Squid Game: 15 Questions The Finale Left Us With — Plus, Grade Season 1

The following contains spoilers from Netflix's Squid Game.

Squid Game. The Netflix hit hailing from South Korea is either something you've heard of but have no interest in... a show you sampled but soon realized you didn't have the stomach for... or it was your latest binge.

Across nine episodes (including the abruptly short one titled "Front Man"), Squid Game follows Seong Gi-hun (played by Lee Jung-jae), an unemployed, gambling-prone divorcé as he and 455 other downtrodden strangers are knocked out with gas and whisked away to a secret island complex, to compete in a series of children's games all given decidedly deadly spins.

The first round, "Red Light, Green Light," brutally dispatches with 255 players. Following a 101-100 vote to quit the game and go home, 187 players ultimately reconsidered and were brought back to chase the grand prize of 45.6 billion won (~$38.6 million). By Round 3, 80 were left to split into eight "Tug of War" teams, after which 39 were invited to pair up for Round 4, leaving Mi-nyeo the odd (yet safe) woman out.

A total of 16 players made it to the penultimate Round 5, of which only three survived: Gi-hun, his childhood friend Sang-woo, and the pickpocket Sae-byeok. Alas, Sae-byeok was gravely wounded by the "Glass Stepping Stones" round (as automatic weapons destroyed the playing field, sending glass shards flying). After Sang-woo "empathetically" ended Sae-byeok's suffering, he and Gi-hun faced off in the titular Squid game, whose rules... well, I still don't 100-percent understand. It was a rigorous, rain-soaked showdown, though, and though Sang-woo got his licks in, Gi-hun emerged with the upper hand — though he refused to deal a death blow. Sang-woo, though, ended his life with his own knife, alowing Gi-hun to be crowned champion and awarded the prize.

Coming out of the ordeal, a distraught Gi-hun barely touched his 45.6 billion won for a whole year, until he was invited to a mysterious rendezvous — with, it turned out, Oh Il-nam. "The Old Man" was believed to have been executed after Round 4, when in fact he has been running this enterprise all along. Legitimately ailing from a brain tumor, he explained to Gi-hun how boring it is to be as wealthy as he is, so the game was a way to end the monotony in his life while also testing to see if humanity had any goodness left in it. Il-nam and Gi-hun engage in one last wager, about whether a homeless man on the street below will be helped by a stranger, though the old man passes away just as Gi-hun wins that bet.

Afterward, Gi-hun got Sae-byeok's kid brother out of an orphanage (as promised on what would be her deathbed) and left him in the care of Sang-woo's proud (if oblivious) mother, to whom he also left half of his winnings. Gi-hun later made tracks for the airport, to visit his daughter in Los Angeles, but along the way he saw the man who groomed him for the game doing the same with another stranger. Snatching the calling card from the stranger's hands, Gi-hun called the number and announced his intention to learn who exactly they were and why they engage in the atrocities they do. Though the voice on the other end advised him to go on with his travels, Gi-hun at the last minute turns on his heel and decides not to board the plane, but... do what?

That final question is among the 15 listed below, coming out of my binge of the nine-episode series. Grade Squid Game in the poll below, and then see which of the Qs below you have As for.

Episode 2 made a point of showing us that Sae-byeok avoided being gassed during her return trip to the island. But to what end? (In the moment, it seemed like she might eventually make use of her knowledge about the secretive journey/destination... and yet nothing came of it.)

Similarly, Sae-byeok made one semi-fruitful escape into the bathroom air ducts (during which all she witnessed was sugar being melted in the kitchen), but then... nothing. Again and again, it seemed like she was being set up to be a threat to the operation a la police detective Jun-ho, but that thread was lost.

Yes, we know that Oh Il-nam was truly suffering from a tumor.

And yes, we know that during the marbles game he was pretending to be in a fog (while Gi-hun sheepishly cheated). But what about at other moments throughout their entrapment? Was it always to some degree an act?

As for the season finale's big reveal that Oh Il-nam was behind it all, had you started to suspect that something about him was not as it seemed when his Round 3 "execution" took place off-camera?

Ever since Episode 2 and its "Sugar Honeycomb" game revolving around dalgona (stamped toffee), social media has been rife with videos about the candy-making process and/or demos of how to nimbly nibble around the design. Has your own social media feed started seeing more of these?

The workers relied on Byeong-gi (aka No. 111) to harvest the organs of select corpses, which then were sold to offshore bidders. Has there thus always been a doctor among each batch of 456 players, to perform such dirty work in trade for gameplay tips?

Not long after policeman Jun-ho embedded himself among the masked worker ranks, he realized that his colleague next door was coughing Jun-ho's number, 29, in Morse code each night. To what end, though? To signal that he was onto the imposter?

Maybe it's indicative of a Stateside upbringing (and/or watching too much of The Little Rascals), but did anyone else think that the players would have to play the traditional game of marbles, in which you "shoot" one from pinched fingers in order to knock your opponent's marbles out of a drawn circle?

And speaking of that episode, did anyone else suspect that Sang-woo had slipped Ali a satchel of pebbles?

What if Player 069 hadn't died by suicide, thereby sending 17 players to the Glass Stepping Stones round? Would they have simply added a 17th mannequin/numbered jersey, and maybe put more time on the clock?

Similarly, what if Sae-byeok hadn't been (mercifully-ish?) killed ahead of Round 6? Would the final Squid game have pitted two attackers against one defender, or...?

Squid Game's unshakeable intensity only veered off course when the VIPs showed up, saddled as they were with dopey, douchey dialogue and played with exactly zero subtlety. Sure, it was possibly intended as a commentary on the exact sort of deplorables who would see such grisly proceedings as sport, but.... How much more harrowing would it have been to make them more menacing, less cartoony?

Also, where was these big bettors' smack-talking and revelry during the final round? Had none of them wagered on Gi-hun, who during both the Honeycomb and Tug-of-War rounds proved himself to be quite crafty?

Would a vegan have been SOL to make it to the black-tie Final 3 dinner?

Like, who takes an order for 455 coffin-shaped boxes adorned with festive pink bow designs, and doesn't bat an eye? (Especially when they're possibly specified to be "extra-flammable"?)

Since policeman Jun-ho surely knew that the game was almost over, why didn't he wait a half-day longer and then stow away on whatever boat took the winner back to the mainland? Instead of aimlessly wandering outside looking for a phone signal, with armed workers chasing him?

It was revealed in Episode 8 that the game's uniquely masked host was intrepid policeman Jun-ho's brother, who had been missing for years. But since the file room binder showed that In-ho had won the game in 2015, did someone else serve as Front Man prior to him? (Because in the season finale, Oh Il-nam kinda made it seem as if the two had always been in cahoots.)

Rather than get on the plane to Los Angeles to visit his daughter (and with an actual gift in hand!), Gi-hun had phoned the number on the card he grabbed from a would-be player and wound up staying in South Korea to go after this mysterious organization. But how? Even if he enrolled in the next Game, they'd see him coming. (Plus, who's to say he would survive long?)

Or is his plan to use his new wealth to seed any next game with planted players, or to help Jun-ho's captain follow up on any shred of a lead from that cliffside phone call?

Season 2, surely?

And if it's a group costume, are the squares in charge of which house you Trick-or-Treat at next?