credit: Squid Game
Squid Game, in the basic sense, was about a series of Korean childhood games presented with a deadly spin. Imagine your regular hopscotch, but instead of you landing on the ground with nothing to worry about, you would randomly fall to your death if you were not careful. With that, it did not come as a surprise that there were a lot of deaths in the series’ last eight episodes, where most games took place.
While most of the deaths in the series occurred before episode 6, perhaps it is in this episode that the viewers found the second most soul-crushing deaths in all of the show (only beaten by those in the last episode, but we are not there yet). Below, we will recall the most emotionally painful deaths of episode 6 and probably the most depressing deaths yet so far.
Synopsis
Before the game began, the players were tasked to find a partner. The players all thought that they would be playing with their partner, so they picked someone close to them and whom they could trust that would bring them closer to victory. However, things went downhill for the players when it was announced that they would play against their partner.
credit: Squid Game
Ji-yeong
Sae-byeok teamed up with Ji-yeong (Player 240), a girl she had grown close with since the events after the tug of war. They did not want to play the game. Instead, they just talked with each other. Sae-byeok revealed her past to Ji-yeong, which was unexpected in her character. She told her partner that she lost her parents while escaping North Korea and that only she and her brother survived. Ji-yeong asked Sae-byeok what she would do with the money if she won, Sae-byeok responded that she would take his brother out of the orphanage and start a new life with him.
They just decided to bet all their marbles in one game to end it quickly. They were to throw a marble into the ground, and the winner would be the one who threw the farthest. Sae-byeok went first and did quite well. When it was Ji-yeong’s turn, she just dropped her marble lazily, allowing Sae-byeok to win because, according to her, she realized that her partner had reasons to get out of the place alive, while she did not.
credit: Squid Game
Ali
While some people broke trusts and promises, Sang-woo was on another level because betrayal in their situation would equate to death.
Ali did not know much about Korean culture and some marble games as a foreigner, so he entrusted Sang-woo to teach him. He did so, and in the end, the moment that the viewers would find unnerving was when Sang-woo used Ali’s naiveness to unfairly win the game.
Ali being a faithful partner to a disgusting Sang-woo would make most of the audience agree that the character combination made Ali’s death the most hurtful in all of the series.
The old man
Gi-hun partnered with Player 001 because he thought the player with no partner would die. He did this despite knowing it was highly disadvantageous to have an old man as a partner in such survival games.
After knowing how the game would be played, Gi-hun struggled with keeping the old man focused. Multiple times, he acted out of his mind and went to look for houses in the game’s set-up. When they finally got into playing, Gi-hun took advantage of the old man’s failing memory to turn the game’s tide in his favor. This was the protagonist’s first unethical action just to advance a step closer to the prize money.
The old man confessed that he pretended to be forgetful and that he knew what Gi-hun was doing. He realized his mistake and began crying. Now, the old man, being the honest man he was, gave his last marble to Gi-hun, said his goodbyes, thanked him for playing with him, and said that he would be his gganbu forever. The episode ended with a gunshot and an announcement that Il-nam (the old man) was eliminated, making Gi-hun the promoter of his death due to his dishonesty. If it weren’t for him taking advantage of the old man’s memory, Il-nam wouldn’t have surrendered and left as Gi-hun lost in the first place.
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