Mai Is the Sneakiest and Smartest Squid Game: The Challenge Finalist

*Warning: This post contains spoilers about the first nine episodes of Squid Game: The Challenge*

The original Squid Game and its reality TV competition offspring, Squid Game: The Challenge, share a lot more in common than a cookie-licking game and contestants living like jailed lab rats. In both, the best player was someone who was deceptively meek and unassuming, yet possessed a level of cunningness and people skills to maneuver their way to being a finalist. Squid Game: The Challenge isn’t as scripted as the original Squid Game (depending on who you ask), but Mai (Player 287) has emerged as the smartest of the 456 contestants, just like Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) did in the original.

In nine episodes, Squid Game: The Challenge has had the saddest picnic, the most stressful game of Battleship, people hilariously feigning death after being shot with paintballs, and one person stealing an extra ration of food. Like the original drama, the reality TV version rewarded those who knew not only how to play the games but also how to play people. In some games like Battleship, where players were eliminated if the opposing team could figure out where every player in a ship was positioned, having a tight-knit group and trust was the difference between winning and losing. But, in some tests like the picnic rouse, where the pairs in each picnic would unknowingly become competitors in the game Marbles, players had no choice but to tear their alliances apart. Regardless of the different rules for the various aspects of the show, the people who moved on were the ones who could manage their emotions and never lose sight of everyone around them being an obstacle on their way to the $4.56 million cash prize.

Bryton (Player 432) derived too much of his confidence from his athleticism instead of strategic intellect and ended up being eliminated in Battleship for choosing the smallest ship that required the least number of guesses to sink. Spencer (Player 299) cowered under peer pressure, picked the hardest shape to cut a cookie out of in the game Dalgona and ended up being eliminated. Everyone eliminated has made a key error they didn’t realize until it was too late. And that’s why Mai has succeeded.

Who is Mai from Squid Game: The Challenge?

Born in Vietnam, Mai was dealing with real life or death situations as a child. In the show, she recalls the time her family fled Taiwan in 1975, near the end of the Vietnam War, when she had a gun placed to her head before her mother pulled her to safety. She doesn’t attribute that experience to her success in the show, but when you watch how easily she shifts between tears and stoicism, friend and foe, prey and predator, you can tell she didn’t just pick that up when she stepped into the Squid Game drab dormitories.

She’s garnered a reputation among her competitors as being a bit duplicitous for good reason. She saved Chad (Player 286) from elimination earlier in the season instead of a woman, going against the pact the remaining women made. She targeted Ashley Tolbert (Player 278) for elimination during the dice rolling game, even though everyone agreed they’d only gamble their own elimination because she felt she wasn’t a team player.

Even with this perception attached to her, Mai managed to somehow earn the respect and trust of some of the best players in the game. TJ Stukes (Player 182) was the de facto leader in numerous challenges, and when it came time for him to select a player to save from elimination, he chose Mai. This was after a few contestants claimed they heard her saying she couldn’t stand him. Chad (Player 286) lasted until the final 12 and swore to protect Mai. He trusted her and her alone to tell him where to move in the glass bridge challenge.

Outside of Squid Game: The Challenge, Mai lives in Fairfax County, Virginia, and is an immigration adjudicator who reviews international students’ F-1 visa applications to study in the United States. Performing the job involves a balancing act of empathizing with the struggles of fellow immigrants and not letting emotions control her decisions. Throughout the competition, we saw why that unique ability served her well.

Is Mai a finalist in Squid Game: The Challenge?

Mai demonstrated why she was the smartest player in Squid Game: The Challenge when she secured her spot as one of the three finalists. In the game “Circle of Trust,” the nine players left sat blindfolded while the guards picked one person to take off their blindfold and retrieve a miniature coffin. That player had to choose which blindfolded player’s desk she wanted to place the coffin on. The player who got the coffin would be eliminated unless they correctly chose who placed it on their desk.

Mai was already branded as a double-crosser shortly before the game. So, a game where you have to both hope no one suspects you are trying to eliminate them and decide who tried to eliminate you with contestants that already don’t trust you seemed like a surefire elimination for Mai. That’s when she went to work.

Mai’s spot as a finalist was secured after Elliott (Player 429) placed a coffin on her desk. Little did he know Mai’s work as an adjudicator was based on her ability to analyze people and determine their intentions. So, when she correctly picked Elliott because he glanced around with a guilty look, that was just another day at work for Mai. She was the first person to guess correctly, and even her staunchest detractors, like Ashley, were impressed by her intuition to the point no one dared put a coffin on her desk for the remainder of the game.

We’ll see if she can outsmart two more people on her way to $4.56 million in the Squid Game: The Challenge finale.