Gyeong-seok isn’t actually dead. “It’s unclear whether he died or not because not only did we not get to see precisely where the bullet hit him, but the guard’s gun was also pointed lower. In other words, it’s possible they missed all major organs, and Player 246 survived despite the bullet wound.” That subtle detail opens the door to something much bigger.
Fans believe that the shooter may have been Guard 011—Kang No-eul, played by Park Gyu-young. No-eul joined the guard ranks after leaving her job at an amusement park, where she had previously met Gyeong-seok and his daughter. Her own personal tragedy—losing her child—may have made her sympathetic to Gyeong-seok’s plight. As the theory goes, No-eul could have intentionally shot him in a non-lethal area, allowing him a chance to live and potentially escape.
If No-eul did spare his life, it wouldn’t be far-fetched to think she also helped smuggle him out. One Redditor suggests, “Definitely that Guard 011 didn’t kill 246 and will smuggle him to the organ harvester room, where she’ll kill those two organ harvester guards (that threatened her) and then try to get him out.” Another fan builds on that by speculating, “I think she’s going to have the hired doctor help fix him up, and then Dad’s going to find the guys out at sea and point them directly to the island.”
While the explosive ending of season two left most of us focused on Gi-hun’s capture and the death of his closest ally, it’s easy to overlook the fates of Gyeong-seok and No-eul. But this theory brings them back into the spotlight and suggests they could play a crucial role in how the series concludes.
With Squid Game season three just around the corner, we won’t have to wait long to see whether this compelling theory becomes reality. If it does, we might owe No-eul more than we ever imagined.