As well as being a brilliantly tense show that's managed to break records and set trends, Squid Game is also packed full of twists.
We get sucked in with the life-or-death games and the creepy pastel colours, and then bam — something happens completely out of the blue that pulls the rug right out from under us.
The biggest of these, of course, is the revelation in the show's final episode (spoiler alert) that the cuddly, sweet old man Gi-hun tricks out of his marbles in episode 6 isn't actually so cuddly and sweet after all — he is, in fact, a) very much still alive, and b) the mastermind of the entire game.
Unexpected? Absolutely. But if we comb back through the series, there are a few sneaky clues in there that foreshadow Il-nam's real identity.
From the first time we meet him to the way he conducts himself in the games, here they are...
1. Il-nam's contestant number.
It seems obvious in hindsight, doesn't it? Of course Il-nam is player number one in the game — the "first to get here," as Gi-hun says with surprise — because he's the one who masterminded the whole thing. Rather than just being a throwaway moment, this is our first hint at just how important his character will become later in the show.
2. Il-nam's reaction to the first game.
During the first game, Red Light, Green Light, Il-nam is the first contestant to start moving again after a wave of gunfire has mown down a huge chunk of his competitors. While the rest of the players look either stunned, terrified, or both, he's seen cheerfully jogging through the pack with a huge grin on his face. At the time, I put this down to him experiencing a new lease of life. I thought that his smile was the face of a terminally ill man experiencing what it was like to be a child again.
Obviously even in hindsight you could argue that that's still the case, but isn't it a little strange that he's not even slightly perturbed by the number of people who've just been shot to death around him?
The real reason, of course, is that he isn't perturbed — he already knows exactly what's going to happen.
3. Il-nam stopping the fight.
This might be the biggest clue of the entire show. In episode 4, after a huge fight breaks out among the players and people are murdering each other all over the place, Il-nam stands on the top of a stack of bunk beds and yells for everyone to stop. "I'm so scared," he yells, as the camera cuts to the man in the black mask, watching him on a TV monitor. "Stop it!"
And sure enough, the second he's shouted for the fight to stop, the man in the black mask turns and gives the order to "end the game".
4. Il-nam helping them win the tug-of-war.
Going into the tug-of-war game in episode 4, it looks like our main characters are done for. Their team isn't as strong as the team they're competing against, and it doesn't seem possible that they'll have any chance whatsoever of winning.
Until Il-nam comes to the rescue, that is. As they travel up to the platform in the elevator he suddenly tells them not to lose hope before reeling off some pro-level tactics that he just so happens to know because he apparently played a lot of tug-of-war in his youth.
OK, sure.
5. Player 001 doesn't have a file.
Along with Il-nam stopping the fight, this is probably our other best clue to his true identity.
In episode 5, after breaking into the masked leader's offices, detective Jun-ho finds records of all the previous Squid Games in binders in a basement room. He locates the file for 2020, opens it up, and sees the record for player 002 staring back at him. There is no record for player 001, of course, because that's Il-nam — and as we later find out, he isn't a real player.
6. The fact we don't see the Il-nam die.
If you're anything like me you were probably too distracted by tears at the end of episode 6 to notice, but after Gi-hun says goodbye to Il-nam and walks out of the arena, we don't actually see the old man getting shot. We see the red hoodie hold a gun to his head, and we hear the gunshot, but we never see the body.
7. Our first glimpse of the man in the mask.
It's only brief, but we catch our first sight of Squid Game's mastermind — the man that the figure in the black mask reports to — during episode 7. His identity is concealed behind a glittering animal mask, but if you look closely in the shot above you can see a hint of Il-nam's grey hair peaking out beneath the gold.
Later, in the shot where he takes the mask off, we also get a look at his hand — and you can clearly tell from his wrinkles that he's an older man.
When you combine those shots with the fact our first glimpse of him comes directly after the episode where Il-nam has "died', things start to make more sense.
And when you add all the clues on this list together, it begins to feel like the answer might have been right under our noses all along.
Squid Game is available to stream now on Netflix.
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