While the Netflix apocalyptic show Squid Game isn’t very uplifting, Nick Mance believes it does offer us a glimpse of light and an invitation as followers of a sacrificial Savior. He writes about the character arc of Gi-hun who entered the games in the show’s second season not to win the money but to try to help those already entrapped. He is a bright spot in a dark environment, not perfect, but relatable to those of us who recognize the tension between who we want to be and who we actually are, especially as people of faith. By season 3, Gi-hun has stepped off the track of good intentions and succumbed to the evil of the games. He had “entered the games hoping to free people from death and now he has blood on his hands. He is like many Christians who set out full of zeal for God but end up tripping over their own sins and flaws to find themselves sprawled in the mud with the rest of humanity.” Then comes a turning point in the plot. “While his mind had been set on vengeance, the other sympathetic characters were making their own sacrifices to protect the pregnant Kim Jun-hee (Player 222) long enough for her to give birth. New life enters the realm of death. With Jun-hee’s allies gone and her death all but guaranteed, she turns to our dejected hero to protect her child. Compassion delivers him and gives him a reason to keep going.” Along the way, he is presented with a way to save both himself and the baby, but it includes killing other players in their sleep. “To spare the wicked and endanger the innocent is a ludicrous decision in a world where the phrase ‘Humans are …’ is followed by ‘…just bodies.’ But for Gi-hun, as it is for the Christian, refusing to pick up the enemy’s weapons for what seems like the greater good is to emphasize the sacredness of human life.” Then the final game comes, in which three people must full to their death from three podiums. After the other players have been eliminated, only Gi-hun and the baby remain on the last podium. “Yet the cost is not so easily embraced. It is one thing to defend an innocent against violent attackers. It is quite another to know, in cold silence, that the only way the innocent can live is if you step out into nothing and plummet to the concrete floor below. ‘Humans are…’ he murmurs, and falls. He has given his answer… He dies in obscurity, with only enemies watching him. The one he died to save will not even remember him. Gi-hun is not Jesus, yet in many ways he bears the characteristics of the suffering servant spoken about in the prophets, an archetype fulfilled in Jesus and then, naturally, in those who follow him” (Nick Mance, “The Suffering Servant of Netflix’s Squid Games,” Christ and Pop Culture, August 29, 2025, https://christandpopculture.com/suffering-servant-netflix-squid-game/). Christ’s sacrifice changed our lives, and it should also change how we live. Though most of us will not be presented with an opportunity to give up our life for another, we ought to be modeling a life that is self-sacrificial in many ways. What ways might God be asking you to sacrifice something to help others or honor him in another way? What are we willing to give up?
