I know that just as Round 6 (or Squid Game) became a global phenomenon back in 2020, today it’s not uncommon to see people turning their noses up at the series. But I still consider it one of the most profound, disturbing, and innovative works of recent years — a masterclass in how to tell a good-versus-evil story through realistic, contemporary lenses. This will include spoilers.

I experienced Round 6 as if I were looking into a distorted mirror of society — or perhaps just an honest mirror, lit by a harsh, unfiltered light. Yes, the series is spectacular, both visually and narratively. But what haunted me most was how cruelly realistic it is in portraying human nature in all its layers: ambition, greed, the slow erosion of the soul, the calculated coldness of those who stop feeling, the raw desperation to survive at any cost. In that world, no one is a hero — except one.

Seong Gi-hun (456) is initially presented as the kind of man we’ve been taught to judge: a loudmouth, in debt, an absent father, almost childlike in his lack of self-awareness. But Round 6 takes its time. It slowly peels back the layers to show us that beneath all that chaos, there is a moral line — something incredibly rare in the world of the games. Gi-hun is fragile, yes, but not rotten. He’s naïve, but not corrupt. And unlike everyone else, when the final choice comes, he doesn’t sell his soul.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the structure, we have the Front Man (Hwang In-ho) — a former winner turned enforcer, now the masked authority upholding the system. But behind the mask and the silence, what he’s after isn’t power. What he needs, desperately, is proof. Proof that no one can truly stay good. That is when faced with the abyss, everyone eventually chooses to fall.

The Front Man’s personal game is silent, but enormous. He’s already fallen. He’s killed. He’s abandoned his brother. He’s embraced the role of executioner. And to live with that weight, he must believe there was no other way. That everyone falls. That goodness is a childish illusion. He needs, obsessively, for Gi-hun to break.

But Gi-hun doesn’t break.

Yes, he suffers. Yes, he hesitates. He even considers running away. But he chooses to stay. He prefers to fight. He decides to save a life that isn’t his own. He dies for it. And in that moment, it’s not Gi-hun who breaks — it’s the Front Man.

Because in the face of Gi-hun’s final act, the lie that sustained him implodes. He sees, with his own eyes, living (and soon after, dead) proof that it was possible to make it through the games without destroying what’s good inside. That becoming what he became wasn’t inevitable. And for someone who’s spent years justifying his own emptiness, that realization is unbearable.

The series never spells this out. But it’s there — in his silence. In the way he watches. In the moment, he spares the baby. He doesn’t punish Gi-hun. He doesn’t stop him. He just watches. Because for the first time, maybe… he doesn’t know what to do.

And then we cut to the final scene, in Los Angeles, where Cate Blanchett is calmly repeating the recruitment ritual in a sleek American café. The cycle seems to continue. The game is going global — more sophisticated, more subtle, with beautiful faces and soothing voices. But something has changed. The Front Man is no longer in control. Not externally. But internally. Because now… he knows.

He knows that choice exists. That purity exists. That someone didn’t break.

And that is what damns him.

The real punishment for In-ho isn’t death. It’s living with the knowledge that he wasn’t just a victim of the system — he was its willing accomplice. That while his brother tried to resist until the end, he gave up far too soon. And that, yes, maybe goodness does exist in the world. He just wasn’t strong enough to hold onto it.

Round 6 shows us that the greatest horror isn’t losing your life — it’s losing your soul and having to live with it. Gi-hun, for all his flaws and pain, died whole. The Front Man, with all his power and status, lives in a shambles.

That’s what makes this series so deeply disturbing.
And so painfully real.

I’ll talk more about it soon — but without exaggeration, Round 6 is a series that deserves to be watched, reflected on, and discussed.