Squid Game, the popular survival drama on Netflix, lends a lot of evidence to the theory that the old man Il-nam is actually Gi-hun’s father. While the ending of Squid Game wrapped up many of the series’ loose ends, a couple of mysteries were left for audiences to ponder, including the possibility that players 001 and 456 are actually related. Even without considering the hard evidence that points to this possibility, the relationship between Squid Game protagonist Gi-hun and the old man Il-nam is obviously suggestive of a fatherly attachment.
Throughout Squid Game, Gi-hun feels a sense of responsibility to Il-nam, and treats him not as competition, but as an old man that he needs to save from danger. While most players distrust and scheme against one another, Gi-hun and Il-nam remain a team, which is even represented by them exchanging jackets, with both sporting the number 001 in the marble round. Finally, during the Squid Game finale’s old man twist, Il-nam reveals to Gi-hun his secret – that he’s actually the billionaire host and founder of the games – after which he dies with his gganbu by his side.
However, as several clues suggest, it would seem that Il-nam didn’t reveal one crucial fact to Gi-hun: that Gi-hun is the Squid Game founder’s son. What are these clues, and how do they affect the story of Squid Game?
In Squid Game episode 1, Gi-hun steals his mother’s bank card, which shows that the name of Gi-hun’s mother is Oh Mal-soon. She has the same family name as old man Oh Il-nam. While Oh Mal-soon retained her husband’s surname, Seong Gi-hun chose to use his mother’s surname for an unexplained reason, and this could be because his father abandoned them when Gi-hun was a child. This abandonment could have contributed to how Squid Game winner Gi-hun, despite his upright morals, is a compulsive gambler who steals from his mother.
Not a single photo of Gi-hun’s father can be found in Mal-soon’s home. They also never talk about the man at any point in Squid Game, even though they discuss how Gi-hun should be a better father to his daughter. This suggests that Gi-hun’s father either abandoned them or died a long time ago and that whatever happened, it’s enough for both Gi-hun and Mal-soon to throw out all his pictures and never discuss him again. This makes sense if Gi-hun’s father is anything like Oh Il-nam, who was lying to Gi-hun the entire time and was actually not only a Squid Game VIP, but the sociopath billionaire founder of the death games as well.
Il-nam’s birthday is the 26th of April, which was revealed when he tried and failed to access his mother Mal-soon’s bank card with the PIN code 0426. As it turns out, Mal-soon’s PIN code isn’t Gi-hun’s birthday, but the birthday of Gi-hun’s daughter instead. Meanwhile, during the marble round in Squid Game, Il-nam asks Gi-hun the day, because if it’s the 24th, his son’s birthday is coming up soon – suggesting that Il-nam’s son and Gi-hun share the same birthday.
In the Squid Game marble round, both Gi-hun and Il-nam recognize the recreated residential neighborhood to be the same neighborhood which they used to live in – suggesting that those neighborhoods are one and the same. Squid Game’s three geometric shapes – the triangle, square, and circle – also appear on a vertical sign on the home that Il-nam recognizes as his own, which is a related clue about Squid Game’s old man twist. The way these Easter eggs occur at the same time suggests a close connection between the fact that Il-nam is the Squid Game founder and that Gi-hun is his son.
In the dorm room, the Squid Game players form lines to receive their meals. Despite the gravity of the situation, Gi-hun asks a worker for chocolate milk, claiming that he can’t digest regular milk. The Squid Game worker doesn’t respond at all and keeps holding out the milk for Gi-hun, who then takes it despite his earlier objections. This prompts Il-nam to tell him that he must been spanked as a child, which Gi-hun confirms by asking Il-nam how he could tell. Il-nam says that his own son was exactly like Gi-hun.
When Gi-hun returns to his mother after winning Squid Game, he’s too late to save her and he finds her dead in their home. In the very last scene, Gi-hun foregoes seeing his daughter in the U.S., seemingly to move against the Squid Game organization, pursuing something bigger than himself and his family – who never benefit from the 45.6 billion won Squid Game prize. This is similar to what happened to billionaire and Squid Game founder Il-nam, as it seems that the only family he preferred to have at his deathbed is his estranged son. Moreover, both Il-nam, who betted on Squid Game players, and Gi-hun, who betted on horses, are avid gamblers and risk-takers. Apart from suggesting that the two are related, this also infers that Gi-hun inherited his impulsiveness from his father.
While Gi-hun assisted the old man throughout the games, he would already be dead without Il-nam’s help. This is especially true during the tug-of-war and the marble games, in which Il-nam practically handed all the marbles to Gi-hun. Il-nam did all this in order to save Gi-hun, and it’s because the billionaire wants his son to win and ascend to become the next Squid Game Front Man. As revealed by the backstory of In-ho, the current Front Man, he won Squid Game in 2015, which could be a requirement for attaining the mantle. As Il-nam’s days are numbered because of his brain tumor, he hoped to pass the mantle of Front Man to the son that he abandoned, which is how the Squid Game founder hopes to do right by Gi-hun. But while the two share many behaviors and even have great chemistry, Gi-hun’s sense of morality isn’t exactly conducive for hosting death games.
Moreover, the way Gi-hun storms out of the airport suggests that rather than joining the Squid Game organization, he plans to somehow fight it. However, on the other hand, the open-ended finale could also suggest that Gi-hun was deliberately lured back to the games, possibly for Squid Game season 2. If the organization had eyes on Gi-hun all the time, then it’s not a coincidence that Gi-hun saw The Salesman recruiting someone, and that he gets his hands on a Squid Game card on his way to leave the country. As Gi-hun takes the bait enthusiastically, Il-nam’s hope for his son to become the next Squid Game Front Man could still be in motion.
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