How Far Do 301 and 302 Get in Squid Game: The Challenge?

The Gist:

• Players 301 and 302 are a son and mother competing in Squid Game: The Challenge.
• The two players often group up together in many of the games.
• Many believe that they plan on splitting the money with each other.

While the Netflix audience is still eagerly anticipating the release of Squid Game Season 2, there’s now a little appetizer with which fans can tide themselves over. It comes in the form of Squid Game: The Challenge. Based on the internationally acclaimed K-drama that first began streaming on Netflix in 2021, The Challenge is a reality show competition that pits 456 real people in a similar gauntlet of South Korean children’s games for an enormous cash prize of $4.56 million.

Many of the same rules from the source material apply here. If you lose, you get eliminated (sans the grisly deaths). That said, the reality series goes above and beyond to recreate many of the iconic sets and games from the show.

And just like the show, the players forge their own alliances with each other to better their chances of winning.

However, plenty of people came with teams already forged, including the heartwarming pair of Players 301 and 302. How far do they get in the competition?

Player 301 aka Trey is a delivery driver who, like everyone else, competes to become a millionaire by trying to survive through a series of elaborate games. He came into the game accompanied by his own mother, Leann (302), a retired newspaper editor.

“I did this because of her,” Trey explains in the first episode as both of them try to make it through Red Light, Green Light. “I wanted her and I to have an experience.”

He also reveals that she was a former athlete with plenty of fight left in her.

As one of the older competitors in The Challenge, Leann is eager not only to win the prize, but she’s also working to prove to others and to herself that you’re never too old to accomplish something extraordinary.

Though both of them branch off to make new friends and forge their own alliances, they often huddle back together to discuss strategies or even gossip about some of the other players. Their opponents believe that they plan on splitting the money with each other if either of them wins.

It’s easy enough to root for this emotional duo, and they’ve certainly got what it takes to make it in The Challenge. They both make it through the first three games of the competition. They even manage to avoid ruffling too many feathers to stay out of the crosshairs of opposing players looking to sabotage others.

However, their relationship is still put to the test. After all, there can be only one winner left at the end of Squid Game. Episode 6 of Squid Game: The Challenge features the marbles games. In this competition, pairs of players each get a bag of marbles and they are tasked with coming up with a game they agree on where there is one winner at the end of the allotted time. For Player 301 and Player 302, this is a nearly impossible task, since one of them winning means the other one goes home.

In the end, LeAnn and Trey both try their hardest to win despite who their opponent is. And Trey wins marbles, thereby sending his mom home. It had to be done, but Player 302 is still devastated to leave the game since she came into it to prove something to herself. Though if we’re being honest here, she still did just that.

Player 301 re-enters the dormitory without his mom and, for the first time, he feels the weight of playing the game alone. While plenty of other players have allies, Trey’s main “friend” in the competition was his mom. In a perfect world, they would have made it to the final two together. Unfortunately, LeAnn’s elimination means Trey is on his own.

And he almost makes it to the final 12, which is how many players are left after the Glass Bridge challenge. However, during the game in Episode 8, Player 301 makes one wrong move (literally) and falls through the bridge to an unknown fate. Well, we know his fate, which is out of the game and on the first plane back home. But you get it.

Watch Squid Game: The Challenge on Netflix.