Diksha Sundriyal
The second season of Netflix’s ‘Squid Game’ brings a bunch of new characters to the fore as Seong Gi-hun returns to the familiar surroundings of the game that he had played three years ago. He returns voluntarily, and his purpose, this time, is not to win the money but to get to the people who not only organize the things but also enjoy it while hundreds of innocent people die for their entertainment. Like the previous season, this iteration also brings a variety of characters, some of whom are sympathetic, while others present themselves as deranged villains. The character of Player 230, aka Thanos, appears as the one that no one wants to root for. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Thanos Has a Villain Arc That Makes Him Irredeemable
There are 456 players in the game, each from a different strata and profession with varying moral and ethical values. The only commonality between them is that they all need the money that the game offers to the winner. Thanos is one of those people. In the outside world, he made his name as a rapper and made enough money in this career that he looked for investment opportunities. He followed a YouTube channel named MG Coin, where he was advised to invest in a cryptocurrency called Dalmatian. Thanos relied so much on the channel and its host that he didn’t use his own brain when it came to analyzing his investment, which means that he didn’t pull out his money at the right time. So, when the market fell and the value of Dalmatian crashed, Thanos lost everything. He became so depressed that he was ready to kill himself and was on the verge of jumping from a bridge and into the river.
He was saved by the Recruiter who found him and, instead of dying then and there, offered him the opportunity to join the game and take his chances there. With nothing left in the outside world, Thanos doesn’t have any qualms about the bloodshed that happens during the game. Like everyone else, he first approaches it as just a regular game where if you lose, you go back home. But as soon as he realizes that the losers are going to get killed, he adapts his mindset accordingly. He had already given up on himself, so he doesn’t care if he dies playing the games. It also becomes easier for him to do so with the drugs that he has inside the cross he wears all the time. The drugs help him with anxiety, which allows him to focus on winning the game and not on the fear of losing. The money that is added to the piggy bank at the end of each day motivates him even further.
Thanos Meets a Fitting End Before the Finale of Season 2
Apart from the money and the games, Thanos has another thing to focus on. He discovers that one of the players is Myung-gi, the host of MG Coin, who advised him to invest in Dalmatian. Blaming him for all his problems, Thanos demands his money back from Myung-gi and constantly messes with him. Meanwhile, Myung-gi refuses to be bullied by Thanos and even tells him that he should have also focused on the disclaimer he put at the end of each video, telling his subscribers to use their own judgment before investing. Myung-gi doesn’t believe he owes anything to Thanos, which angers the villain even more.
Tension escalates with each day, especially after the third game when the vote is tied up between Xs and Os. Xs, like Gi-hun and Myung-gi, want to exit the game and have the reward money divided equally amongst all surviving players. Os, on the other hand, like Thanos, wants to keep playing so that more money accumulates with each game, and they get the 45.6 billion won they were promised. When the vote is tied, it is decided that another vote will happen the next day. Thanos and his supporters use this as the opportunity to turn some votes in their favor. They start with Min-su, the young man who is easier to push around and scare. When Myung-gi sees what they are doing, he intervenes.
From here, things only get worse as a brawl erupts in the men’s toilet between a handful of Xs and Os. Thanos and Myung-gi fight each other, and Thanos easily overpowers his enemy. For a minute, it seems that he will suffocate Myung-gi, but the latter has a fork up his sleeve. A few minutes ago, when food was distributed to the players, Gi-hun noticed that this time, steel forks were given with the food. Having been there before, he knew that this meant that the organizers were trying to incite violence between the two groups, as the fork could be used as a weapon. Myung-gi also had this thought, which is why he hid the fork in his sleeve, which was good for him because when the time comes, he stabs Thanos with the fork, ending the villain’s story and saving himself from imminent death.
Read More: Does Jung-bae Die in Squid Game? Why Does the Front Man Kill Player 390?
