Squid Game ending explained and all your burning questions answered

In Squid Game, the disturbing however intriguing Netflix hit sequence a couple of deadly tournament of children’s games, the competitors winds its option to a bloody decision. However that does not imply all questions get resolved because the ninth and closing episode closes. Listed below are solutions to eight burning Squid Recreation questions viewers might have after watching the dystopian Korean present. 

Warning: The next story consists of big spoilers for Squid Game, so if you have not watched all of the episodes, come again and skim this after you are completed. You actually do not wish to be spoiled for a number of the plot twists.

1. When did Squid Recreation come out?

The nine-episode sequence launched on Netflix on Sept. 17. Netflix says it marks the streaming service’s biggest series launch ever. 

2. Will there be a season 2 of Squid Recreation?

Should you’ve watched the entire present (keep in mind that spoiler warning above), you understand the sport does not actually finish with the ninth episode. It continues, and the way forward for “winner” Seong Gi-hun (performed by Lee Jung-jae) is left unsure. Will we ever know what occurs after he will get off that airplane? The reply is a powerful … perhaps. Author/director Hwang Dong-hyuk told Variety he might return to big-screen films earlier than fascinated about a Squid Recreation sequel.

“I haven’t got well-developed plans for Squid Recreation 2,” he informed Selection. “It’s fairly tiring simply fascinated about it. But when I had been to do it, I would definitely not do it alone. I might think about using a writers’ room and would need a number of skilled administrators.”

Squid Recreation’s success is bound to have Netflix execs wanting extra, however we simply do not know if they will coax the director again for extra. Get out the dangling piggy financial institution stuffed with Korean received, Netflix, and pay the person. Listed below are our concepts for characters, games and plots we might wish to see in Squid Recreation season two.

3. Was Squid Recreation based mostly on a e-book?

It actually looks like Squid Recreation would make an amazing novel or graphic novel. However proper now, you possibly can’t go to your bookstore and scoop up a Squid Recreation e-book to learn.

According to Korean pop-culture site Soompi, Squid Recreation director Hwang Dong Hyuk mentioned that he bought the thought for the present again in 2008 from a comic book e-book about individuals who had been enjoying an excessive sport. However he did not identify the comedian.

And it won’t even be a single comedian, as a result of the director told the Korea Herald that he “learn lots of comics, and was mesmerized by survival video games.” So till Hwang comes out and names a few of his studying materials, guesses are all we’ve got. It appears seemingly that Squid Recreation will now be was e-book kind, because it’s such a success. Keep watch over these bookstore cabinets.

Some are claiming that Squid Recreation is suspiciously much like a 2014 Japanese movie, As The Gods Will, directed by Takashi Miike. That movie itself is predicated on Japanese manga. It is also a couple of dying match utilizing childhood video games, and appears to have some very comparable scenes, together with a doll that spins round and tries to catch gamers transferring.

Squid Game’s director said at a press conference that solely the primary sport within the movie is much like his present, and that he had been engaged on his idea for years earlier than As The Gods Will got here out in 2014.

4. Is Squid Recreation an actual sport?

Clearly there isn’t any lethal Squid Recreation match, the place individuals are killed enjoying harmless kids’s video games. We hope. However the title refers to at least one particular sport that will get its identify from a courtroom formed vaguely like a squid. 

Major character Seong Gi-hun makes it sound as if Squid Recreation is exclusive to his city, describing a sport that is form of like Crimson Rover and form of like Seize the Flag and is performed in a playground courtroom formed like a squid. To be able to win, the attacking workforce, who’re solely allowed to hop till they cross the squid’s waist, should faucet the squid’s head with their foot. Director Hwang told the Korea Herald that it was his favourite childhood sport, so sure, it does appear to be actual.

Different video games performed are pretty clearly actual, together with marbles, tug-of-war, and Crimson Mild Inexperienced Mild. There’s one sport that is clearly not actual — one through which gamers should cross a glass bridge and do not know which panel will shatter underfoot — although video games like hopscotch do require you to put your ft solely in sure squares.

One sport provides every participant a tin of sweet with a form embossed into it, and so they should use a pointy object to chop out the form with out breaking it. That is simple you probably have a triangle form, not really easy in case you picked the umbrella. Contestants finally be taught that licking the again of the sweet helps launch the form.

That sweet is real–here’s a YouTube video from PinoyChefKorea that exhibits you make it. (Recipe directions are proven in English captions.) Did you get into making Dalgona coffee in the course of the pandemic? This sweet is Dalgona sweet.

The sweet is common with Korean kids, the chef notes. And sure, eaters in Korea try to eat around the embossed shape with out breaking it, although the stakes for them aren’t life and dying.

5. Is the Crimson Mild, Inexperienced Mild doll actual?

The primary sport the contestant play is Crimson Mild, Inexperienced Mild, however as a substitute of a human turning round and attempting to catch somebody transferring throughout “Crimson Mild,” it is a super-creepy big schoolgirl robotic doll factor.

On-line publication Koreaboo reports that the doll wasn’t made for Squid Recreation, however that it already was on show on the Jincheon Carriage Museum Journey Village, also called Macha Land, a museum in Chungcheongbok-do, South Korea, a number of hours from Seoul. Koreaboo says the doll has now been returned to the museum, however in some way is lacking one hand. Hey, these video games had been tough on everybody.

Den of Geek pointed us to tweets from residents of the Philippines noting {that a} model of the doll was a part of a Netflix show in a mall there, and its head really spun round.

6. That Squid Recreation enterprise card

Squid Recreation recruiters handed out light-brown enterprise playing cards with the sport’s image — a circle, triangle and a sq. — on one facet, and a cellphone quantity on the opposite. (Enterprising online artists are selling them in case your Halloween costume wants a prop, or make them your self.)

Author Jasmine Leung explains for The Focus that the shapes are literally Korean letters.

“The circle is the letter ‘o’, the triangle is a part of the letter ‘j’, and the sq. is ‘m’,” she writes. “So facet by facet, it reads ‘O J M’, that are the initials (of) squid sport in Korean, which is learn as Ojingeo Geim (오징어게임).”

That facet of the cardboard is okay, however the different facet, with a cellphone quantity proven, brought about some issues. Mashable Southeast Asia experiences that an individual with that quantity has complained of receiving “endless” calls and text messages. (C’mon Netflix, you need to’ve purchased a particular quantity and arrange some promo message for many who known as it.)

7. Concept about Squid Recreation guards

The guards in Squid Recreation put on purple, and when one’s uncovered, he looks like a younger naive soldier. One on-line concept tries to clarify how the guards had been employed. Lead character Seong Gi-hun performs a sport known as ddakji with a recruiter for the sport. (Ddakji is a traditional Korean game of flipping paper tiles–kind of like POGs.) Gi-hun picks blue paper over purple. It appears random, however one concept claims it is not.

“So there is a concept in Squid Recreation the place Gi-Hun picked the blue card from the salesperson (Gong Yoo) after which awakened in blue go well with as a participant,” one tweet notes. “Had he or the opposite gamers picked the purple card, they’d be the employees/guards.”

There is not any proof that that is true, however hey, good fodder for a doable sequel.

8. The Squid Recreation ending defined

Tremendous-spoiler time, as a result of we will speak concerning the sequence’ ending. Seong Gi-hun wins, and he learns who’s actually working the sport (you’ll have figured it out since we do not see this character die within the sport, however it’s such a juicy plot twist that I will not reveal it right here). 

After coping with the sport mastermind, Gi-hun dyes his hair vivid purple (just like the guards’ outfits, although that is in all probability not linked). Then he begins to get on a airplane for LA to reunite together with his younger daughter. However he spots the sport recruiter who concerned him within the sport attempting to persuade one other down-on-his-luck man to play. Gi-hun grabs the cardboard, and simply earlier than he will get on the airplane, calls the quantity and tells the one who solutions he will monitor them down. SEQUEL? Even when the director does not appear in a rush, the setup is ideal for one.

And let’s speak concerning the brothers. Police officer Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon) infiltrates the sport, looking for his lacking brother In-ho. Jun-ho escapes the sport compound however is seemingly killed by The Entrance Man, who’s form of the supervisor of the sport. And The Entrance Man is revealed to be … Jun-ho’s lacking brother, who we already realized received the sport in 2015.

The brothers may return in a sequel, too. Jun-ho was shot within the shoulder (earlier than falling off a cliff into water). So he won’t be lifeless, although he does not appear to have ratted out the sport masterminds to his fellow cops, because the sport is constant. It would not be the one dying fake-out on this present.

9. Is there extra to discover in Squid Recreation?

Creator Hwang Dong-hyuk told The Hollywood Reporter that he deliberately left season one’s ending open-ended, however as a result of he thought that was “good closure” for the story.

“Season one ends with Gi-hun turning again and never getting on the airplane to the States,” he mentioned. “And that was, in truth, my means of speaking the message that you just shouldn’t be dragged alongside by the aggressive circulation of society, however that you need to begin fascinated about who has created the entire system — and whether or not there’s some potential so that you can flip again and face it. So it is not essentially Gi-hun turning again to get revenge. It may really be interpreted as him making a really on-the-spot eye contact with what is actually happening within the greater image.”

Hwang additionally mentioned that he’d wish to additional discover the story of the 2 brothers, in addition to that of the recruiter who brings Gi-hun into the sport.

“And, after all, we may go together with Gi-hun’s story as he turns again and discover extra about how he will navigate via his reckoning with the people who find themselves designing the video games,” he mentioned. “So, I do not know but, however I will simply say there are lots of potentialities on the market for season two storylines.”

He additionally mentioned that whereas he felt stress now to ship a second season, he tried to look on the brilliant facet of their expectations.

“I may really pull concepts from followers all world wide to create the following season,” he mentioned. “I believe that is what I am wrestling with proper now — that I should not simply view it as an enormous quantity of stress, however consider all of this love and help I am receiving as an enormous field of inspiration that I can leverage for season two.”