If you are someone who enjoys TV shows and movies where you get to know characters and become attached easily, the show Squid Game may not be for you…
The show “Squid Game” is a South Korean survival drama/thriller TV series released last month and now streaming on Netflix. Written and directed by Hwang Dong-Hyuk, the plot surrounds 456 contestants. Each contestant is either struggling with extreme financial problems or has no money. After accepting the challenge to play a game called Ddakji, a traditional Korean game of flipping paper tiles with a man that the contestants had only just met. Each contestant after winning the round of Ddakji wins 10,000₩ or South Korean won and soon begin to trust the “man in the suit”. After the encounter, they are handed a card with three symbols, a circle, a triangle and a square with a phone number on the back of the card. Each contestant has now been selected to compete in a series of games to win a large cash prize; little does each contestant know what happens as the game progresses.
As the first episode progresses, 456 contestants are brought through a colorful maze of stairs to enter the area of the first game, Red Light Green Light where a large animatronic doll stands in front of them miles away. Once 무궁화 꽃 이 피었 습니다 (Red Light, Green Light, 1, 2, 3!) is announced, our contests soon learn the cost of playing in the Squid Game once a character moves after the giant automatic doll finishes her song. The player is eliminated, and not in the way a child is eliminated in a simple game. Rather, guns are shot at them until they are “eliminated”.
As the show continues, children’s games are presented to the contestants such as cutting out a dalgona candy in a specific shape without breaking the cookie, a large life version of tug-of-war that results in a deathly fall, a game of marbles between two contestants, glass stepping stones where one piece of glass is tempered and one is real and strong enough to hold over 200 pounds, a fight at midnight where contestants brutally battle one another, and the final game. The squid game to see who will take home 45.6 billion ₩.
After the airing of the show worldwide, many speculations and conspiracy theories have surfaced as many viewers noticed many of the hidden easter eggs throughout the show. If you paid close attention to the walls in the room where the contestants slept throughout the six days of games. Viewers will notice as each bed is removed from the eliminated contestants, drawings on the walls give clues as to what the next game will be for the contestants.
Fans theorized about the colors of the Ddakji game. After being presented with a red or blue colored card to play the game, viewers soon believed that if the main character Seong-Gi-Hun picked the red card, he would be one of the workers in the black mask and pink jumpsuit. Fans also believe that beloved detective Joon-ho who is played by actor Wi Ha-Joon is in fact not dead after being shot and falling off the cliff into the water.Fans believe that in the last episode that Seong-Gi-Hun somehow knows not to get on his plane to go see his daughter. Speculations have said that the plane was somehow hijacked since Seong-Gi-Hun wasn’t like most contestants and didn’t spend his winnings similar to other contestants.
The last biggest conspiracy theory that fans have accumulated after the show is that the favored old man, contestant 001 Oh ll-nam played by Yeong-Su Oh is the main character Seong-Gi-Hun’s father. In episode three, the two characters have a conversation that gives fans a feeling that throughout the whole show there are clues that the two are related but nothing has been said for sure as to if the rumor is true.
Netflix has confirmed for those who fell in love with the South Korean show that there will be a second season in the works as the last episode has left fans on the biggest cliffhanger. But mostly everyone wants to know why Seong-Gi-Hun dyed his hair red…
