‘Hell’ Is The Least Flashy, But Most Important Episode Of ‘Squid Game’

Squid Game, now ranked number one on Netflix in 90 countries, already has a multitude of articles delving deep into the show’s smart and thrilling writing, hyper-violent appeal, and bleak statements about inequality.

— Warning: Major Spoilers ahead for Squid Game — 

A lot of the commentary has focused on that twist in Squid Game’s final episode, which is absolutely deserved — but what fascinates me from a narrative perspective is a much more subtle twist that happened right at the beginning of the season.

Episode 2 of Squid Game features a brilliant storytelling move which I believe is responsible for elevating the show from the superficialities of its premise (hyper-violent children’s games for adults who will absolutely get shot by guns) to a brilliant and elegantly told analogy of capitalism and socio-economic injustice.

Episode 2: ‘Hell’

According to the third clause of the Squid Game’s agreement, if the majority of players agree to end the games, all players will be sent home, alive but without any money. After watching more than half of their peers get murdered by sniper rifles during a game of ‘Red Light, Green Light’, the remaining players vote for this, and get ejected unceremoniously back out into the real world, beginning episode two, titled ‘Hell’.

After the set-up and climax of the first episode, it might be expected that Episode 2 would capitalise on the gory spectacle of it all, following up with a bigger and more awful murder game. After all, episode one did its due diligence with setting up motivations for the characters to join the Squid Game. We understand that the players are desperate and in debt, their backstories ranging from the villainous to the pitiful. But instead of capitalising on the momentum of the show’s violent premise, the characters and the audience are forced to settle uncomfortably back in the real world, confronted with the grim reality of the situation that led them towards Squid Game in the first place.

These stories include our protagonist Gi-hun finding his situation has worsened, with his mum desperately needing money to treat her advanced diabetes. Sang-woo is about to be arrested for financial fraud, Sae-byeok needs to get her mother out of North Korea and her brother out of an orphanage, and Ali fears the consequences of attacking his employer who was withholding wages from him in a migrant sweatshop situation.

We are introduced to the families and loved ones of each of these characters, exploring for the first time how their plights affect the people they care for — it’s a deeply upsetting episode, in many ways as grim as the game they have fled from. And it does this on purpose — the Squid Game is violent and brutal, but at least it’s upfront about it. The outside world is no fairer, and for most of these players, devoid of the hope of salvation (a huge pile of money) that the game provides. The world the characters live in is depicted as brutal and rigged and unfair — for a variety of reasons, but mostly due to socio-economic inequality.

As old man Oh Il Nam says: “Out there, the torture is worse.”

The Moral of Squid Game Is “Be Yourself”

Letting the players leave the game and re-experience their desperate lives is a great way to promote character growth — and shows that Squid Game is committed to the drama of a proper narrative arc.

It’s not so much that the characters are redeemed by their backstories, made into heroes, or even just made more likeable — it’s that they become humanised. It deepens our investment in them and their success. It’s a great storytelling device, or when you think about what happens to basically every single character, a brutally compelling emotional ordeal to put the audience through.

But where it becomes brilliant, becomes a twist in its own right, is that each of those characters leaves the Squid Game, and then decide to re-enter of their own free will, eyes wide open to the terrible reality of everything it entails.

If ‘Hell’ was removed from the show, Squid Game would have been a story about a bunch of desperate people who were hoodwinked into joining a terrible game and forced to survive. It would have set them firmly as a group against the evil game, washed clear of nuance and grey areas. Their decision to join the game could be explained instead as a lapse of judgement.

Having them choose to re-enter the horrible Squid Game, to gamble their lives and wellbeing again on such a slim chance, re-affirms the hopelessness of their lives, and bleeds the moral certainty away from the situation, as well as giving certain agency to the players. They re-enter the game not as victims of the Squid Game, but genuinely as players. That fundamentally changes the way we view these characters.

There Is No Ethical Consumption Of Squid Games Under Capitalism

It should be pretty obvious that Squid Game itself lends itself pretty handily as a metaphor for capitalism, for the inequalities and dangers of the model, and for class struggles. South Korea is currently groaning under the strain of several different types of socio-economic pressures that make narratives like this, and films like Parasite, easy to identify as explorations of consumerism and class struggle.

Suspending a golden pig full of cash above a bunch of people and forcing them to play blood sports to achieve it should be a self-explanatory analogy. The pastel labyrinth that the squid game takes place in and the hierarchy of soldier, worker, and manager should be pretty recognisable for anyone who has worked in a corporation before. The chipper voiceover which both enforces civility politics and speaks on the behalf of the company, claiming the best intentions for the workers as a whole while simultaneously announcing the rules for the next bloodbath, can’t help but be recognisable to anyone who has dealt with a HR department before. I’m not saying the show is making any new points, or claiming to solve capitalism, but it does set up a potent metaphor that helps bind and extend the story being told.

Simply living in a capitalist society forces the inequality it relies upon to endure, as much as we might fight against it.

But one of the most profound points that the show makes about inequality and late-stage capitalism is set up in ‘Hell’ — that of the illusion of choice within the capitalist structure. By giving the players the “option” of leaving the game — and letting them do so, only to make the decision to then return — brutally mimics the lack of choice we are presented with in everyday life.

We all know that our capitalist society is unfair, reliant on exploitation of class structures and the perpetuation of poverty, propping up the lucky few in a diminishing pyramid before reaching an elite minority — we all know that. Like in the Squid Game, opting out of this unfair system is theoretically possible — but in the end, it’s an impossibility, and we each “make the decision” to continue our part in the rigged game in one way or another. Simply living in a capitalist society forces the inequality it relies upon to endure, as much as we might fight against it.

“Every person here is living on the brink of financial ruin…Will you go back to your old depressing lives, getting chased by your creditors? Or will you act and seize this last opportunity we’re offering here?” says the Frontman of the Squid Game.

‘Hell’ creates an analogy, a microcosm of that trap; the consequences of trying to leave the rigged system, and the reasons we return. It turns Squid Game into a broad, extremely entertaining, ultra-violent commentary on the immorality of late capitalism.

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Patrick Lenton is a journalist, author, and former editor of Junkee. His new book Sexy Tales of Paleontology is out now. He tweets @patricklenton.