From Home to Honeycomb: Squid Game

Ben Wang, Student Life Editor

Imagine a world where your GPA was dependent on your performance on the FitnessGram Pacer Test. Now take that, but add weapons, betrayal, and a 45.6 billion won ($39 million dollars) and you get Squid Game, Netflix’s new battle royale-esque show that has
become its most popular series ever.

Main protagonist Seong Gi-Hun is a gambling addict brutally in debt to shady loaners who struggles to take care of his mother and daughter. Cho Sang Woo is a businessman who lost all he had in the stock market. Kang Sae-byeok is a defector from North Korea seeking
to save her orphaned brother. They all have one thing in common: they all owe massive amounts of money to the bank and more nefarious organizations. Almost like an
answer to their prayers, Gi-Hun, Sang-Woo, Sae-byeok, along with 453 others are invited to participate in the Squid Game, and given a chance to change their lives.

Starting off with character backstories common to most K-dramas, the show quickly shifts its pace in the second half of the first episode, “Red Light Green Light”. Contestants quickly realize that, though they are playing harmless children’s games, losers face dire consequences. As the game progresses, characters gradually reveal their true natures. To make things more sinister, their game proctors, silent masked soldiers in red uniforms, seem to pay no attention to their
suffering.

As the game goes on, alliances are made and broken, strength and cunning are pitted together, and viewers’ emotions are manipulated back and forth like a tug of war. Players are forced to choose what’s important to them: their sanity, or the grand prize. Behind the scenes,
the Squid Game’s inner workings slowly unravel to the audience as subplots rage on, trying to answer all of their lingering questions: Who is the Front Man? Why are they doing this? How on earth does that guy’s phone have so much battery? Not all of these questions are answered, as the world waits in anticipation for season two already in the making.

Squid Game is a beautifully woven masterpiece combining gruesome scenes with an unsettling
musical score. Hidden in its layers are multiple battles regarding the fine line between good and evil fairness and wealth inequality, kindness and greed. The acting is top notch. The soundtrack is eerily captivating. And the character development is one of the most
driving forces you’ll ever experience. I highly recommend that you binge this in nine hours if you can, because this show is all you’ll be thinking about for weeks.