‘Squid Game’ was one of the best things to happen in 2021. The Korean show broke all the streaming records when it landed on Netflix in September that year. While the fans are now eagerly waiting for the second season of the series directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk, a reality game show based on the same has been released for now.
‘Squid Game: The Challenge’ arrived this week on Netflix on the 22nd of November and you might have already read that there’s a Nepali player competing in the game show as well.
And well, it makes any show or film 10x interesting when a fellow Nepali is part of it; so no wonder, I binge-watched all first five episodes of the show on the very day they got released. And man, I had no idea this was gonna be this exciting. I was skeptical that they are not gonna pull it off so well, one of the reasons being we had already watched an unofficial version similar to this game show done by MrBeast. But they did it, y’all!
*Spoilers Ahead* If you haven’t watched the show yet, this is your warning to not read ahead as there are gonna be some spoilers.
Now let’s talk about our boy, Purna — the Player no. 031 — shall we? After that not so impressive performance in another one of MrBeast’s videos, Extreme Olympics, by the Nepali rep; I wasn’t expecting much that this bro is gonna achieve much on Squid Game either; but dayum, he did so good, like really really good.
456 players competed in the first round of the game show, Red Light Green Light, and only 197 of them made it to the next while the other 259 had to go home. And guess what, Purna actually made it — he made it out of one of the toughest games where each of the contestants had to make it through on their own.
Not just that, he then made it through the two other games along with two elimination tests and is now one of the only 63 contestants standing in the competition for that $4.56 million prize (yep, that’s over 60 crore in Nepali Rupees).
With that shocking second dormitory elimination test, his “Gganbu Gang” took a hit with some of his strong group members getting eliminated from the competition; but by the end of episode five, he is still standing strong; and with his low-key kinda presence that keeps him away from all the drama and limelight — his competitors thinking he is not much of a threat — he might actually go really far in the competition ahead.
The next four episodes are dropping on 29th of November, followed by the finale arriving a week later on December 6th. This sure is gonna get way more interesting with that marble game that’s coming up next as the showrunners really took the participants by surprise when they had them pair with their closest ones in the disguise of a picnic; but it was too late by the time they realized what it actually was for.
Our guy, Purna, didn’t really get a whole lot of screen time as much as some others enjoyed in the first five episodes; and I am really hoping that we get to see more of him in the episodes to come and see him as one of the front runners in the competition.
Totally rooting for this guy!!
So who’s this guy anyway? Purna Biswa is currently based in Kansas, USA where he is a computer engineer. But that’s not all he is — he is also a published author, he acts, he writes songs, he sings and of course, now he is a reality TV star too. One thing is for sure, homeboy may or might not win this thing; but he sure is winning in life already.
