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This article contains spoilers for Squid Game seasons 1 and 2.
Squid Game does a phenomenal job of getting us to care for a number of contestants. Series creator Hwang Dong-hyuk has now crafted two groups of compelling characters, many with their own unique motivations for entering the games. With so many desperate people vying after an increasingly large amount of money, betrayals are bound to happen – in fact, it’s something that those in charge of the games seem to count on.
But because we’re asked, as the audience, to empathize with so many of the players, these betrayals can often hit pretty hard, even if we could see them coming a mile away. Here are some of the most heartbreaking betrayals we’ve seen in Squid Game thus far.
Player 218 Cho Sang-woo and Player 199 Ali Abdul
Arguably the biggest and most memorable betrayal from season 1, this heartbreaking moment takes place during the marbles game. In the fourth game of the season, players are told to partner up before it’s revealed that they will be playing against their partner. The players have the freedom to play any marble game they choose, as long as one player collects all of their opponent’s marbles within 30 minutes, winning the game and surviving. Cho Sang-woo (Park Hae-soo) asks Ali Abdul (Anupam Tripathi) to be his partner before they hear the rules (also leaving Gi-hun hanging in the process), thinking it will give him an advantage in the challenge ahead. Which ends up being true, just not in the way we think.
Sang-woo uses Ali’s trust in him to his advantage. After losing to Ali fair and square, Sang-woo convinces him that there will be another round of the game, and that they have to split up to see how the other teams are doing to see who they could be up against. Sang-woo offers to make Ali a safer pouch to hold his marbles, and Ali trusts him, handing over his pouch. It isn’t until the game is over that we realize that Sang-woo switched out Ali’s marbles for rocks, approaching one of the masked guards and claiming the victory for himself. Ali calls out for Sang-woo, looking for his friend as the game comes to a close.
Player 218 Cho Sang-woo and Player 067 Kang Sae-byeok
This season 1 betrayal isn’t quite as surprising given Sang-woo’s manipulation of Ali, but that doesn’t make it any less heartbreaking. Right before the final game, Sang-woo, Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), and Kang Sae-byeok (Jung Ho-yeon) are given a fancy steak dinner by their wealthy overlords (and of course allowed to take their steak knives with them). Kang Sae-byeok is doing her best to hide a stab wound inflicted by the explosion of the glass bridge in the previous game, but that doesn’t stop Sang-woo from killing her in the players’ quarters anyway to get rid of his competition before the final game.
Player 456 Seong Gi-hun and Player 001 Oh Il-nam
Seong Gi-hun and Oh Il-nam become unlikely allies throughout season 1’s games. They do their best to help each other survive up until the fourth game. Like Sang-woo and Ali, Gi-hun and Il-nam end up as partners, testing the limits of their friendship. Il-nam appears to struggle greatly with his dementia in this challenge, leaving Gi-hun to decide whether or not to use that to his advantage to win the game. In the end, he does, somewhat, and Il-nam is aware enough to know that he did. But still, he refers to the two of them as gganbu, trusted friends, and seems to accept his death graciously. This is where the real betrayal comes in.
In the season finale, Gi-hun receives a mysterious invitation from Il-nam a year after winning the games. It turns out that not only did his former friend not get killed in the games like he thought, but he’s also the one who created the games in the first place. Sure Il-nam actually does die a few moments later, but that doesn’t make this betrayal hurt any less, for us or Gi-hun.
Hwang Jun-ho and Hwang In-ho
Hwang Jun-ho’s (Wi Ha-joon) search for his missing brother is one of the best subplots in season 1. Through Jun-ho’s search, we get to learn more about how the games work behind the scenes, the rich scumbags who find enjoyment in them, and the identity of The Front Man – a mysterious masked figure pulling the strings. After Jun-ho tries to escape the island and finds himself cornered, The Front Man takes off his mask and reveals himself to be Jun-ho’s missing brother Hwang In-ho (Lee Byung-hun). In-ho was a contestant in one of the previous games and won. After his victory, he was offered the job as The Front Man. In-ho tries to recruit his brother, but when Jun-ho refuses, he shoots him in the shoulder, sending him tumbling off the side of a cliff into the waters below. It’s a heartbreaking moment that shows us just how cold and calculating In-ho can be.
Player 456 Seong Gi-hun and Player 001 Oh Young-il a.k.a. The Front Man
Speaking of Hwang In-ho, his betrayal of Gi-hun and the others really shouldn’t have been a surprise. From the moment we saw him step out in the 001 player uniform under the identity of Oh Young-il, it was never really a matter of if he would betray Gi-hun, but rather when. But even though we saw this betrayal at the end of season 2 coming a mile away, that doesn’t make it hurt any less.
There are some moments where it really seems like Gi-hun has gotten through to In-ho, that maybe, just maybe, he really will help the other players overthrow the games. In the end, however, that’s not the case. Gi-hun and Jung-bae (Lee Seo-hwan) nearly make it to the control room before getting pinned down by gunfire. Young-il and a couple other players follow soon after, with Young-il claiming to offer them support by going around to the back of the gunman. But instead of shooting them down, he shoots the other players, fakes his death, does a quick costume change, and comes back around to Gi-hun and Jung-bae as The Front Man. Gi-hun may not yet know it’s his friend, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still feel the sting of this betrayal, especially as The Front Man shoots Jung-bae point-blank to punish Gi-hun.
Sure, Gi-hun probably should have been a little wary after the last time he trusted a player with the 001 number, but it’s hard to fault him for wanting to see the best in people.
Captain Park
One of the more surprising betrayals of season 2 is Captain Park (Oh Dal-su), the sea captain that Jun-ho hires and befriends in his quest to find the island the games are held on again. In the season finale, one of the men hired by Gi-hun and Jun-ho to aid in the search discovers that Captain Park is sabotaging one of the drones they’ve been using to search. Captain Park uses the storm as a cover to throw him overboard in an attempt to cover his tracks. Even though no one else is aware of Captain Park’s betrayal thus far, it still hurts to know that even this old fisherman is likely on The Front Man’s payroll.
Player 125 Park Min-su and Player 380 Se-mi
While we don’t get to learn much about Park Min-su (Lee David) and Se-mi (Won Ji-an), as two of this game’s youngest players, it’s heartbreaking to watch their potential friendship crumble under the weight of peer pressure. Min-su and Se-mi start the games by forming an alliance, and are soon recruited to be in Thanos’ (T.O.P.) squad. We soon learn, however, that Thanos really only cares about himself, and is willing to leave anyone to die at a moment’s notice.
During the “Mingle” game, Se-mi asks Min-su to come with her and holds out her hand, but Min-su chooses Thanos instead, leaving her to find her own group of three. She survives the game this time, but later on when the O’s start fighting and killing the X’s to stay in the game, she’s killed by Nam-gyu (Roh Jae-won). Min-su tries to intervene by throwing a glass bottle at Nam-gyu, but it misses, and is too little, too late to save her or their friendship.
The post Squid Game: The Most Heartbreaking Betrayals appeared first on Den of Geek.
