Demystifying Squid Game

Squid Game

It’s impossible not to talk about Squid Game, the latest sensational hit on Netflix. I don’t know about Game of Thrones, but there’s something special about Squid Game. For the first few days, I tossed off the idea of watching this Korean series that was gaining up hype on social media. But I eventually gave in. I didn’t regret my decision.

If you still haven’t watched Squid Game, you are missing out a lot. It is not just any other series that you can find on Netflix. It will hold you at the edge of your seat throughout the episodes.

What is Squid Game?

By this time, you must have known a lot about Squid Game, and about its writer and director Hwang Dong-hyuk. He had a hard time, like the protagonist in the series, when writing the script. He even had to sell his laptop for $675 because he ran out of money. Most of the studios and producers rejected his script because the plotline was “too grotesque and too unrealistic”. There is no definite theme like the one you would find in other ordinary series. Squid Game is just a bunch of players playing children’s games. But there’s a catch.

What happens in Squid Game?

If you don’t want a spoiler, you’d better skip this part. Squid Game is about survival. The series starts with the story of the protagonist Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) who lives off the money made by his diabetic mother. Worse, he gambles away the money that she gives to him to buy food for his daughter on her birthday. He wins the bet in horse racing, but that too is stolen by a pickpocket. Then he meets a mysterious man who invites him to play ddakji, and gives him a card to play games where he could make more money. He joins the game as player #456.

(There are two color of cards in ddakji: Blue and Red. Gi-hun goes with blue. There is a theory that if he has selected the red card, he would have joined the game as one of the masked guards.)

There are other 455 players from different walks of life. But all of them have one thing in common: DEBT. They have a hard life out there. But here, they have a chance to change their lives. All they have to do is to survive through the game. The penalty for losing is death. For each life lost, 100 billion Won is deposited in the piggy bank. The final prize money is 45.6 billion Won.

After the bloody first game, the players vote to terminate the game. They go back to their below-average life and realize that they are no better off in their real life. They at least have a chance to make money in the game. Once again, each of them receives the mysterious cards, and they rejoin the game.

Jun-ho, a detective, joins the party as a masked man. He is searching for his missing brother, who gave him one of his kidneys. He doesn’t find his missing brother until the eighth episode. The game keeps on getting mysterious and unpredictable. Sang-woo, Gi-hun’s cousin, is a smart guy, but he is self-centered and betrays Ali. One by one, the other players get eliminated. The three finalists are Gi-hun, Sang-woo, and Sae-byeok (the pickpocket), but Sang-woo kills Sae-byeok. Gi-hun has promised to take care of Sae-byeok’s brother from the children’s home.

In the final game, Gi-hun and Sang-woo face each other. It’s the Squid Game. No rules. There can be only one survivor. Gi-hun is clearly the winner, but he decides to quit the game so that both of them can go home. But Sang-woo kills himself. Gi-hun is the winner.

Back to outside life, Gi-hun has a fortune as promised by the game. But he is not happy. Then he meets the creator of the game: Oh Il-nam, Player #001, who was with him from the beginning. Gi-hun is about to leave for America to reunite with his daughter, but he sees the same mysterious man playing ddakji with another person. Gi-hun doesn’t get on that plane.

#001 and #456

Player Number 001 and 456

Player Number 001 and 456 are the first and last players in the game. Gi-hun (456) befriends Oh Il-nam (001), and they are together in the same team until 001 “loses” against 456. Who knows, Oh Il-nam must be Gi-hun’s father who he never mentioned.

Just think about it! As a co-creator of the game, Oh Il-nam made sure that Gi-hun stayed alive. That’s why he gave his Number 001 jumper to Gi-hun because the masked men would never shoot at 001. It might be just a random theory, but isn’t that possible?

Reason Behind Squid Game’s Success

Squid Game is on the verge of becoming the most-watched TV show on Netflix. Its record-breaking success was something nobody anticipated. The director took something as simple as the children’s game and made a whole series out of it.

Squid Game is brutally honest about the economic struggles that the lower-income class of people in South Korea has to face. It is about humanity and survival. It is about money and happiness. Just before the creator of the game dies, he says this to Gi-hun:

“Do you know what someone who doesn’t have any money has in common with someone with too much money? Living is no fun for either of them.”

The game adds money to the piggy bank for each player lost. This means that the winner is taking the money for the total lives lost. In this context, Squid Game slaps a bitter truth on the face of mankind:

“Money is just the cost of living. It is not the ultimate prize.”

Final Words

We don’t know yet about the Season 2 of Squid Game, but it would be awesome to watch it. There are lots of questions unanswered. The story might have been over if Gi-hun had taken that plane, as suggested to him on the phone. But he didn’t. He is onto something.

I am one of the few people on earth who haven’t watched or read “Game of Thrones” and “Harry Potter”. But, trust me, Squid Game is at the whole next level. With only nine episodes, each one of them roughly around an hour, you can watch from start to finish in a day. At the end of the day, you would feel like me: A day well spent with Squid Game.

 

© Linking the Myths 2021: Demystifying Squid Game