‘The 8 Show’ Ending Explained

Editor’s note: The below contains spoilers for the finale of The 8 Show.

After three years of living off the memories of Squid Game, Netflix has finally offered us a new successor that hits the same bloodthirsty spot as the former. Like Squid Game,The 8 Show showcases a dystopian horror reality series where contestants are pitted against each other in harrowing trials of survival, all for a delicious prize pot. But the structure of The 8 Show is vastly different, mimicking a real working society on a smaller scale in a closed system, which traps in all the pent-up resentment and anxieties until they explode in one fateful episode. It explores how power dynamics are naturally formed, based upon chance and different personalities, while also delving into the potentially violent consequences. While working in this political framework, the series also delves into the depths of humanity and how far a desperate, impoverished, and tortured human is willing to go. These themes culminate in the finale, as the warring sides finally end the game, but not without a price.

What Are the Rules of ‘The 8 Show’?

Named after the floor they reside on (1F to 8F), the eight contestants are picked for this show based on their financial difficulties. We primarily follow 3F (Ryu Jeon-yeol) through the series, who was 900 million won in debt to loan sharks and was contemplating suicide when he received the first deposits of money for his “wasted time.” This encourages him to partake in the show, where time is quite literally money. In his three-window, completely bare room there is a screen that displays the amount of money he has earned by simply existing, increasing at every minute interval by a huge amount. But of course, this comes at a price, with each item he is allowed to order being sold at one hundred times the real-world price.

As the eight floors congregate together, they slowly pick apart the rules of the place, which can become difficult to keep up with. These include no blocking the infinite number of cameras, no taking things bought in the room outside, and remaining inside the rooms between midnight and 8 AM. They also realize that the time represented by a glaring timer in the common hall can be used as currency, which they first use to buy communal items. But more sinister revelations are made as they discover that each floor makes money at a different rate, in ascending order using the Fibonacci sequence, leaving 8F (Chun Woo-Hee) with the highest earnings and an eight-window room. She is also the one that gets their daily food and water delivery, needing to send it down the chutes in order to distribute it to the rest of the contestants… sound familiar?

With 8F reflecting the highest class that controls its resources, the reality show deftly sets up a more simplified version of the class system and watches how the group’s responses to it unfold. Combine this with the fact they blindly pick their floors using cards, and it reflects how people are born into certain classes by chance. But when they discover that the only way to earn more time is to entertain their guests, things take a sinister turn, especially as the person that controls their resources has a psychopathic streak. Quickly being divided into the lower floors and higher floors, violence becomes the ultimate form of entertainment, where the working class is forced to take the brunt of it. Even after a rebellion, 8F returns to her place as queen and decides brute force isn’t enough, turning to a horrific form of psychological torture, ensuring that the timer never runs out.

Do the Players Escape ‘The 8 Show’?

By the time the finale rolls around, it feels as if 8F’s words from an earlier episode are prophetic: “the show will never end.” There is another rebellion, where 4F (Lee Yul-em), who was 8F’s lackey, switches sides after finding out there may be a way to change rooms. Remember when 1F (Bae Seong-woo) made the comment about needing a whopping one billion won from this place? Turns out it was to be able to change rooms, or as we later discover, to buy the instructions to change rooms. After enduring all the abuse inflicted by 8F and her crew, from the overt brutality to even just becoming the sewage system of the place, this revelation completely cracks him. As the group has resignedly agreed to leave the place, 1F proves that you don’t have to be a psychopath to become a tyrant.

We discover he used to be a clown in his former life, and as such, he donned his traditional makeup and created a makeshift tightrope for one last performance. In order to keep the timer running, 1F precariously balances along the rope and even starts manically jumping on it. As he jumps higher and higher, the camera follows him, showing him on level with the eighth floor. In a sense, it reflects the culmination of 1F’s journey and ambitions. His generous demeanor certainly gained him allies within the group but also barred him from joining the higher-class psychopaths. Yet this also allowed no one to suspect him of being as ambitious as he was, with everyone assuming he needed one billion won to fix problems in the outside world and not necessarily get ahead here. But that ambition is what broke him and allowed him to truly step into the shoes of 8F, becoming physically in control of the other players. That being said, this display of talent also suggests how the working class tends to be more practically skilled than higher ones, yet are the ones that become exploited and disadvantaged. His up-and-down journey and his ambition are also what disconnect him from reality, as his jumps become too far (reaching all the way to the fictional city) and cause him to go down in flames.

In hope of saving him, the group desperately try to run the timer out to leave, with their display of emotion simply earning more time as their torment is once again reduced to bite-sized entertainment to be consumed. In a manic frenzy, 3F decides to break one of the aforementioned golden rules: do not interfere with the cameras. By destroying the cameras and stripping the consumers of their voyeuristic need for entertainment, the showrunners have no choice but to unlock the doors. This also hints at the Zeno effect, which proposes that a system cannot change if it is being observed. Also used in the finale of Escape Room, this idea reflects how the reality show was a closed system that had no interaction with the outside world, rendering it a sort of standstill moment in time, especially since time itself was fluid. Only once they had stopped being consumed were they able to make a genuine change, that is, escape, with the open doors finally allowing the real linear flow of time to rush in.

The Players Part Ways After ‘The 8 Show’

Just as the game ends, 3F finds himself in an auditorium by himself, filled with a sea of empty red seats. Though this could just mean everyone escaped before he reached there or there was no one watching at all, it may also hint at how readily available entertainment is now, since people can watch from the comfort of their own homes. The people who had enjoyed their suffering and tipped them for it are now simply a sea of anonymous figures — he can’t see anyone, because no one really knows who is watching. This idea is amplified by the differences in aspect ratios, where the reality TV show is filmed in a high definition 16:9 frame used by most media, while real life is in a grainy 1:1 ratio, making it seem less real.

We return to 3F’s apartment, who is dealing with the trauma of the game and decides to reunite the players for one last time at 1F’s funeral. 3F, 2F (Lee-Joo-young), 4F, and 5F (Moon Jeong-hee) meet each other and decide to keep their identities hidden, once again indicating how the show was essentially an entirely different world and the people they became during it were more like performances rather than their real selves. This is especially pertinent to 4F’s storyline, which revealed that she had compartmentalized so much that she had behaved like an entirely different person just to entertain. By keeping these parts of their identities separate, it also allows them to move on from this horrific game more easily. This is also helped by the news of 8F’s arrest for arson as she couldn’t quite let go of the artistic psychopathy she had cultured.

‘The 8 Show’ Post-Credits Scene Hints at a Season 2

As the former contestants part ways to live their new lives with their newfound wealth, the show winds down to a close, but not before a sinister post-credits scene. The intelligent and side-switching 7F (Park Jeong-min) was also one of the players that didn’t appear at the funeral, instead paying his respects to 1F by tracking down his wife and relieving some of her financial issues. He does, however, appear in a post-credits scene where he is sharing a script that details his harrowing journey with a producer. The producer gave his script his sterling approval, a far cry from the previous script 7F had offered in a flashback, and even implied that he had been in the same game. However, after laughing it off as a joke, we’ll never know if that is true or not, but it leaves us with a damning statement that curtails The 8 Show‘s commentary on class and wealth: “Our lives are pretty great though.” No matter the emotional and physical trauma that the show leaves, in the end, wealth and class have such a strong hold over humanity that the former seems negligible.

On a more positive note (for us consumers, not the players), the post-credits scene also hints at a potential Season 2, with the producer exclaiming that it is worthy of a sequel. As such, The 8 Show somehow manages to jam-pack the eight episodes with multiple thematic concerns, which can be dizzying yet leaves us feeling as haunted and despaired as Squid Game did. With the criticism of the class system and how much power wealth has over us, the exploration of the depths of humanity, and the critiques of complacent consumerism, The 8 Show deftly flicks over these, and it will be interesting to see how much of this could seep over to the potential second season.

All episodes of The 8 Show are available to stream on Netflix in the U.S.

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