This…is…Squid Game! Now entering the studio are today’s contestants:

…and Player 001, Hwang In-ho, aka the Front Man, Gi-hun’s nemesis.

Didn’t see that last one coming, did you? For good reason: For In-ho, it’s an enormously risky move. Maybe even a shakily written one, too. After all, In-ho has know way of knowing for sure that his brother, Jun-ho, never showed his comrade Gi-hun a family photo — or more to the point revealed that In-ho has been helping to run the Game ever since he won it years earlier. 

Unless, of course, he does have a way of knowing. That’s the suspicion of Gi-hun and Jun-ho’s third-in-command, Woo-seok, when the team discovers that Gi-hun’s transmitter has been removed from his tooth and stashed on a completely different island. If they had snipers ready to thwart the pursuit by car, why would their inside intel stop there? There may be a rat in this operation. Bu for now, so much for a search and rescue — or as Gi-hun puts it when he probes his tooth and discovers the transmitter is missing: “I’m fucked.”

This episode’s most impressive achievement is repeating key elements from Season 1 without rehashing them, so to speak. When the players finally step into the arena, the first game is once again Red Light, Green Light, presided over by a giant, motion-detecting doll. Yet both this scene and the equally familiar one that follows feel fresh, thanks to the second season’s novel new dynamic: Gi-hun has played this game before, he knows how it ends, and he’s doing everything he can to save everyone he can. In-ho’s entry into the Game seems like a reaction to this, an attempt to rebalance the odds so that the players won’t have an “unfair” advantage. That’s the deranged logic by which the Game’s masters operate.

It goes well enough for a while. Despite some initial skepticism regarding his claim that anyone who loses the game will die, the players follow the instructions of Gi-hun, who warns about the danger with the volume and conviction of a fire-and-brimstone preacher. 

But when glamorous player 196 gets stung by a bee, her instinctive physical reaction leads her to her death by sniper. After a brief delay, widespread panic breaks out. Before Gi-hun — and player 120, the trans woman — can get everyone across the finish line, 90 people are dead. When pink-suited Soldier 011 — aka North Korean defector No-eul — finishes off the wounded player 444 after the game is over, the number ticks up to 91. (The man was wounded rather than killed deliberately, by another sniper; the motives of both shooters are unclear for now.)

The episode’s climactic setpiece doesn’t involve anyone getting killed — not directly, anyway. It’s just the customary post-game vote, in which the survivors collectively decide whether to continue playing or cash out and go home. Gi-hun, naturally, tries to convince everyone to get the hell out of there with their lives while they still can. To do otherwise in the vain hope of striking it rich on the word of some weird cultists would be suicidal, especially since you’re also condemning everyone who voted the other way to the same fate.

But in the end, the decision is made by the narrowest of margins, thanks to a thumb placed on the scale by In-ho, one of the architects of the whole bloody mess. And thus 49% of the voters are placed under the thumb of a violent dictatorship by the majority, greedy or deluded or both, who don’t care how many people suffer and die as long as they get theirs. By my estimation, this episode takes place on November 1, 2024. Do with this information what you will.

So much of what makes this episode good is also what makes it familiar: the giant doll, the X and O voting, the “Greta Gerwig’s Barbie remixed by M.C. Escher” staircase set by production designer by Chae Kyoung-sun, But what sells the drama of it all, what makes it feel like more than just a rehash, is what has changed: Gi-hun. When we see flashes of the initial season, he looks like a different person, floppy-haired and fresh-faced. Actor Lee Jung-jae’s transformation is subtle, but it’s like an optical illusion or a Magic Eye poster: Once you train yourself to see it, it’s kind of mind-blowing.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.