TL;DR: assuming Squid Game is a commentary on capitalism, it also says that in capitalism mothers are expected to be passive non-entities and only exist to support (emotionally, financially, physically) their children.
Disclaimer: there are some posts on Reddit about this topic–this was written without reading any.
Dying Alone
Think about it: after lying to his mother, stealing her money, failing to see her rapidly worsening diabetes, and breaking her heart by not supporting her beloved granddaughter (not to mention obviously forgetting his mother’s birthday), Gi-hun allows his mother Oh Mal-soon to die alone–probably of a diabetic crisis, and probably thinking that her son has abandoned her.
Her Character Doesn’t Even Have a Name
Ssang-Woo’s mother is a bit more jovial: she has a shop, she seems to be healthy, and she is a proud mother of (she thinks) a successful son (did you know he was top of his class at SNU?!?). But in the last episode we watch Gi-hun bring her a boy she never asked for and a suitcase full of cash, as if those two things can make up for the obvious loss of her previous store and of her son.
Of course she’s written to be a self-sacrificing angel, so she cheerfully takes this mysterious North Korean orphan under her wing. We are supposed to feel warm fuzzies that Sae-byok’s brother has a loving home–and never question whether what Ssang-woo’s mother needs in her time of obvious crisis is an orphan to be completely dependent on her.
A Counter-point?
The contrasting example, love her or hate her, is Han Mi-nyeo. We learn she has a child in the episode where she asks to stop the game–but she obviously chooses to come back.
If you’re in club “I don’t like Han Mi-nyeo,” you probably want to make some statement about how she’s annoying or selfish.
If you’re in club “I do like Han Mi-nyeo,” you’re probably aligned with the narrative that she’s scrappy, resourceful, and all-around under-estimated.
Consider this: she’s the only mother in the series to make choices about her fate. Yes, they seem like questionable choices. But as someone once observed about those who succeed in free market capitalism: they didn’t make good choices, they were GIVEN good choices.
Han Mi-nyeo made pro-active choices within the parameters she was given: to return to the game, and to end it on her terms–with an additional sweet benefit of revenge.
No, The House Always Wins
At first, it seemed like the obvious foil characters were Mi-nyeo and Ji-yeong, the women who decided their own fates in the game. A simplistic interpretation (probably from the “I don’t like Han Mi-neyo” camp) is that Ji-yeong is a self-sacrificing martyr, Mi-nyeo a selfish harpy.
But Ji-yeong’s purpose in the story is to help us better understand Sae-byok (and also gain a little insight into the insidious and truly terrible ways Christianity wreaks havoc in South Korean society and perpetuates cruelty to women–but that will have to be a different post).
Han Mi-nyeo is the foil to Oh Mal-soon and Ssang-woo’s poor nameless mother–but her tragic end simply underscores the point that in capitalism, motherhood is expected and required of women, but entirely expendable to the “VIPs” who pull the strings.
And so we end the series with a dramatic cliffhanger about Gi-hun, having been encouraged to forget what he did to his mother, be lulled into complacency about Ssang-woo’s nameless mother’s new life, and we don’t even question it.
Why do the mothers get mistreated, lied to, left behind, stolen from, and drained of life? Because that is what capitalism expects.
Reynolds Diary 