'Squid Game' Season 2's Bread and Lottery Scene Means More Than You Think

Sign in to your Collider account Editor's note: The below contains spoilers for Squid Game Season 2. In both seasons of Squid Game, the deadly children's games began before the players ever stepped into the familiar arena, facilitated by the elusive man dubbed the Salesman or Recruiter (Gong Yoo). In Season 1, this was a relatively harmless game of ddakji, which the Salesman used to lure people into the game with monetary rewards and the stinging pain of a slap that was a tiny glimpse into the pain they would later face. He returns in Season 2 in a larger role for the first two episodes, inducting Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) back into the tournament with a higher-stakes and more fatal game of Russian Roulette. Before this, the Salesman also takes us through a bizarre and seemingly purposeless scene involving bread loaves and lottery tickets, which turns out to be more revealing than we initially assumed, as it exposes parts of his psyche while symbolically tying into the Gi-hun's hunt for the true villain of Squid Game. 'Squid Game' Season 2 Reveals the Salesman's True Self This obscure scene doesn't seem to have too much rhyme or reason to it. In fact, it just seems like another example of the games' creators' twisted sense of giving people a choice to help themselves. However, it is actually less didactic and superfluous than you may think. In an interview with RadioTimes, creator Hwang Dong-hyuk explains that this enigmatic scene is an expression and projection of the Salesman's own self-hatred. The Salesman is "someone who lived a difficult, tough, rock-bottom life" and can see whispers of this life in the homeless people in the park. "He is someone who is so filled with self-hatred. It is expressed in the hatred he harbors for other humans," says Dong-hyuk. "And by hating these people, he believes that he is different from them... almost as if he's trying to escape his own self-loathing nature." The Salesman Exposes the True Villains in 'Squid Game' It is interesting to gain insight into this mysterious man who really introduced us to Squid Game, but this revelation about his self-hatred actually ties into the thematic concerns of the rest of the season. It somewhat bridges the gap between the players and the guards in the series. On the surface, the Masked Ones seem to have a more powerful position over the players, especially as they are responsible for enforcing the rules and they hold deadly weapons. But this isn't necessarily the case. Each person in the show, player and guard alike, completes their purpose in the closed environment of the tournament to ensure their survival and future in the real world. And if they deviate from that responsibility, profoundly negative consequences occur. Squid Game Seasons 1 and 2 are available to stream on Netflix. Your changes have been saved Hundreds of cash-strapped players accept a strange invitation to compete in children's games. Inside, a tempting prize awaits with deadly high stakes: a survival game that has a whopping 45.6 billion-won prize at stake.