This Squid Game Fan Theory Says This Character Is A Former Contest Winner

Netflix’s Squid Game left us with a thrilling and emotional first season with a lot of unanswered questions that will sure to be addressed when an eventual subsequent season comes to the streaming platform, which is likely to happen given the global phenomenon of its premiere season and the fact that its creator has already been talking about what may be in store for a follow-up.

Fans are now nibbling at the edges of every minute detail and side characters of the franchise, giving their best guess as to the origins or backstory of seemingly innocuous elements.

The hit Korean Netflix show centers around financially distressed people recruited into a shadowy organization in a macabre contest. And that recruiter is none other than the subject of the latest fan theory.

Warning: spoilers ahead

Train To Busan‘s Gong Yoo plays The Salesman in Squid Game, who entices our protagonist Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) into a friendly game of Ddjakji, a children’s game involving folded paper tiles similar to the American game of Pogs. If Gi-hun loses, he gets a slap in the face, but if he wins he gets 100,000 won (Korean currency). After Gi-hun endures countless slaps in the face, he finally wins the money and is recruited to the larger contest where similarly childish games are played, but for life-or-death stakes and a much larger cash prize.

Eventually, Gi-hun becomes the champion of the entire 456 person contest, winning $38 million, but at the last second of the show turns around from boarding a plane to see his child in America and decides to go back to the contest, presumably to take down the entire organization.

Now Reddit user Movie_Advance_101 has a fascinating explanation for The Salesman’s back story, offering in the Fan Theories subreddit that he is himself a former Squid Game champion, similar to mysterious puppeteer The Front Man, whose existence became meaningless after he won. Check it out:

It certainly doesn’t seem like a stretch at all that most if not all the employees in the secretive organization are themselves former contestants or somehow otherwise connected to it

Can you tell us some of your favorite Squid Game theories?