Season 2 is in the works , but in the meantime there are many questions left hanging as the ninth and final episode of season 1 closes.
Warning: The following story includes huge spoilers for Squid Game, so if you haven’t watched all the episodes, come back and read this after you’re done.
Get out the dangling piggy bank full of Korean won, Netflix, and pay the man.
According to Korean pop-culture site Soompi, Squid Game director Hwang Dong Hyuk said that he got the idea for the show back in 2008 from a comic book about people who were playing an extreme game.
And it might not even be a single comic, because the director told the Korea Herald that he “read a lot of comics, and was mesmerized by survival games.” So until Hwang comes out and names some of his reading material, guesses are all we have.
It’s also about a death tournament using childhood games, and seems to have some very similar scenes, including a doll that spins around and tries to catch players moving.
Main character Seong Gi-hun makes it sound as if Squid Game is unique to his town, describing a game that’s kind of like Red Rover and kind of like Capture the Flag and is played in a playground court shaped like a squid.
Other games played are fairly obviously real, including marbles, tug-of-war, and Red Light Green Light.
One game gives each player a tin of candy with a shape embossed into it, and they must use a sharp object to cut out the shape without breaking it.
The candy is popular with Korean children, the chef notes.
Online publication Koreaboo reports that the doll wasn’t made for Squid Game, but that it already was on display at the Jincheon Carriage Museum Adventure Village, also known as Macha Land, a museum in Chungcheongbok-do, South Korea, several hours from Seoul.
The guards in Squid Game wear red, and when one’s exposed, he seems like a young naive soldier.
Gi-hun grabs the card, and just before he gets on the plane, calls the number and tells the person who answers he’s going to track them down.
Jun-ho escapes the game compound but is seemingly killed by The Front Man, who’s kind of the manager of the game.
So he might not be dead, though he doesn’t seem to have ratted out the game masterminds to his fellow cops, since the game is continuing.
“And that was, in fact, my way of communicating the message that you should not be dragged along by the competitive flow of society, but that you should start thinking about who has created the whole system — and whether there is some potential for you to turn back and face it.