* Stop right there! This post is packed with spoilers from the first nine episodes of Squid Game: The Challenge*
The original Squid Game and its reality TV offshoot, Squid Game: The Challenge, share more than just a cookie-licking game and reality show contestants living like caged lab rats. In both, the best player was someone who was deceptively quiet and unassuming, yet possessed a level of cunning and people skills to navigate their way to becoming a finalist. Squid Game: The Challenge isn’t as unscripted as the original Squid Game (depending upon who you ask but Mai (Player 287) has indeed emerged as the smartest of the 456 participants, much like Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) did in the original.
In its 9 episodes, Squid Game: The Challenge has delivered the saddest picnic, the toughest game of Battleship, people hilariously faking death after being shot with paintballs, and someone stealing an extra ration of food. Much like the original drama, the reality TV version rewarded those who knew how to play the games and people. In some games like Battleship, where players were eliminated if the opposing team could determine where every player in a ship was located, having a cohesive team and trust was the difference between winning and losing. In certain challenges like the picnic ruse, where the pairs in each picnic would unknowingly become rivals in the game Marbles, players had no choice but to tear their alliances apart. Despite the varied rules for the different elements of the show, those who survived were the ones who could manage their emotions and never forget everyone around them being an obstacle on their way to the $4.56 million prize money.
Bryton (Player 432) derived too much of his confidence from his athleticism rather than strategic intelligence and ended up being eliminated in Battleship for choosing the smallest ship that required the least number of guesses to sink. Spencer (Player 299) buckled under peer pressure, chose the hardest shape to cut a cookie out of in the game Dalgona and wound up being eliminated. Everyone eliminated has made a crucial mistake they didn’t realize until it was too late. And that’s why Mai has succeeded.
Who is Mai from Squid Game: The Challenge?
Born in Vietnam, Mai was dealing with life or death situations as a child. In the show, she recalls the time her family left Taiwan in 1975, near the end of the Vietnam War, when she had a gun put to her head before her mother pulled her to safety. She doesn’t attribute that experience to her success in the show, but when you see how quickly she moves between tears and stoicism, friend and foe,
