Squid Game The Challenge winner Mai Whelan claims she has yet to receive the $4.56 million first prize - 10 months after filming the Netflix show. The 55 year old won over viewers of the game show with her dramatic story of how she escaped the communist regime in her homeland of Vietnam after the fall of Saigon - as well as her cunning streak that saw her beat 455 other players to scoop the jackpot. In the final of the programme, which was inspired by Netflix’s smash-hit dystopian Korean series Squid Game, she beat 27 year old scuba instructor Phill Cain after multiple rounds of rock, paper, scissors.