The first time actor Kang Ae-sim (Geum-ja, aka Player 149) walked onto the set of Squid Game Season 3’s Hide and Seek challenge, she was reminded of a Las Vegas casino. “Places like that have domed ceilings with lights that confuse the occupants if it’s daytime or nighttime,” she tells Tudum. “It felt uncanny and surprising on set to see things I never would have expected.” 

Much like visitors to Sin City, Squid Game players are competing for a huge sum of cash in a disorientating labyrinth of colors and shapes — as well as cutthroat adversaries. Unlike in gambling dens though, losers won’t merely drain the contents of their wallet — they’ll forfeit their lives. Hide and Seek ratchets up the tension by giving players an ultimatum: kill or be killed by each other in a fatal game of tag. Squid Game creator Hwang Dong-hyuk enjoyed a similarly fraught dynamic with one very memorable game in Season 1, and wanted to restore that atmosphere with Hide and Seek, only with even higher stakes. 

“Just like Marbles in Season 1, where fate tears apart close bonds, Hide and Seek was the ideal setup to capture twists of fate and throw the characters into intense moral dilemmas,” he explains. “I wanted to re-create this feeling on set, capturing the childhood atmosphere, the grim situation the players are in, and the cruel fate through this game of Hide and Seek.” 

So how did the Squid Game team pull off this gargantuan challenge in Season 3, Episode 2? Keep reading as Hwang, production designer Chae Kyoung-sun, and the rest of the cast come out of the shadows to reveal all about Hide and Seek, its heartbreaking eliminations, and the introduction of a new player who serves as a “beacon of hope.” 

What is Hide and Seek? 

Hide and Seek is the fourth game played in this round of Squid Game, and it takes place inside a dizzying, deadly maze. It begins in the Season 3 premiere, as players line up at what looks like a giant gumball machine, and get either a red or a blue ball. Competitors who get blue are “Hiders,” and those with red are “Seekers.” Hiders must either, well, hide from the Seekers for 30 minutes, or find an exit and escape in that time. Seekers must find and eliminate a Hider before their time runs out; if a Seeker does not kill a Hider before then, they will be eliminated themselves. As an added twist, players are allowed to swap teams before the round begins if they so choose. They cannot switch once play has started. 

Finally, Hiders are handed keys for the challenge, and Seekers are given knives. 

The game was inspired by Hwang’s childhood love of da-bang-gu, “where you have to find and tag the other player, and they’d be ‘dead.’ ” he says. “Except, in Squid Game, that means killing them for real.”

No Ju-han/Netflix

How was the Hide and Seek set built? 

As Lee David (Min-su) tells Tudum, Hide and Seek is “the game where everyone crosses a line of no return.” So Squid Game needed a set worthy of such a momentous and devastating occasion. That is where Chae Kyoung-sun, the series’ production designer, comes in. 

Chae tells Tudum that the Hide and Seek set took the longest to build and wound up being her favorite of Season 3. The space spans 300 pyeong — or 10,675 square feet — and required four months to create. She wanted to convey the theme of the contestants being “lost on the road” under a night sky. Along with her crew, they tested various shades just to find the right inky hue and even hand-drew all the celestial scribbles on the ceiling for the perfect dream effect. Thanks to their effort, the space feels equally “heartfelt” and disconcerting. 

“The brutality stems from the fact that people with no safe place are desperately trying to find a way out through these doors and roads, only to end up in a deadly situation where they must fight or kill,” Chae explains. Doors open to death-defying drops. Hallways lead to nowhere. Walls are splattered with blood … and artwork that conjures the memory of childhood. 

“I thought it would feel even more brutal and poignant if people were killing each other against this backdrop,” she continues. “As kids, this would have been a place to play tag with friends and draw on the walls, much like a playground. But now, it’s transformed into a terrifying space.” 

Squid Game: The Official Podcast Reviews Season 3, Episode 2 The Starry Night

To prepare, the first thing Chae bought were the maze puzzle books of her youth. To understand what would be necessary to block certain sequences in Episode 2, the Squid Game art department created 3D models of some of the puzzles. Then they added their own “creepy” touches, with shapes that mimic blood vessels of the human brain or ant nests. Along the way, Chae and Hwang maintained collaboration to ensure his specific vision could come to life. Ramps, stairs, and intricate floor plans helped. 

“You know, once you enter this maze, you could seriously get lost,” she says, admitting her own team got turned around during production. “There are walls everywhere — walls that aren’t very tall, yet they evoke a deep sense of fear. You don’t know where you’re standing or which way is the right path.”  

The team’s hard work paid off. Park Sung-hoon (Hyun-ju), Kang, and Jo Yuri (Jun-hee) all toured the Hide and Seek set together at the start of production, since it would house one of their most important scenes of the series (more on that soon). “While all the rooms had different designs, one overarching theme was ocean. So it was almost like we were filming in an aquarium,” Park says. “It was very special because oceans are where everything is born. It’s like the root of everything. We wondered if the design was meant to express amniotic fluid.”    

His co-star, Kang, agrees, saying, “It was a blessing for actors to be able to work on a set like that.”

No Ju-han/Netflix

How was a baby born in Squid Game? 

Once the game begins, the characters separate into a series of intersecting journeys. Gi-hun, aka Player 456 (Lee Jung-jae) and Dae-ho (Kang Ha-neul) enter a battle of speed and brute force. Myung-gi (Yim Si-wan) and Min-su are drawn to new levels of darkness. But, Hyun-ju, Geum-ja, and Jun-hee are the heart of the episode. Pregnant Jun-hee goes into labor in the middle of the round. Rather than abandon Jun-hee at her most vulnerable, her friends Hyun-ju and Geum-ja decide to act as both protectors and midwives while she gives birth to her baby girl. 

“I love that trio. I wanted them to be a team in the fourth game,” Hwang says. Their bond only grows stronger when it becomes clear the stakes will be even higher once Jun-hee has her baby. “When I was writing the scripts for Seasons 2 and 3, I wanted a baby character. To make it more dramatic, I thought of the baby born inside the game — she’s like the last beacon of hope for mankind.” 

Park recalls that filming the birth scenes filmed him with emotion. The experience is a true show of sisterhood for Hyun-ju, who yearns for this kind of connection. “Even when I knew that this was a show and we were just acting, it just really brought tears to my eyes,” he tells Tudum. “This is a very special moment for  Hyun‑ju.” 

Hyun-ju takes her responsibility to her found family seriously, employing her military skills to keep the trio alive by any means necessary. Park admits Hyun-ju’s hallway brawl with two bloodthirsty Seekers was his most “physically draining” sequence of Squid Game. “In order to film that scene, we had to attend action classes, rehearse multiple times beforehand, and finalize the scene on set,” he says. 

While Jo Yuri didn’t have to learn fight choreography for Episode 2, she did have to focus on the emotional challenge of Jun-hee going into labor during Squid Game’s most savage round. “I faced one difficult scene after another, and whenever I stumbled a bit, Sung-hoon and Ae-sim were there to lend a hand,” the actor says. Part of Jo’s process was accepting the mayhem of Jun-hee’s situation. 

“It’s hard to explain in words, but I’ve heard beforehand that a woman in labor wants to just grab onto things and tear them apart,” Jo explains. Yet, Jun-hee can’t even make noise if she wants to live. “So with the thought of ‘chaos’ in my mind, I performed the best I could,” she says. 

Kang is proud of her co-stars. “I did feel a sense of responsibility being the ‘mother’ of Hyun-ju and Jun-hee,” she says. In fact, the actor thinks Geum-ja — who delivers Jun-hee’s baby — channels a certain mythological mom: Grandmother Samsin, the Korean goddess of childbirth. Kang’s niece pointed out the similarity to her. “I thought that reference was fitting for Geum-ja. She represents motherly love, instincts, and protectiveness. She felt deeply for someone who’d just become a mother.”  

Who dies during Hide and Seek? 

As we learn in the subsequent episode, 35 players were eliminated during the tumult of Hide and Seek. However, of those deaths, three change Squid Game forever.

No Ju-han/Netflix

Who kills Hyun-ju?

Myung-gi commits this unforgivable act. It seems like there’s a sliver of hope for the valiant soldier, Jun-hee, and Geum-ja until the very end of Episode 2. The trio manage to successfully deliver Jun-hee’s baby in the midst of the game, and Hyun-ju even locates an exit door out of the maze. But just as Hyun-ju is telling her friends the good news, she’s stabbed in the back. Park knows viewers are going to grieve the shocking death of his beloved character. 

“My heart goes out to everyone out there who gave so much love and support to my character, Hyun-ju,” he says. “I’m so grateful.” 

Hwang calls Hyun-ju’s death “heroic.” He specifically chose Hyn-ju to be the one who shows audiences what warmth, courage, and the “essence of humanity” looks like. “She was choosing not to escape alone, but to turn back to get the others. I believe we all have that spark of conscience, compassion, and humanity,” he says. “But as we navigate this harsh world, we often bury those values and convince ourselves they don’t matter. Or we sideline those values, thinking they’ll cost us too much. Still, when I reflect deeply, I believe those beautiful thoughts remain within us. If anyone were to embody them, it had to be Hyun-ju.” 

No Ju-han/Netflix

Who kills Yong-sik?

Much to her own horror, Geum-ja takes action against her own son. The shocking confrontation happens as Jun-hee and Geum-ja attempt to flee the game, now with a baby in tow. Just as they’re unlocking an exit door, Geum-ja’s son Yong-sik (Yang Dong-geun) appears. Having initially swapped teams with his mother, he is now a Seeker, and he’s failed to eliminate any players. If he doesn’t kill someone in the next minute, he will die. While Geum-ja begs her son to take her life, Yong-sik refuses. He goes after Jun-hee and her baby instead. Realizing her son is far more dangerous than she knew, Geum-ja stabs Yong-sik with the knife hiding in her binyeo (a traditional Korean hairpin). While this isn’t a fatal blow, the impact of what Geum-ja did in order to protect innocent lives is resonant.

When Hwang first envisioned the characters of Geum-ja and Yong-sik, he knew viewers would assume the mother would eventually sacrifice herself for her son. He wanted to “flip” that expectation. “Her action still needed to be convincing and something viewers could understand,” he says. Enter: Jun-hee and her baby. “I want to throw all of these characters into impossible moral dilemmas, all at once.  In Season 3, I wanted to take that to the extreme, pushing each character to their limits to see what decisions they make.”  

Kang leaned on her prior acting experience in the Korean play Red Poem to pull off the devastating twist. “I conveyed that character’s vulnerability, her hurt, and her inner scars in that play,” she says. “That really helped me feel the emotions that I needed to feel at the end of Hide and Seek.” 

Although Yang jokes he was “ready” for his character Yong-sik to die, he’s still impressed by the scene. “The fact that the mom would make such a choice! This is a scene you’d only see in Squid Game,” he says. “The catharsis blows you away.” 

No Ju-han/Netflix

Who kills Dae-ho?

Up until Hide and Seek, Gi-hun had never even wanted to kill another player. That changes in Season 3, Episode 2, as he stalks Dae-ho through the maze. Player 456 blames his former friend — who failed to get much-needed ammunition during the rebellion — for the uprising’s failure and his best friend Jung-bae’s (Lee Seo-hwan) death. As the episode culminates in players’ final maneuvers, Gi-hun finally takes Dae-ho’s life; the Front Man (Lee Byung-hun) watches on from the control room. 

Hwang says the brutal moment was one of Season 3’s most challenging scenes, since it marks Gi-hun’s “rock bottom.” Up until this point, Player 456 has survived on his luck, kindness, and team work. Finally, he takes his wrath out on another competitor, like many others around him. “In Season 3, Gi-hun does what any average person might do when faced with immense failure and despair — he redirects his guilt and blames others,” Hwang explains. “Gi-hun holds Dae-ho responsible for everyone’s death, including Jung-bae’s. By placing the blame entirely on Dae-ho, Gi-hun attempts to relieve himself of his guilt. “  

Still, even Kang empathizes with Gi-hun. “I wanted Dae-ho to die in shame so that the viewers didn’t lose focus on the remaining characters, like Gi-hun,” he says. 

(Re)watch all the shocks of Hide and Seek for yourself by tuning into Squid Game Season 3, now streaming. Keep coming back to Tudum as we say goodbye to the game forever. 

Did You Catch These Easter Eggs in Squid Game?