SPOILER ALERT: This column contains potential spoilers about Squid Game season 1 and 2
If you’ve been online in the past three years in any capacity, you’ve probably heard of Netflix’s hit TV show “Squid Game,” which premiered in 2021. The show took the world by storm with its jarring, gruesome plot mixed with distinctive visuals, and the latest installment of the series, which premiered Dec. 26, 2024, has only further cemented it as one of the most popular TV shows of all time.
The series follows Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), a chauffeur with a large sum of debt, who is invited to participate in a deadly children's games along with 455 other players, with the hopes of winning the grand cash prize. After winning the games in season one, he returns once again in season two with the goal of shutting the games now.
The creator of the show, Hwang Dong-hyuk, based the story off his own struggles growing up in the working-class community of Seoul and witnessing the inequality within South Korea's capitalist society. He wanted “Squid Game” to represent the competition and cruelty of a modern capitalist society, presented in a simpler manner through the use of children’s games.
Some people view the show as purely anti-capitalist, and sometimes even promoting communism. While the show is trying to make a statement about the repercussions of a capitalist society, I think it goes deeper than just politics. Really, it explores capitalism by showing how humans act when faced with greed, examining the war between selfishness and selflessness. While it is an intense, gory show that often displays the worst of people, the true point of the show, and something that is woven throughout it, is the idea of hope.
Hope is most obviously felt alongside greed, as shown through the players’ blind hope of getting through each game to accumulate a larger cash prize. This is further exemplified in season two with the introduction of the voting system used after each game to determine if the players will continue playing the games or return home with the money gained at that point. Despite the difficulty and gruesomeness of the games, the majority of players voted to continue playing the games twice, all those voting in favor with the reasoning that they would play “just one more game” and leave with even more cash. However, this greed-fueled hope would often not work in the favor of the players, as many people, even those certain they could easily survive one more game, would die.
Having hope in humanity, however, is the more poignant exploration of hope. The people who created and ran the games in the show believed that when faced with greed, people will turn into monsters. The show itself challenges this idea with the use of Seong Gi-hun’s character, who essentially becomes the embodiment of hope.
While he is flawed, Gi-hun is one of the only characters in the show that consistently makes selfless choices. In the first episode of the first season, any time he is given money, he immediately shares it with people (and even cats) who need it, even if he has a large debt himself. Then, at the end of the first games, Gi-hun spends his prize helping the families of his opponents who died in order for him to win. Rather than giving in to greed, taking the money, and starting over with a new life, he willingly goes back to the games to take down the higher-ups so more people won’t have to suffer and die out of greed.
He continues this hope in season two when he goes out of his way to help the people competing with his past knowledge of the games, even when players don’t want to listen to him, or his courage puts himself in more danger. The Front Man, who is the supervisor of the competition, even enters the games in season two, which I believe was his way of challenging and observing Gi-hun. He wanted to confirm there is no hope in humanity, and yet at every turn Gi-hun proved him wrong by acting selflessly.
This is the true heart, and genius, of this series. Really, “Squid Game” is not about the games, or the violence, or the masked guards in pink suits walking around childish scenery. You could take all that away and at its core, it’s an exploration of humanity. That is the real reason why so many people resonate with and respect the show. That is what makes the show distinctive and special.
While the show is gruesome and dark, its true intention is to restore hope in humanity by showing the worst, but also the best of it. This is the true genius Hwang Dong-hyuk instills within “Squid Game.”