What Is the Jack and Jill Game From Squid Game? Theories, Explained

Squid Game Season 2 ends on a cliffhanger, and while we’ll have to wait until later this year to find out what’s next, we’ve been given a glimpse of what some are calling Jack and Jill. Here’s an explanation of the various Jack and Jill Squid Game theories.

All the Jack and Jill Game Squid Game Theories

The first thing to know about Squid Game’s Jack and Jill game is that “Jack and Jill” is what fans are calling it. Neither Netflix nor Squid Game’s showrunners have called it that.

Instead, Squid Game Season 2’s final episode featured what appears to be a brief scene from Season 3, which shows a male version of Seasons 1 and 2’s Red Light, Green Light motion-detecting mannequin. Netflix later posted an image of the two side by side, naming the male version as Chul-Su.

Young-Hee and Chul-Su are characters that were used in Korean student textbooks, back in the 1970s. However, they weren’t attached to a specific fairy tale. Instead, some fans have made the jump to Jack and Jill, possibly because they’re a pair of male and female characters, and they’ve assumed there’ll be a game based on the Jack and Jill nursery rhyme.

What Is the Jack and Jill Nursery Rhyme & How Could it Figure Into Squid Game?

The Jack and Jill nursery rhyme is a Western rhyme, which tells the story of two children going up a hill to fetch water from a well and falling right back down the hill. The rhyme is:

Jack and Jill went up the hill
To fetch a pail of water;
Jack fell down and broke his crown
And Jill came tumbling after.

There are additional verses, but the gist is that the pair attempt to ascend a hill, and both get hurt, with Jack injuring his head. There’s been much discussion of the rhyme, suggesting it has a hidden meaning, but as with a lot of rhymes, no one knows its origins for sure.

With the Jack and Jill rhyme in mind, some Squid Game fans have come to the conclusion there’ll be a game where players have to ascend a hill and come back with water, without spilling it. One Reddit user suggests, “The steep hill they must climb, littered with traps, slippery paths, and unstable platforms, symbolizes the unpredictable and dangerous nature of life’s challenges.”

Related: Here’s a tiny, brilliant detail you probably missed in Squid Game Season 2

Another theory doesn’t name-check Jack and Jill but suggests players will have to work in pairs to beat a challenge, with failure perhaps meaning death for both players. There are a whole host of other theories, too, many offering some spin on either teamwork or the Jack and Jill rhyme.

However, it seems extremely unlikely there’ll be a game based on Jack and Jill, Why? Well, because Jack and Jill is a Western nursery rhyme, and so far, all of Squid Game‘s games have been based on Korean childhood games. Squid Game is a South Korean show, and as popular as it is in the West, it’s hard to imagine it’s suddenly going to pivot to nursery rhymes, and Western ones at that.

What Could Squid Game Season 3’s New Double Mannequin Game Be?

So, if it’s not based on Jack and Jill, what could Squid Games Season 3’s new Young-Hee & Chul-Su game be? This is just guesswork, but it could be a version of Red Light, Green Light, where players are split into two teams.

One would be Team Young-Hee and the other Team Chul-Su. Team Young-Hee would move when Young-Hee said Green Light and the other team would move when Chul-Su said Green Right. However, given that there’d be cross-talk between the two mannequins, players could move at the wrong time, eliminated because they were Team Chul-Su but moved when Young-Hee gave them Green Light.

So, the explanation of the Jack and Jill Squid Game theories is that Western fans are associating the two mannequins with the Jack and Jill nursery rhyme, but there are really no grounds for that.

Squid Game 2 is streaming now on Netflix.