The ‘Squid Game: The Challenge’ Winner Explains How They Survived
*Spoiler Alert: This post reveals who won Squid Game: The Challenge. Proceed cautiously.*
Netflix's grand (and expensive) social experiment is finally over. Squid Game: The Challenge crowned its winner of the $4.56 million prize with the least amount of backstabbing and manipulation in the entire season. In the end, it came down to a simple game of Rock, Paper, Scissors and unlocking a box curiously containing a gold-plated debit card supposedly loaded with $4.56 million. And it went to the person who played the game the best from the first day: Mai Whelan.
The Squid Game: The Challenge finalists came down to Mai Whelan, Sam Wells, and Phill Cain, but ultimately, Mai came out victorious after defeating Phill in the final Rock, Paper, Scissor challenge and selecting the correct key. Using the same analytical skills that allowed her to see through the best bluffs her competitors could muster up in the "Circle Of Trust" game when no one trusted her, Mai shot those deadly focused eyes into Phill's subconscious and figured out what he was going to throw in Rock, Paper, Scissors. Phill honestly didn't stand a chance against someone who reads people for a living and never showed any of them her real self.
"When I walked into the dormitory for the first time, I thought the character I have as a person is outside the dormitory, and my new persona in the dormitory is that of a competitive person," Whelan explained to Men's Health a week before the finale. "It was like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde."
Mai wasn't the most liked by her fellow contestants or the Squid Game: The Challenge viewers. She burst out in tears when TJ Stukes (Player 182) chose her to move on to the next round earlier in the season, even though some contestants remember her saying she didn't like him. She bonded with the remaining females of the competition, who made a pact in front of Mai to ensure they brought each other to the next rounds, only for Mai to turn around and choose a man in Chad (Player 286) to save. She could be as amenable and comforting as a genial grandmother and as cold and calculated as a ruthless killer before her eyelids touched the bottom of her eyes.
Some may see that as her being a two-faced liar who only did anything if it served her best interest. First of all, duh! It's a competition for $4.56 million. Mai understood that was the only way she could survive a game where every friendly interaction was rooted in an understanding that only one person could win it all. We never saw the real Mai from the first moment she stepped into the dorms.
She says she had to come to terms with the fact that "this is not me on television, but I have to play what I have to play." She exemplified it at Netflix's massive watch party for the season finale last night at NYC's Terminal 5. Decked in an elegant black dress, the stoic gaze she sported was softened to cheeks that couldn't help but protrude with joy and glee. Before the episode aired, we asked her how she felt, and she said, "Nervous," even though she knew she was $4.56 million richer.
Even when the competition was over, the money was secured, and the rest was a formality; Mai's poker face never wavered until the very last second. Now, that is how you win Squid Game.
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