Mind-Blowing Squid Game Theory May Reveal How Players And Workers Are Chosen

Netflix’s new South Korean drama series Squid Game has set the world alight, becoming the latest surprise international hit on the streaming platform since its debut last month. In case you haven’t caught it yet, the show follows a group of people with financial difficulties who are invited to participate in a series of children’s games in order to win a huge sum of cash. But only once it’s too late do they discover the penalty for losing is not worth the risk.

Within the Squid Game world, characters are divided into workers and players – the players wear green jumpsuits and the workers are dressed in red, with their faces covered by black masks sporting either a circle, square or triangle symbol, depending on their rank. Season 1 leaves us with a big mystery, though. While we see how the players end up in The Game, we don’t find out how the workers got there.

But this new theory that’s going viral on TikTok may reveal the truth. According to this compelling theory, it’s all to do with the color tiles that participants pick at the beginning. In episode 1, protagonist Seong Gi-Hun (Lee Jung Jae) is approached by a Salesman (Gong Yoo) on a train platform and tempted into playing a game of Ddakji for a cash prize. When asked to choose between a red and blue folded paper tile, Gi-Hun chooses blue.

Now here’s the thing: all the other characters we see who become players also choose the blue tile. The theory goes, then, that those who choose blue become players while those who select the red tile are destined to become workers. If you take a look at the comments in the original TikTok video, you can see how much this theory is blowing fans’ minds because it’s so highly plausible. So plausible, in fact, that it feels like this might be something creator Hwang Dong-hyuk could confirm as fact in season 2.

The nine-episode first season of Squid Game can be streamed on Netflix now.