concluded the series on a pretty bleak note. Not only did Detective Jun-ho never manage to shut down the games (or even so much as make a dent in the operation), but the games themselves ended poorly for 99.56% of the players involved. Of the 456 people who took part in the game, only two survived. One was Player 256 (who was discreetly rescued by sympathetic guard Kang No-eul) and the other was Player 222, a cute CGI baby. Even our main character Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) died in the end. He sacrificed himself in order to save 222’s life, throwing himself off a ledge after a season full of pain.
It’s a dark finale, but it wasn’t always the writers’ plan for Gi-hun. As showrunner Hwang Dong-hyuk explained in a recent interview, he was originally thinking about keeping Gi-Hun alive throughout the entire series. That doesn’t necessarily mean, however, that Dong-hyuk was planning to have Gi-hun throw poor baby 222 off that giant triangle. As he explained:
“I did think about having Gi-hun live. I thought about an ending where Gi-hun would make it out of the game in one way or another, and he would go to America to see his daughter. But in the process of writing it, I had a change of heart. I thought what story do I want to tell through the show? Also, I looked at what was happening around the world at the time and how there was less hope for humanity. I thought of Gi-hun sacrificing himself for this baby, just as we all should for our future generation. That was a better-fitting ending for both the show and the character.”
