Tear Jerker / Squid Game S1E9 "One Lucky Day"

• Gi-hun and Sang-woo's brutal and vicious fight is just heartbreaking to watch, considering their past and everything they'd gone through.
• Towards the end, Gi-hun takes Sang-woo down and proceeds to repeatedly punch Sang-woo, screaming and sobbing "You killed them!" between each hit. For a moment, it really does look like he wants to kill Sang-woo, but ultimately, even having him dead to rights, Gi-hun can't go through with it. After all, Sang-woo was his best friend when they were children and was practically like a brother to him. Instead, Gi-hun says he wants to invoke the group vote and tells Sang-woo they can vote to leave and go home together as the friends they used to be and even offers his hand, only for Sang-woo to reject it, leading to the next moment.
• Even after everything that he's done, Sang-woo's death is just tragic. He apologizes to Gi-hun and then grabs his knife and stabs himself in the throat so that Gi-hun can leave with the money, rather than allowing them both to leave empty-handed and live with the guilt of what he's done. Gi-hun, having just fought off the opportunity to kill him, cradles Sang-woo in his arms and sobs as he bleeds out, while he chokes out his Last Request for Gi-hun to look after his mom for him and also apologizes for everything he has done. Sang-woo may have crossed the Moral Event Horizon in the eyes of many in the episodes leading up to this, but this final fight does a hell of a job showing just how much he and Gi-hun have been through, and just how tragic his death ends up being as his body stacks up with 454 others.
  • Sang-woo's last statement before he stabs himself in the throat:
    "When we were kids, we would play just like this, and our moms would call us in for dinner. But no one calls us anymore."
• After Gi-hun officially wins the game, there are several empty, lingering shots: the player count going down to one, the money-filled piggy bank sitting in an empty room that once held 456 people, and the masks of the VIPs set down. No victory, no fanfare—just a few somber piano notes. The protagonist survives, but over 400 people were still killed in the process, all for the sadistic entertainment of a few rich assholes.
• A blindfolded Gi-hun has a conversation in a limo with the Front Man, who personally congratulates him for winning. Gi-hun, seething with rage, demands to know who they are and why they made these games in the first place, and the Front Man equates the players to racing horses (the same game Gi-hun bet money on beforehand). Gi-hun is disgusted at how they could be capable of this cruelty with the Front Man simply telling Gi-hun to think of it as a dream. Fridge Horror sets in since the Front Man is a previous winner, so him saying this strongly implies he's also struggling with his own trauma and might be trying to help Gi-hun in his own way.
• When Gi-hun arrives back in town after winning the games, he encounters Sang-woo's mother, who informs him that his mother's condition is getting worse, and as he leaves, she asks if he knows where Sang-woo is. Gi-hun stops walking and can't answer or even look at her, knowing he's only alive because Sang-woo killed himself to forfeit the game and give him the prize. He just continues looking ahead with a Thousand-Yard Stare, eyelids twitching as tears well up in his eyes.
• Gi-hun returns home, only to find that his mother already died, all alone, while he was off playing the game. As financial security for his mother's declining health was one of the reasons he played in the first place, his participation was therefore, at least in that respect, All for Nothing. By the time he sees his mom, he's so drained from all that he's experienced that he doesn't even have the energy to cry, and can only lay down and sleep next to her body.
  • The way his voice gets more broken and choked up as he tries to wake his mother up, only to slowly realize she's dead...
  • This becomes even worse as you realize that their last conversation was about how his irresponsible financial habits led to her diabetes getting so bad because they couldn't afford to let her take the time off and get treatment for it, implying that his mother died seeing Gi-hun as an irresponsible slacker and a coward who abandoned her out of shame for gambling her money away, never knowing that he was risking his very life trying to right his wrongs.
  • Imagine being Gi-hun here. You've just returned home after a traumatic ordeal where several hundreds of people (including your childhood friend) died horribly, and because of their deaths, you're rich beyond your wildest dreams. After all that you've been through, you couldn't save your mom, and she couldn't be proud of you.
  • The director himself, Hwang Dong-hyuk, said he made a small contribution to that scene: as he stands over his mom's body, Gi-hun weakly says, "Mom, I have money now." Against the eternal silence of the room she's in, the statement sounds incredibly pathetic, further driving home the point of whether Gi-hun's victory was even worth it.
  • The episode title, "One Lucky Day", is a reference to a similarly saddening novel which also revolves around a man winning lots of money only to come home and find that a sickly loved one has died in his absence.
• Time Skip to a year later, and Gi-hun is so destroyed by his trauma and guilt that he leaves the money untouched in the checking account for that whole time and continues living like a bum. The banker who treats him as a VIP client looks worried for his health and encourages him to drink some coffee and asks what he can do to help as Gi-hun prepares to leave. Gi-hun simply asks for a ₩10,000 bill, driving in just how much he can't stand to touch a single cent of the prize money due to the baggage associated with it.
  • Even worse, Gi-hun rarely speaks and generally acts detached and aloof. Considering that this is the energetic Gi-hun we know, it's upsetting to see him turn into the exact opposite of his old self.
• We find out that it was a freezing night, and Gi-hun was going to spend it out in the cold drinking alcohol. Il-nam possibly saved his life by having the flower lady indirectly invite him to a heated penthouse apartment. As Il-nam points out, one "bum" was not so lucky to have someone reach out to him earlier, that he can see from his window.
• Everything about that last twist:
  • Gi-hun's reaction to finding out that Il-nam is alive, lives in a fancy apartment, and is bedridden and at death's door, preparing for his cancer to kill him. He realizes the Awful Truth - the old man was the real Big Bad who orchestrated the games for wealthy people's amusement, and tearfully asks, "Why did you let me live?"
  • Il-nam attempts to convince Gi-hun to not waste his life away. He says that Gi-hun earned the money and he shouldn't feel guilty about who died for him to load his bank account. In response, Gi-hun shakes him down for answers and even comes close to strangling him. Gi-hun nearly succumbed to his hatred again, as he almost did with Sang-woo, as Il-nam stops him by politely asking for one last wager, and in exchange, he'll give answers.
  • In a twisted sort of way, the Host's reasons for creating the games. Unlike the hedonistic and vile VIPs, he's fully cognizant of the fact that his wealth has ultimately left him an empty person. He created the games so that he could relive the only time when he remembers being happy: his childhood. Part of his hatred for the poor and why he has them targeted as the games' participants stems from the fact that he believes their misery to be the same as his, that they are ultimately "worthless". Not to mention, he claims that the games were also a means of seeing the nature of humanity at its most desperate. Considering everything that's transpired in just the two games shown and the implications that he's seen it all before, it's unfortunately not too hard to see how he could develop such a cynical view of humanity.
  • One of Gi-hun's questions is Was It All a Lie? and understandably so. This kindly old man whom he befriended, that seemed wise and stronger than he looked, was the same person who created a sick and twisted "game" to prey upon the poor and desperate to entertain himself and his peers. Il-nam reveals that he told the truth, and merely hid tiny pieces of it: his friendship with Gi-hun was real, along with his family and the tumor in his brain. He was dying and wanted to participate rather than spend a year behind a screen and watching his "friends" place bets. The reason why he let Gi-hun live in the marbles game when he could have taken advantage of Gi-hun's guilt about cheating who he thought was a man losing his senses to the tumor, is that he saw that Gi-hun was not like the other participants. He was more of a genuine friend to Il-nam than all the other rich VIPs he associated with.
    • Moreover, Il-nam must've also known that Gi-hun would suffer a massive Broken Pedestal with regards to him and he would lose the only genuine friend he ever made due to his atrocious actions. But he tells Gi-hun the truth anyway because he really does respect the younger man and wants to give him some kind of advice to not waste his life wallowing in guilt before passing on.
• Sae-byeok's brother asks where his sister is after Gi-hun finds him in the orphanage and comments that they look very alike. Despite their fight the last time that she offered to buy him ice cream, he knows something must have happened to her since she hasn't visited in a year. Gi-hun looks helpless that he can't tell him the truth, because it's too horrifying.
• When he makes due on Sang-woo's dying request to look after his mother, Gi-hun leaves a suitcase full of money after making sure Sae-byeok's little brother is looked after by her. Which is already a tearjerker, but what really nails it home is the note he leaves inside, which has a very heartbreaking double meaning.
  "It's the money I owe Sang-woo."
• Crossing over with Awesome, Gi-hun having to turn his back on a trip to America to see Ga-yeong again when the Front Man reveals that he knows about the trip, determined not to endanger her life as he makes it his new mission in life to take down the cruel games. Even worse, he had an actual birthday present for her, which he promised to hand-deliver.

---