We learn in the last episode of Squid Game that Oh Il-nam created the games along with his rich clients. And we also learn that the reason they created the games was primarily because nothing satisfied them anymore. They had more money than they could ever want. They wanted to experience some excitement in their lives again. And Squid Game, in all of its gore and human suffering, offered them that.
The reasoning behind this seem trite. Almost ridiculous that someone could be suffering from boredom to such a degree he has to resort to pitting human beings against one another in fight-to-the-death battles. But it is exactly this simplicity that the writers want to highlight in what separates the rich and the powerful from normal, every day individuals.
It’s your right. You’ve earned it through hard work and luck.
When Gi-Hun confronts the old man in the last episode, Oh Il-nam asks him why he hasn’t touched his bank account. Why has he not enjoyed his prize for winning the Squid Game.
The old man assumes, correctly, that Gi-Hun was riddled with guilt. Gi-Hun, shocked, asks the old man why he himself isn’t feeling any guilt.
The old man reassures Gi-Hun that he has earned it. That it was through his sheer hard work and luck he has survived and won the games. And because of that, it was his and he should not feel guilty to spend it in whatever way that makes him happy.
This dialogue reveals the very basis to which the rich justify their wealth. Through hard work and luck, they have achieved their success. As a result, they deserve to be happy… even if it meant a lot of people died or got hurt on the way.
It’s a sobering through, but it’s one that reflects our real world realities.
You see, if one were to overly focus on the number of people who had gotten injured or died, it’d be practically impossible to be comfortable to feel good about it all.
Along with these thoughts, we also recognize another attitude the old man has toward the poor…
They deserve what they got
In agreeing to play the Squid Game, Oh Il-nam emphasizes that nobody was forced to play. It was purely their decision to do so and to sign their lives away in a bloody, brutal fight to the last person standing.
And because of this reason, the players who lost (their lives) knowingly put themselves at risk and got what was coming to them.
To a large degree, the old man is technically correct. The players who signed up and returned to the games wanted to play. They did put themselves into desperate situations in the real world, resulting in their wanting to play the games with the hope to win the money.
I’d argue, however, that the choice is bore less out of free will, but rather because there was no other choice.
In other words, these players were desperate and targeted, the former a situation created by our financial systems and the latter taken advantage of by the old man and the VIPs. So while technically the players had played, arguably, a large role in their own demise, the system was designed to trap them into these precarious circumstances in the first place.
We see this reflected in our lives today through things like bank penalties, compounding interest on debt, exorbitant fines, and regular folks being unable to navigate and defend themselves due to a lack of legal and financial resources.
The game (and I’m talking about the real world here) has always been stacked against most people from the moment they are born. In Squid Game, the old man explains he wanted to create an environment where people could play the games as equals, but even that is a lie. We learn that he himself, as Player 001, was never in any real danger as he controlled every thing and could stop the brutality at any time — if he wanted to.
Everyone was there to play with him
The point of Squid Game, at least from the perspective of the old man, was for every one there to play with him.
Think about what it means to be called Player 001.
In video games, the first player is the primary player. Like on a children’s playground, he’s the one in charge. He calls the shots, decides the rules, and, sometimes, determines the winner.
We see this in Squid Game when Hwang Jun-ho, the police officer who snuck onto the Squid Game island, finds finds a binder with the names of all the players from previous years. When he opened the binder, we see the first player as Player 002, not Player 001.
I suspect that the old man has regularly been a player in previous games. He might not been a player when he first created the games, but certainly he was one in later years. This is why when we see the old man plays, he’s smiling with so much excitement.
Is the old man evil for creating Squid Game?
With the reveal of the old man’s reason for creating Squid Game, we immediately recognize the inherent evil of the whole idea. I mean, to subject people to a series of fatal children’s games is insane, right?
The old man believes that human beings are unkind, that life in itself is cruel. He makes a bet with Gi Hun right before he dies, wagering that no one will help the homeless man outside before midnight.
With this context, it’s easy to see that the old man is someone who does not consider evil as a thing with which to worry himself. The killing of players was simply something that happened.
He is so far removed from standard morality that by any measure, one can say that he’s either insane or is not human.
And I think that’s the point the writers are trying to make. In creating these games, the rich and the powerful are so disconnected with the rest of humanity that they no longer recognize evil. Yes, in the standard morality sense, they are evil. But this is no longer something they themselves understand.
Can money really make someone act like the old man?
It seems almost preposterous that money can make someone behave like the old man, but it’s common for those in wealthy and powerful positions to think of themselves as above the law.
I don’t think the old man represents the extreme case. In fact, his actions is meant to bring a broader awareness of how having so much relative to fellow human beings results in being disconnected to what’s right and wrong.
In this sense, the writers are also saying that being so powerful and wealthy also makes one desperate, like the players, but in a different way. While the players are so desperate that they would even participate in a contest where they could die, the powerful and wealthy are so desperate for some sense of excitement and joy that they would resort to even killing people.
Credits: Images are from Squid Game (Youngkyu Park / Netflix) 2021
