You Might Already Know Figgy on 'Squid Game: The Challenge' if You're a Reality TV Fan

Spoiler warning: This article contains spoilers for Episodes 1-5 of Squid Game: The Challenge.

The Gist:

• Figgy from Squid Game: The Challenge was on Survivor years before the Netflix series premiered.
• Outside of reality TV, Figgy is a sixth grade science teacher.
• Figgy gets close to two of the more central players on Squid Game: The Challenge.

Before Squid Game: The Challenge premiered on Netflix as a spinoff of Squid Game, most of the cast remained under wraps. And even after the first five episodes were dropped, most viewers didn’t recognize most of the first season’s players. Except, if you’re also a Survivor fan, you might have recognized a player by the name of Figgy, who develops a friendship with players 301 and 302, a mother/son duo.

It’s not unheard of for reality TV show contestants to make the rounds, so to speak, and appear in other competitions. But, because so many details about the reality show, except for its concept of course, were kept on the down-low before the premiere, there wasn't really any inkling that Figgy would be in another reality competition show.

There are some players in the Squid Game reality show that producers seem to focus on more than others. And Figgy is one of them. She’s close to players 301 and 302, and she promises the son of the duo that she’ll look after his mom if he gets eliminated before she does. Unfortunately, Figgy gets eliminated before the end of the first five episodes. But she’s no stranger to the intense atmosphere of a reality competition show.

Figgy, whose full name is Jess “Figgy” Figueroa, competed in Season 33 of Survivor, which was titled Survivor: Millennials vs. Gen X. During the season, Figgy was one of the millennial contestants and in her Survivor bio at the time, Figgy said that what attracted her to the series was “the challenge” and you have to assume that’s the case with Squid Game: The Challenge too. And not just because “challenge” is in the title.

“I was brought up in a crazy household outside of the inner city with crime happening right outside our windows,” Figgy said in her Survivor bio. “I have had to fight for everything I have ever had in my life, and Survivor is the ultimate fight I want to take on. Mentally and physically, my strength is unreal.”

Although Figgy didn’t win Survivor, she made it to Episode 6, when she was voted out. And she walked away from the series with a short-lived romance with fellow islander Taylor Stocker, though it ended after she went home.

Episode 3 of Squid Game: The Challenge introduces a game we don’t see in the original scripted series. Warships is a life-size version of what is clearly the Battleship board game. And when Players 301 and 302 make it back to the dormitory, they look around for Figgy. Unfortunately, she doesn’t make it out of the game and she’s eliminated, along with a ton of other players.

Watch Squid Game: The Challenge on Netflix.