One of the biggest surprises in Squid Game season 2 arrives before Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) even joins another round of games. The moment occurs in episode 2, when the Netflix series reveals that one of the new characters—who we’re led to believe is a new player—is actually joining the games as a pink guard. Her name is No-eul (Park Gyu-young), and she arrives in season 2 with quite the backstory.
We first meet No-eul in the second episode when a police officer finds her sleeping in her car. She’s a defected soldier from North Korea, who now works as a mascot at a local theme park. No-eul is looking for the daughter she left behind in North Korea, but she hasn’t received much help from a local broker. No-eul visits the broker in episode 2, unknowingly passing Gi-hun as she walks up the stairs. The broker urges her to give up the search, arguing that her child likely died, even though “no one has actually witnessed her death or found her body.” Desperate, No-eul eventually takes a new job as one of the Squid Game’s snipers.
“[No-eul] has no other purpose in life than to reunite with her child,” Park told Netflix. “[She’s] harboring the kind of indescribable agony that cannot be expressed in words.” Though it’s unclear why the character joins the game, Park explained that No-eul “begins working at the game with the mission of letting hopeless people pass on peacefully without pain … and giving peace to those suffering just like her.”
No-eul is looking for her daughter, whom she left behind when she defected from North Korea.
Squid Game fans may remember another North Korean defector from season 1, named Kang Sae-byeok (Jung Ho-yeon). She allies herself with Gi-hun and survives five rounds of games before she’s stabbed in the neck and killed by another contestant. Before Sae-byeok dies, Gi-hun promises to protect her little brother, Kang Cheol. So in season 2, Gi-hun follows up on Kang Cheol’s whereabouts. He’s doing fine, raised by a kind older woman with a fish store. Gi-hun is also working with the broker to safely transport Sae-byoek’s ailing mother across the border.
Call me crazy, but is there any possibility that Kang Sae-byeok and No-eul are related somehow? Squid Game must be keeping No-eul’s surname a secret for a reason. We’ll find out when Squid Game returns for a third and final season later next year.
