Squid Game Creator Explains Gi-hun’s Motivation For [SPOILERS] In Finale

We’re getting more insights into the final moments of the first season of Netflix’s monumentally successful show Squid Game from none other than its creator.

The South Korean survival drama has been confirmed by the streaming service as the platform’s biggest series launch of all time, garnering a staggering 111 million fans across the globe. And there’s a good reason for that.

The show is a fascinating and well-crafted allegory commenting on class inequality and capitalism. It centers around cash-strapped contestants recruited by a shadowy organization to participate in a macabre contest. The competitors participate in a series of children’s games wherein whoever stands victorious receives a life-changing sum, but those who lose in the games also lose their lives. Spoilers ahead.

Lee Jung-jae’s Gi-hun ultimately becomes the winner in the game, with his main motivation throughout the series being to accrue enough cash to see his estranged daughter in the U.S. However, at the very last second, instead of boarding the plane to go see his daughter, he turns around.

During an interview with THR, writer/director and showrunner Hwang Dong-hyuk elaborated that it’s not necessarily a move that foreshadows revenge against the organization, but more so symbolizes going against the grain of society to face the underlying system that arguably controls it.

“It’s true that season one ended in an open-ended way, but I actually thought that this could be good closure for the whole story too. season one ends with Gi-hun turning back and not getting on the plane to the States. And that was, in fact, my way of communicating the message that you should not be dragged along by the competitive flow of society, but that you should start thinking about who has created the whole system — and whether there is some potential for you to turn back and face it. So it’s not necessarily Gi-hun turning back to get revenge. It could actually be interpreted as him making a very on the spot eye contact with what is truly going on in the bigger picture. So I thought that might be a good simple, but ambiguous, way to end the story for Gi-hun,” Hwang said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

We’ll just have to see what Gi-hun decides to do, whether it’s taking down the organization or deciding to ultimately reunite with his daughter when Squid Game presumably gets renewed for a second season.