Here’s the Front Man’s Squid Game story, from the truth about wife to rising through the ranks

The Front Man has become the shining star of Squid Game season two, but with all his aliases and various motives at play, it can be difficult to keep track of who he actually is.

Besides a few rare moments in season one, Squid Game’s Front Man was left an enigmatic mystery with few details about his lore. We learned a little bit more information in season two, but still, I have more questions than answers. In a bid to get us all on the same page before Netflix’s season three, let’s dive into the backstory of the Front Man. Or was it Young-il? Hwang In-ho? It’s hard to keep track.

Was the Front Man actually honest about his wife?

When the head honcho ditched the black mask to keep an eye on Seong Gi-hun in season two, he opened up about his reasoning for joining the deadly game. Though we assumed it was as fabricated as his name Young-il – which is coincidentally the same as his player number – he might have been more candid than we realised.

We already know that the Front Man, real name Hwang In-ho, is the brother of that police detective with the lethal face card, Hwang Jun-ho. At the start of the season, Jun-ho and his mother discussed how In-ho had been devastated by the loss of his wife to cancer.

This was pretty much the same story he told Gi-hun, and while we know that he was referring to the events that led him to join the 28th Squid Game, he might have simply switched the tenses to keep his lies in a straight line during the 2024 instalment.

His half-brother added weight to the story about his wife

Most Read

Squid Game creator reveals the wild hidden meanings behind the show’s costumes

Squid Game creator defends casting choice for Thanos following backlash towards his acting

Here’s the real reason Thanos speaks English in Squid Game season two

We know that Hwang In-ho started out as a highly decorated South Korean police officer who gave a kidney to his younger paternal half-brother, Hwang Jun-ho. When his wife suffered from liver cancer the doctors provided them with two choices: Terminate the pregnancy or continue with it and risk her own health. She chose the former.

When neither his brother nor mother were able to provide the organ, In-ho turned to slightly more nefarious means of acquiring the money and was sacked as a result. Soon enough, he abandoned his family and joined the 28th Squid Game in the hope of winning the hefty cash sum.

When the Front Man forgot his job pic.twitter.com/gkECvanKPt

— Squid Game (@squidgame) December 30, 2024

Unfortunately, despite winning the games and going home with the prize money, Hwang In-ho was too late to save his wife who had succumbed to the illness.

How did he go from player to top dog?

How are people not realising that Front Man and Player 001 are the same person 😅 that’s literally been the headline story of this season#SquidGame2 pic.twitter.com/W0SF3msyWS

— orange panther (@jesthinks) December 28, 2024

Little is currently known about Hwang In-ho’s time in the Squid Game, besides the fact that he competed in 2015 in the 28th edition. According to records visible in the background, other players were Kim Yea-han, Jung Il-sik, and Park Min-hyuk.

The Front Man ultimately won his Squid Game, no doubt beating the other players with the ferocity we saw him exhibit in the later episodes of season two.

In season one of the show, which is set in 2020, we saw In-ho acting as the manager of the games while the undisclosed leader later to be revealed as Oh Il-nam was competing in them. Following his death in 2021, In-ho was elevated to the highest position.

That’s about as much as we know about In-Ho’s story, though I am still left wondering about his motivations when signing on to work for Oh Il-nam. Did he start as a worker? Did he jump immediately into the Front Man persona? Sure, his wife was dead and he was out of a job, but that’s a huge jump from respectable police detective to sociopath with a fetish for geometric masks.

Hopefully, we will get answers to our burning questions in season three!

Squid Game 2 is available on Netflix now. For all the latest Netflix news, drops and memes like The Holy Church of Netflix on Facebook. 

Featured image credit: Netflix