Squid Game’s Sinister Front Man on His Character’s Surprising Season 2 Arc

Squid Game 2 is finally here! If you haven’t binged the episodes yet on Netflix, turn away now, because this interview with star Lee Byung-hun reveals the storyline for his character, the Front Man—someone we barely got to know in season one, but who plays a much bigger part this time around. io9 got a chance to ask Lee more about what it was like revisiting, and significantly expanding, his previously very enigmatic role.

As season two reveals, the Front Man takes a far more active role in the games: he’s actually one of the competitors, a shocking reveal that comes a few episodes in after we’ve already seen him in his masked-man ensemble.

For Lee, getting to dig into the Front Man—his real name is In-ho, but he identifies himself within the game as “Young-il”—was an acting delight.

“In season one, I played the frontman as a cameo,” he explained through a translator to io9 and other journalists at a Squid Game 2 press event. “And also the character was limited to an operational role with the mask on. In season two, the mask comes off and you get more about, and I get to tell more, of his story.”

Thanks to the events of season one, we know that In-ho—brother of determined police detective Jun-ho, whose search for Squid Game justice is a major part of both seasons one and two—is a past winner of the games.

“[Season two explores] why he first came into the Squid Game in the first place, how he has become this extremely pessimistic person that he is,” Lee said. “He reveals his backstory in season two to [the] other people who he’s playing games with. He creates this fake persona, almost a new character, and deceives those that he plays the games with. So ultimately, it’s almost as if you get three different types of characters within a single character. There’s the Front Man, there’s In-ho, and then there’s Yeong-il.”

He continued. “As an actor, to be able to play a character who has such complex and multifaceted sides to him is both challenging and something very, very enjoyable to do as a performer. And as for the degree to which I would be showing each of the different elements of the character, that was something that the director [Hwang Dong-hyuk] and I would have constant conversations about so that we could just make it just right.”

The Front Man’s journey still has a ways to go, as the season two finale certainly shows—especially since none of the players have yet realize who Player 001 really is. Watch Squid Game 2 on Netflix now.

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