Alice in Borderland Season 2 Explained: What Does Joker’s Card Mean In The Last Episode?
Alice in Borderland on Netflix is one of the series similar to Squid Game, as this Japanese production of intrigue and mystery has its protagonists locked in a world where they participate in lethal games. Based on the manga of the same name, the show tells the story of Ryohei Arisu (Kento Yamazaki), a boy obsessed with video games who get trapped in Borderland, an alternate version of Tokyo.
There he meets the girl Usagi (Tao Tsuchiya) and they both face a series of numbered games with a deck of cards, where the losers die and those who manage to finish all of them and collect some cards will be able to return to the real world. In the first season of the Japanese survival thriller series on Netflix, Arisu and Usagi make it to the final rounds, but season 2 has more dangerous challenges in store for them.
Alice in Borderland: Explained the End of Season 2 Of The Netflix Series
In the second installment of Alice in Borderland, the protagonists are very close to reaching their goal of returning to the real world, but the Queen of Hearts, Mira (Minako Kotobuki), stands in the way. After several deaths of teammates and friends and after defeating the King of Swords, Mira takes Arisu and Usagi to the last game, where they must complete three rounds of croquet, but nothing is as easy as it sounds. Mortally wounded and with Mira running mind games, finishing the rounds of the game is complicated for the couple.
In the end, they manage to solve all the difficulties and complete the game and together with all the survivors they are given the choice to decide whether to stay as permanent residents in Borderland or leave it. Arisu and Usagi refuse to stay in this world, while the characters Banda (Hayato Isomura) and Yaba (Katsuya Maiguma) agree, which could make them the ones in control of the games in a third season. Thus, the survivors who reject the offer finally wake up in the real world inside a hospital and discover that the fireworks they saw at the beginning of the series were a meteorite that crashed in Tokyo.
All the Borderland participants are survivors of the impact and their hearts stopped for a minute. During that time, they literally fought for their lives in the games in a kind of limbo. None have any memory of what happened in Borderland. Although when Arisu and Usagi meet again, they feel like they already know each other because they share a special bond. It seems like a happy ending for the survivors, but some things seem to indicate that they are not in the real world, because on a table some cards are moved by the wind and the only one that remains is Jokers. That could mean this is just another level of the games, one even more dangerous because they must regain their memories before some deadly challenge ends their lives.
Alice in Borderland Season 2: What Does The Joker Card Mean?
The Joker card or the Wild Card, is represented by a mysterious character who is the one who controls all the games and Borderland. It is hinted that he created Borderland as a limbo to give a second chance to people who want to continue living or stay in that world if they were not satisfied with their lives. Since in the series the letter does not appear in the games and is only seen in the scene at the end of season 2, it is implied that perhaps Joker returns everyone to Borderland or that they are still within this world.
Another explanation could be that the Joker letter is in real life for Arisu and the other Borderland survivors to see and remember what they experienced and learned about life at that moment their hearts weren’t beating. Lastly, if the show doesn’t have a season 3, the card could be a way for it to have an ending open to interpretation, something similar to what happens in Christopher Nolan’s ‘Inception’ with the rotating totem of Leonardo’s character DiCaprio.
