Squid Game director explains Gi-hun’s red hair in season finale: ‘It showed his inner anger’

Hwang Dong-hyuk admitted that Gi-hun would never dye his hair red, but the colour has a special significance

Squid Game writer and director Hwang Dong-hyuk has explained why Seong Gi-hun (played by Lee Jung-jae) dyes his hair red in the season finale.

In an interview with Zapzee, Dong-hyuk deconstructs the final moments of the South Korean survival drama, including Gi-hun’s dramatic hair transformation.

Dong-hyuk said: “I imagined being him and thought to myself, ‘What is the colour that you would never choose to dye your hair?’ Then I came to the conclusion that Gi-hun would never dye his hair red. It would be the craziest thing for him to do.”

The creator of Netflix’s most-watched show yet, Dong-hyuk added that the flaming red hair “really showed” Gi-hun’s “inner anger” and rage towards the organisers of the lethal Squid Game.

After the season finale aired, some viewers tweeted that Gi-hun’s new look had left them confused.

Squid Game has taken Netflix viewers by storm since it was released on 17 September and continues to dominate Netflix’s top 10 charts across the world.

In the show, hundreds of debt-ridden people sign up to play their favourite childhood games for a chance to win an enormous cash prize, only to realise Squid Game is no child’s play.

While one player will stand to win billions of pounds, the other participants will be “eliminated” or killed over five lethal rounds.

On comparisons with other Japanese movies that are also based on survival games, Dong-hyuk told Zapzee that the most significant difference between them and Squid Game is that the latter focuses on the people, not the games.

He noted: “Usually, in movies like this, a genius appears to solve the complex games. However, we chose the simplest games of all children’s games. It’s not about a hero winning the game, but it’s all about the story of the losers.”

Dong-hyuk has also previously responded to criticism that Squid Game is very similar to the 2014 Japanese film, As The Gods Will . The Takashi Miike film also includes the Red Light, Green Light game that was featured in the first episode of the Netflix show.

Speaking at a press conference, he said: “It is true that [the first game is] similar, but after that, there aren’t any similarities.”

Dong-hyuk clarified that he worked on Squid Game in 2008 and 2009, and at the time, the first game had already been decided.

“It’s not really something that I wanna do, to claim ownership of this story,” Hwang added. “But if I had to say it, I would say I did it first.”

Squid Game also stars Jung Ho Yeon (as Sae Byuk), Oh Yeong-su (as Oh Il-nam), Anupam Tripathi (as Ali Abdul) and Park Hae-Soo (as Cho Sang-woo) in lead roles.