"Squid Game" Has the World in A Craze. Find Out Why
Squid Game’s main character Seong Gi-Hun played by Lee Jung-jae. (Courtesy of Netflix)
It hasn’t even been a month yet since the release of “Squid Game”, which was created and written by Hwang Dong-hyuk, and it’s already becoming Netflix’s most watched show. According to Vulture, Netflix’s Co-CEO Ted Sarandos is expecting Squid Game to surpass Bridgerton and The Witcher as the most sampled original series to launch on the Netflix platform.
The Korean TV series gives us a different twist on how we view debt and what we’re willing to do to get ourselves out of it. At the basis, Squid Game is a 9-part series about individuals, including the main character Seong Gi-Hun played by Lee Jung-jae, that play childhood games for a chance to win themselves out of debt, but it’s more to the story – elimination from a game means death.
The contestants put their lives on the line for a chance at millions of dollars.
According to Variety, Dong-hyuk originally created this show as a feature film back in 2008. He was denied for many years before landing the deal with Netflix.
“I wanted to write a story that was an allegory or fable about modern capitalist society, something that depicts an extreme competition, somewhat like the extreme competition of life. But I wanted it to use the kind of characters we’ve all met in real life,” Dong-hyuk said to Variety.
It was an extreme competition indeed. The very first game was “Red Light Green Light”. The rules were pretty simple. Run on green and stop on red, but if you get caught then it’s game over for forever. Just from the first competition, over half of the players were eliminated leaving around 200 people to complete the games.
Now, here’s where it’s even more crazy. According to clause number three in the game, if majority of the players want out, then the competition comes to an end, and everyone can go home. Well, this is exactly what happened, but everyone who left was given a chance to play again. Majority of those players came back.
Occurrences like this one had the audience thinking if they would’ve returned to play or just dealt with the life and debt they created for themselves.
As more and more people fall in love with the series, the cast of Squid Games is feeling the love as well. One of the main characters HoYeon Jung who played Kang Sae-Byeok following went from 400,000 to over 19 million followers in less than a month.
And just like any viral thing, Squid Game challenges have been made. From cutting a shape out of candy to the hilarious memes. Also, sales for track suits, white vans and other items seen throughout the series have dramatically increased. Everyone wants to be a part of Squid Game in some form.
There are also a lot of unanswered questions such as why Seong wants to do everything but be a good father to his daughter? Or why did Kang have to die? Or even why did all of the players decide to come back? Maybe some of these questions will be answered in a potential season 2.
Watch Squid Game here.