One person’s life changed forever, when the winner of Squid Game: The Challenge Season 2 became $4.56 million richer.
In the jaw-dropping finale, the five remaining players — Vanessa (Player 17), Perla (Player 72), Steven (Player 183), Dajah (Player 302), and Trinity (Player 398), who bested the 451 others who entered the game — faced off one last time.
Dressed to the nines (yes, the iconic tuxes are back), the remaining players endured a final round of the diabolically stressful competition and the return of a chillingly familiar doll — until only one was left standing. In the end, Perla crossed the finish line in a reimagined game of Red Light, Green Light, becoming the winner of Season 2 and walking away with a life-changing prize.
Keep reading to get even more familiar with the final five players of Squid Game: The Challenge Season 2. Find out about their journeys this season, why one of them initially applied to be on another Netflix series, and what each person planned to do with the money.
“First, I have to pay off my credit cards so they can stop calling me,” Perla tells Tudum about what she’d do if she wins Squid Game: The Challenge. “Second, I am getting my mom, my brother and [myself] home security. I do also want to make my mom’s dream of going to India a reality.”
Throughout every step of the competition, Perla hasn’t wavered on what matters most: “being my most authentic self.” And that has resonated with fans watching around the world. “I'm getting a lot of love from the Bronx, Dominicans, Black women, and people supporting me because they know what it’s like to feel things very deeply.” While others haven’t been as kind (“There are the haters who are like, ‘You cry so much’ ”), Perla knows that her emotions have been a superpower in the competition, even when it’s shaken her to her core.
Perla and her brother Jeffrey (Player 283) were able to stay under the radar in the early stages of the game. “My brother is more reserved than me, so we complement each other,” she says. Plus, Perla believes other pairs who entered the game together diverted attention away from the sibling duo. “The twins (Players 431 and 432) were such a big thing, and then Zoe (Player 369) and Curt (Player 370), just because he was a big personality, and people love a parent-kid relationship. No one thought of Jeffrey and me as a threat.”
The game turned the siblings against each other during Marbles, which pushed Perla to the brink. And when he sacrificed himself so she could go on in the competition, all the emotions came flooding out. “My brother is the calm that I need sometimes, so when he left, I was really scared that I wasn’t going to hold it together,” she recalls. “For him to trust me so much, it gave me ammo. I was like, ‘If Jeffrey trusts me, then I should trust myself, and I shouldn’t doubt myself [or] change for anyone else.’ ”
That inner strength powered Perla all the way to the final moments of Season 2, in which she took home the $4.56 million prize. To learn more about Perla, her strategy in the game, what life looks like for her now, and if she plans to split the money with her brother, check out Tudum’s winner’s interview.
Why would Steven — a professional poker player who’s already won millions of dollars — even want to enter Squid Game: The Challenge? “Competition and more money,” he tells Tudum. “Because more money is always better, right?”
Coming into the game, Steven, who finished second in the 2023 World Series of Poker Main Event and took home a staggering $6.5 million, never expected he’d make it so close to the end. “I went in just for the fun of the experience and not even expecting or thinking about the money,” he says. “It’s such a long shot. If you think about the money, it's going to mess up your mindset.” In fact, Steven didn’t even plan on applying for the Squid Game: The Challenge, as another Netflix series had caught his eye. “I originally applied for Love Is Blind. … I was trying to find love,” he says. “After I applied, I got an email saying, ‘Oh, we’re also casting for Squid Game: The Challenge.’ I was like, ‘Screw it. I’m here. I’ll apply for this, too.’ ”
Steven quickly discovered that his poker bona fides could serve him well in this game. “At the beginning, I just tried to stay in the background and not volunteer for anything,” he says about his strategy. “As it got a little bit deeper, then the poker skills helped, because my biggest advantage in poker is knowing how other people think.” But as the game drew to a close, he also began to feel increasingly isolated from the other players, which led him to confess to Kate (Player 327) about his previous poker winnings.
“I thought she was going to be happy for me, but I was shocked at her reaction,” he recalls. “She just looked at it like she was thinking about her son, and what’s my motivation? That’s kind of messed up. … I really felt alone. Because she was my only ride or die. And then after that reaction, I felt like nobody had my back.”
As for his elimination during Red Light, Green Light, Steven says he’s “just not used to sitting still,” which led to his downfall despite an early lead. “I’m just Mr. Twitch. I should have practiced this more beforehand because I would’ve gotten used to it, but my legs were going numb. We’re frozen for longer than it looks.” To regain the feeling in his legs, Steven tried to fall to his knees before the motion-sensing doll, Young-hee, turned back around, but he was just too late. “I should have gone down first and then crawled,” he says. “Instead I dropped down at the end of the music.”
If Steven had won the money, he planned to pour it back into himself and his loved ones, as well as his surrounding community. “I want to invest some, help some family members out, buy another house, and donate a portion to the Boys & Girls Club in Scottsdale.” And, no matter what happens, Steven is still searching for a forever ride or die — whether they meet in the pods or somewhere else. “I’m a lover at heart,” he says. “I have the money, and I’ve been very blessed to have so many successes, but I think that’s the last piece of my life that I’m looking to complete.”
“Sleep in the dorms. Make the top 50. Do an interview.” Those were Trinity’s three goals ahead of the competition, and he tells Tudum he planned to achieve them by “being a background character.” A conscious effort to blend in until around “halfway” through helped Trinity surpass his initial objectives, landing him in the final five. Trinity emphasizes that he was also aware of how important it was to play a social game, something he worked on from start to finish.
“My strategy was to make a lot of friends on the down low, so if somebody talked about me in another group, I had a friend there to defend my name.” Once the numbers dwindled down, Trinity found himself reading people with ease, helping him inch closer to the prize. “You can pick on people’s ticks very easily. Whether they smile, frown, or put their hand over their mouth, that means they’re hiding a secret when we’re in high-stress situations. When you read people, it becomes very easy. The hard part is games left up to chance, like Slides and Ladders.”
Aside from socializing, Trinity also avoided putting himself at risk when he didn’t have to. “I did not volunteer for anything I didn’t have to do. I was kind of a boring player, just winning games, making friends, and keeping my mouth shut.” He emphasizes the strength of the connections he made, which were expedited by the confines of the dorm. “One day feels like one week in there. When you’re having a conversation, you’re talking about their entire life from beginning to end because we have no phones, just time to sit and talk.”
Those friendships made it difficult to watch so many fellow competitors get eliminated. “You hear all these stories in the game, like, ‘I’m playing for this.’ Kate’s (Player 327) son has a lung issue, and I relate to that because I was born with one and a half lungs. Then you see one get eliminated. You see another get out. It puts a toll on you mentally, because you know what they’re playing for.”
That same empathy for his fellow players is what pushed Trinity to ultimately sacrifice himself in the finale. “Dajah is a single mom, and I grew up with a single mom with three sisters, so I know that struggle. Vanessa is a fisherman, but no one will hire her because she’s a woman, and she wants to use the money to buy a boat and start her own company,” he says. Letting his strong sense of faith and morality guide him, Trinity stands by his decision to eliminate himself and forfeit the $4.56 million. “It felt like a literal battle in my head, but if winning the money would relieve some of their stress — whatever they’re going through in life — I’d rather them have it.”
Before his final decision, Trinity had big plans for the potential winnings, which he intended to use for himself and his nonprofit Recharge Emissions. “The money would’ve helped with my nonprofit and moving my mom down to Kansas City. Then I wanted to set my future family up so they don’t have to go through what I went through when I was younger.”
“I was locked in,” Dajah tells Tudum, explaining why she believes her focus on bringing home the prize was palpable on screen. “I know I don’t come across [as] funny on the show, because I was serious. I don’t think anything’s funny when it’s time to handle business. We can laugh afterward. $4.56 million dollars? There’s nothing funny right now. Let’s get to work.”
Treating Squid Game: The Challenge like a business trip proved beneficial for Dajah, who’s shown time and again that she’s one of the season’s most dialed-in competitors. While she’s always had a knack for reading people, she credits the specialized training and classes she’s taken as a law enforcement worker for her high level of perception, which was on full display during Circle of Trust. “I’m that girl when it comes to reading and clocking. I’ve had tons of interviews with suspects, witnesses, and victims, so I pick up on body language well. To me, it’s easy.”
Despite having a skill set that plays more to offense than defense, Dajah went into the competition planning to keep things chill — an approach heavily inspired by Season 1 winner, Mai Whelan. “My strategy was to [lie] low but not too low. Mai was a big influence. She read people well. I didn’t want to let anyone know that I was in law enforcement [because] they’ll think I’m a big threat. I told people I was in real estate.”
Though she had a simple mission, Dajah still built connections that made losing every ally along the way an emotional experience. “We were building these bonds for weeks. I know [viewers] see our cast crying on camera, and it looks like they met this person two days ago, but we’re in there 24-7. There’s no phone, no internet. We’re just getting to know people.” Having persevered through the pain of losing friends like Faith (Player 361) and battling to the end alongside a rival like Steven (Player 183), Dajah planned to complete the final mission and bring home the prize fund. “I would’ve given my son the childhood I never had and traveled the world.”
But in the final moments of Red Light, Green Light, Dajah was struck down by an unexpected foot injury, forcing her to pull out of the game. “That crushed me so bad because I would’ve rather just lost, but to do so because of a medical disqualification — it really hurts,” she says. “But I will say, thank God, at least it’s Perla that won.”
“I’m Canadian, so I went in there playing a Canadian game,” Vanessa tells Tudum about her strategy. “Say sorry to everybody. Be nice to everybody and kind of put that front on, even though I think I’m pretty ruthless at the end of the day.” Of course, Squid Game: The Challenge upends even the best laid plans, and Vanessa had to lock in like never before when the competition tested her steely reserve.
While she developed close bonds with a few fellow players early in the competition, Mingle decimated her allies, forcing her to pivot. “I lost everyone in that game, so my strategy went out the nonexistent dorm windows,” she says. “I just had to restart. I kind of played a lone wolf game after that, and it helped me because I think people weren’t looking at me since they thought I was alone.” But Vanessa has plenty of experience of taking the road less traveled. “I work in my country’s most dangerous job as a lobster fisher, and I am the only [woman] lobster fisher in my harbor,” she says. “I am a blue-collar, salt-of-the-earth, hardworking woman in a completely male dominated industry. I am used to people not exactly loving me at first, but they do warm right up to me once they get to know me.”
But with few allies and the daunting task of surviving games like Slides and Ladders and Circle of Trust, Vanessa had to dig deep to project a sense of calm. “I’m a ball of nerves most of the time, so I was worried that my nerves would take me out, but I was able to breathe through it,” she says. “I only thought I had a chance of winning when I made it to the final five. Then I was like, ‘OK, girl. Maybe you can do this.’ ”
For Vanessa, $4.56 million would’ve gone a long way in her career. “Owning my own boat and running my own show out there on the open sea has quite literally always been my dream,” she says, noting that securing a vessel, licenses, and gear would cost almost $2.5 million. “I get worked up and emotional fantasizing about that becoming a reality. If I am being completely honest, this dream can only become reality by winning, so trust me when I say I was motivated.”
Despite her best efforts, Vanessa came up short in the finale, but she’s not walking away with any regrets, as she’s extremely proud of making it all the way to the end of the competition. “I don’t want my life to change. I love my life. I love fishing. I’m completely content going back and just having the memories of Squid Game: The Challenge.”
