Mai Whelan became the first-ever winner of Squid Game: The Challenge on Wednesday, beating out two other finalists. She’ll go home with $4.56 million US, the biggest cash prize in reality TV history. Whelan, from Virginia, wore No. 287.
The Netflix reality show is based on the streaming giant’s extremely popular and extremely bloody critique of capitalism from South Korea, Squid Game.
What started out as 456 players competing for a large sum of money — in the case of The Challenge, a cool $4.56 million US — was narrowed down to three competitors before the finale.
Thankfully, players in the real-life version aren’t shot dead upon elimination like they were in Squid
