Squid Game: Why The Old Man Lets Gi-hun Win At Marbles

Squid Game’s fourth round involves a game of marbles, in which the old man Oh Il-nam allows Gi-hun to win – but why did this happen? Shortly after it was released on Netflix, Squid Game rose to become the most popular show on the streaming service, as well as one of the most discussed series on the web. This is not just because of the show’s stellar performances but also because the ending leaves certain mysteries unsolved, including why the marble game ended the way it did.

After Gi-hun and Il-nam roam around the fake residential neighborhood where the marble game happens, which Il-nam says looks like his own former neighborhood, Il-nam at first dominates Gi-hun at marbles. He then allows Gi-hun to take the lead. After Gi-hun wins, old man Il-nam is executed off-camera. Il-nam’s death is later revealed to be fake when he reappears to Gi-hun and admits that he is the founder of Squid Game, and that he joined the games for fun. Squid Game’s climactic old man twist puts into focus why Il-nam, despite having all the advantage during the marble game, allows Gi-hun to win.

The most straightforward explanation is that it would have been dangerous for Il-nam to progress to the bridge game. The fifth game involves crossing a long bridge by jumping on succeeding glass platforms, which may or may not shatter when the players land on them. In the end of the bridge game, only Gi-hun, Cho Sang-woo, and Kang Sae-byeok survive. Even the random player, who could actually tell whether or not the platforms are tempered glass, died by falling off the bridge. This means that the game is too dangerous for the Squid Game founder, so he couldn’t be allowed to make it to the bridge in Squid Game episode 7. Moreover, as Il-nam explained that he only joined the games for fun, there was more than enough action in the first four games to satisfy the billionaire founder. Even if Il-nam still wanted to continue competing, it wouldn’t have been good for business if the founder died in Squid Game live and in front of the VIPs.

Apart from these obvious reasons, there’s also the possibility that Il-nam wanted Gi-hun to go on and win Squid Game. Throughout the death games, Il-nam and Gi-hun had a very close relationship, and Il-nam even calls Gi-hun his gganbu. All of these clues and more point to the possibility that old man Il-nam is actually Gi-hun’s dad, which is why Il-nam prevented Gi-hun from being eliminated by letting him take all the marbles. This also infers that the Squid Game founder wants Gi-hun to inherit his role in the organization after his death, as it is the only way Il-nam knows how to give back to the son that he abandoned.

Squid Game episode 6 is actually rife with other clues that support this theory, such as how both Gi-hun and Il-nam sport the same player number when Gi-hun wears Il-nam’s jacket, and how the two recognize the neighborhood to be the same one that they used to live in. Indeed, Squid Game’s marble round, in the episode titled “Gganbu,” is one of the series most compelling death games. Its conclusion sets up some of the different possibilities for Squid Game season 2.

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