

It was also his research into Year Walking that led to the secret ending of the game.

The final few entries of his diary set up the secret ending of the game, and implies that he went on his own Year Walk.

It turns out that the Year Walk is a very real thing, and his research into it draws the attention of the forces of the universe designed to protect the Things Man Was Not Meant to Know. His research into the subject is detailed in the diary found along with the companion app which is only accessible after beating the game once. Theodor AlmstenA present-day university professor researching Year Walks. Whether or not Theodor convinced him to kill himself and Set Right What Once Went Wrong so that Stina could live in the secret ending is completely up in the air. The Hero Dies: The secret ending reveals that he was executed a year later for killing Stina.Silent Protagonist: Never makes a sound over the course of the game.Featureless Protagonist: We never get to see what he looks like.So, less "I've hit the Despair Event Horizon and I'll off myself", and more "Will I do what this note in a box tells me to do?" Driven to Suicide: The secret ending leaves it really ambiguous as to whether or not he uses the knife sent back in time to him to kill himself or Stina, but Theodor Almsten's intent was that he kill himself so that the Watchers get their sacrifice while Stina gets to live a happy life.Determinator: If what he encounters on his Year Walk is standard fare for other Walkers, then he should be commended for being able to see it through to the end without being killed or succumbing to the horrors he encounters.So I thought that might be a good, simple-but-ambiguous way to end the story for Gi-hun.Player Character/ Daniel SvenssonThe protagonist of the game, who ventures out on a Year Walk to try and see the future. It could actually be interpreted as him making a very on-the-spot eye contact with what is truly going on in the bigger picture. “So it’s not necessarily Gi-hun turning back to get revenge. Hwang continued, noting that in his view, the ending doesn’t set up a revenge story. And that was, in fact, my way of communicating the message that you should not be dragged along by the competitive flow of society, but that you should start thinking about who has created the system – and whether there is some potential for you to turn back and face it.” Season 1 ends with Gi-hun turning back and not getting on the plane to the States. “But I actually thought that this could be good closure for the whole story, too. “It’s true that Season 1 ended in an open-ended way,” Hwang said. Why doesn’t he keep the prize money and live his life? And is he going to seek revenge now? What’s his endgame?Ĭreator Hwang Dong-hyuk told THR that he views the ending as thematically appropriate and, actually, not a cliffhanger at all. Many are flummoxed by Gi-hun’s decision here (including LeBron James). Il-nam dies, and Gi-hun leaves the building. It’d been so long since I had that much fun.” Thanks to you, I got to remember things from the past I had long forgotten. He asks Il-nam why he let him live, and Il-nam replies, “Because it was fun playing with you. Gi-hun is visibly upset, wondering how Il-nam could be so callous. So we all got together and did some pondering. At some point, all my clients began to tell me the same thing: that they had no joy in life anymore. If you have too much money, no matter what you buy, eat or drink, everything gets boring in the end. “Do you know what someone with no money has in common with someone with too much money?” Il-nam asks Gi-hun. Il-nam reveals that he’s a money lender, and he invented the games as a way to have fun. Il-nam says he was being truthful about the tumor in his brain, and he decided to play the games himself one time before he died, having spent the rest of his life as an audience member. Then Gi-hun gets a mysterious note that leads him to an office building in the middle of the night, where he discovers that not only is Oh Il-nam (O Yeong-su) alive, but he’s the one responsible for creating the deadly games in the first place.
