The real-life Squid game has finished, and the four-and-a-half million dollar prize was decided on a game of rock, paper, and scissors. So yeah, four and a half million after cutting down 454 other players comes down to rock, paper, scissors.
Now, in my honest opinion, Squid Game The Challenge was some wildly up-and-down viewing. When they actually did the challenges from the original show, things were tense, not to mention how they edited it to make it even more wildly dramatic.
Here is Squid Game The Challenge Ending Explained:
Squid Game The Challenge Show Explained
Squid Game The Challenge introduced something called tests, a new addition to the game that provided players an opportunity to gain advantages or disadvantages, and for the most part, I hated these tests they sucked. Because no one actually got advantages or disadvantages for the challenges.
It just ended up being the power to send players home, and far too many people were eliminated for a reason completely out of their control.
I mean, you could work your ass off surviving red light green light, which apparently was done in this giant frigid Air Force Base, and they would stop you for sometimes up to 30 minutes or more while they get the drones out to get shots of people. And if you moved, even when the timer was paused, you were still out.
However, you could survive all of that, and then the next moment be gone because someone pointed a finger at you. For example, this lady decides that she doesn’t like Grandpa over here. Y’all, Grandpa Rick was precious, and it was kind of secretly hoping he was like the player one of this game.
Anyways, fair enough, he was still in a clique of all dudes called the Gangbo Gang, which to her was a threat. So when this test comes where they have to pick a jack-in-the-box where each one can give you either an advantage or eliminate you randomly, 229 over here gets the wonderful surprise of getting to eliminate multiple people, whoever she wants.
So she drops Grandpa and his BFF, plus also the guy who Jack in the boxed an advantage in the next round, which to me sucked.
The Advantages And Disadvantages
First off, I wanted to see what these advantages or disadvantages and challenges actually were, but we never got to. And the advantages or disadvantages of being an added concept to the competition are great. But losing control over your own game is not fun and not fun to watch.
I mean, I get it. It’s supposed to add a bigger social element to the game. It also kind of simulates the night fight part of the show and the risk of players offing each other outside the games. But this show didn’t need additional social elements?
The Gift Game
It’s already there, like the gift game near the end, a new game that had players try to guess who secretly laid a gift on their table.
The gift, of course, is a one-way ticket home where number 451 does his best phoenix right imitation as he’s able to sell us out not once but twice the person who secretly planted the gift in front of him.
If he’s wrong, he goes home. If he’s right, the other person does. But this was such a social game because all the players factored in their relationships in their thinking. “Who is it that might believe I won’t suspect it’s them? Who might blindside me? Who doesn’t like me and wants me gone?”
The Falling Bridge
#287 and #278 don’t exactly like each other. Because when they got to the Glass Bridge game, everyone decided that the best and fairest way to play was to have each person in the turn order jump only once.
If you make a 50-50 guess, you get through, and then the person behind you in line goes ahead of you and takes their 50-50. Instead of one person having to risk making 17 jumps in a row, they all only have to do one. However, 278 decides, “Nah, I’m not jumping.”
Now, eventually, after Trey here gets eliminated, jumping not once, not twice, but three times, the balls on this dude, I swear. Well, now she has nowhere to hide and has to take her 50-50, which she does and succeeds. And I mean, hey, for four and a half million, I don’t necessarily blame her. I mean, I was furious and wanted her to get eliminated at every opportunity after that, but I don’t necessarily blame her.
The Social Game
However, in the following game, where people had to nominate someone to eliminate and then try to roll a 6 on a die to do so, the group decided the fairest way to go forward was for everyone to nominate themselves. That way, each person’s fate is in their own hands, and so they all only have to endure elimination once. However, Maya didn’t like that bridge business from Ashley, so she nominated Ashley.
Anyways, both my and I make it to the gift game, and now they both have to factor in “Will the other person try to eliminate me, or is that too obvious? Or is that the way they want me to think?”. And when 287 takes off her blindfold to see a gift placed in front of her, well, it wasn’t Ashley who put it there, but that doesn’t stop Ashley from trying to act as guilty as possible in order for me to pick her and then get eliminated.
See the social game. You don’t need the random eliminations, or if you want stuff like that, let the other players hand out disadvantages at their own peril. I don’t know stuff like forcing someone to go first in the bridge game or forcing someone else to pick the umbrella in the cookie game. Yeah, they’ll probably get eliminated, but that’s up to them now.
The Battleship And The Marble Game
Look, I’m all for change-ups. Instead of the tug-of-war game, they do battleships. It was something that really threw the strong people for a loop, as they thought they were getting an easy win that round. But in my opinion, it still kind of felt bad when people just randomly selected a boat and then sat there and got eliminated. Nothing they could do, even if their team went on to win.
I won’t lie. I had some of this social random elimination test game stuff at points; I felt like I just wanted to skip it. But then, when they reward everyone with a picnic lunch alongside someone of their choice, only to find out that there’s a bag of marbles at the bottom of their basket, and now they have to play the marble game with each other, that was Genius.
Because now you’ve got friends facing off with friends for the most part, with one having to eliminate the other, including Trey facing off with his own mom. This game was full of tension, a big high after what I felt was a really low dip of randomness.
The Dinner Game
But of course, we also have to talk about our last two games, once again, which is very random. Now, in my opinion, the less random of the two was the dinner game, where, just like the show, the final three contestants get this opulent dinner.
However, in order to get these final three down to two in this version, they must all decide to press one of these buttons, one of which will turn green and not only guarantee you a spot in the final but also give you the opportunity to choose who goes with you. Another button will turn Gray and mean nothing, and the last button will turn red and eliminate you. So, there is a bit of social strategy with this one.
As 287 here knows that #451 and #16 are buddies, she thinks they’ll likely choose each other if one gets the green button. As a result, she wants to get in there first.
However, she picks Gray, and now the new social element is that both these guys think the other will pick them to go to the finals if they get the green button. So it’s obviously better to let the other person pick because that way if they get green, they’ll take you, but if they get red, they go, and you stay without having to risk pressing the red button.
But ultimately, as #16 goes to pick, it’s just another game of chance, and when he picks red, the sentiment he felt was not far off from what I felt watching.
Squid Game The Challenge Ending Explained: The Rock Paper Scissor Game
This brings us to the apex of the whole season, the final game, Freaking Rock, paper, scissors. Something, I suppose they thought, would be another childhood game to add to the squid game theme, but without the physical element of actually playing Squid.
The twist to this one is that if you win around, you get to go and choose from a box full of keys, one of which opens a safe with the four and a half million inside, so there is even more randomness.
Now they do try to make it seem like there’s an actual strategy which professional rock, paper, scissors players will tell you there is. Which I don’t necessarily buy, but I guess she’s right because number 451 over here decides to throw a rock every time. And 287 wins 90% of the games.
However, all it takes is one win to get the millions, and they do this little fakeout where 287 is winning all the time, and then Phil here actually wins one, resulting in them editing in this big build-up as if he’s about to win, which if you’re 287, would absolutely suck. But Nah, he misses.
