Squid Game Season 2’s Biggest Mistake With the Salesman Is a Missed Opportunity They Can Never Undo

The second season of Squid Game has finally concluded. Seong Gi-hun is reprised by Lee Jung-jae, who is all set to fight against the organization that has created the games. The children’s story continues three years after the first season.

There is one character that stands out in the first episode of the third season– the Salesman, the character performed by Gong Yoo. Fans know him from season 1, where he was the mysterious recruiter who invited people to games of Ddakji at the subway stations. Season 2 just brings him back with a more evil persona.

Squid Game season 2’s missed opportunity with the Salesman

The season also shows that Gong Yoo’s character initially begins as the masked guard in the games, helping to burn corpses. His progress through the ranks is shown by adding more violence to his character, up to the point that he has to shoot his own father in one of the Games. This revelation suggests there was much more to his backstory than the show presented.

The Salesman’s despise for poor people is revealed through his actions, which includes a scene where he presents two options to homeless people- bread to satisfy their immediate needs and a lottery ticket as a chance at a better life. This cruel manipulation of the desperate must have come from resentment, and there was clearly more to it.

The Salesman must have also suffered from a difficult upbringing, which adds to his hatred for the poor. Although the show did foreshadow his evolution from a desperate person to an evil recruiter, it never develops this interesting backstory.

From burning bodies to being the recruiter, his story might have been an interesting way to show how the system ruins the people it serves. The show could have explored his complex relationship with his parents and his challenging childhood that shaped his twisted mentality. However, the show passes through all of these in a few minutes during his interaction with Gi-hun through brief dialogs.

The Salesman dies in the first episode of the season during the game of Russian Roulette with Lee Jung-jae‘s Gi-hun, leaving viewers just a little aware of his backstory. Unfortunately, such an ending feels rather anticlimactic and seems to leave out one of the most mysterious characters of the show.

Why Squid Game season 2 cut short the Salesman’s story

The showrunners’ decision to end Gong Yoo’s character so early on seems to be based on the vision of keeping things more surprising than the potential storytelling. Although the scene is heavy, it loses the opportunity to explore a character who embodies the game’s ruthless philosophy.

In an interview with RadioTimes, the showrunner Hwang Dong-hyuk explained the Salesman’s internal conflict and complexity and his motivation towards his actions.

I believe that Gong Yoo’s character [The Recruiter] is someone who lived a difficult, tough, rock-bottom life, just as much as those that are depicted as the homeless people in the series.

And he is someone who is so filled with self-hatred, it is expressed in the hatred he harbors for other humans. And by hating these people, he believes that he is different from them. [He is] showing and expressing his hatred for the people who choose lottery tickets instead of bread, almost as if he’s trying to escape his own self-loathing nature.

The show’s creators might have believed that the mystery behind the character would make this character more attractive. However, the Salesman’s final scene appears quite powerful from a dramatic perspective, but it feels like the end was too early for a character whose background could have given more insight into the poverty, survival, and moral corruption that Squid Game explores.

Squid Game season 2 is now streaming on Netflix.