Alice in Borderland Season 3 Ending Explained: What Happened to the Rest of the Players?
BEWARE, SPOILER ALERT. Alice in Borderland Season 3 landed on Netflix. After overcoming all the card games and returning to the real world, Arisu Ryōhei (Kento Yamazaki) and Yuzuha Usagi (Tao Tsuchiya) are married and leading a happy life in the third season of “Alice in Borderland”. However, due to a memory that torments her, Usagi decides to return to the Borderlands, so Alice is forced to follow her and bring her back. To achieve this, you must overcome even more extreme and bloody tests than the previous ones. So what happened to the protagonists of the Japanese Netflix series based on the Haro Aso manga? Although memories of Borderland only appear in dreams and hallucinations, there is something that disturbs Usagi: her father’s suicide. After speaking with Ryuiji Matsuyama, a psychopathologist interested in near-death experiences, he becomes convinced that he can find answers in the Borderlands. Ryuiji takes advantage of this to reach that world. When Alice discovers that her wife is in a coma, she looks for a way to help her. Although he doesn’t remember Rizuna Ann (Ayaka Miyoshi), he turns to her because she told him about Borderland. She supplies him with a drug that stops his heart for a few minutes and wishes him luck. Back in that world, Arisu recovers some memories and passes the first test, which involves fire arrows.
Alice in Borderland Season 3 Ending Explained: What Happened to the Rest of the Players?
Because the protagonist of “Alice in Borderland” Helps several players survive, they join him in the next round. The next card game includes zombies, cures, and guns. Arisu has a strategy for his group to survive, but he needs to make alliances with other players, so he meets Rei Murikage, a risky young woman who has an ace up her sleeve. When the players get carried away by human selfishness, Arisu changes strategy and manages to keep his team alive, with some additions like Rei and Kazuya. Meanwhile, Usagi and Ryuji face a relentless hail of lasers, and the survivors must board a train where they must guess whether the gas released in each car is toxic or not.
Things get complicated for Usagi and Ryuji’s group, so they must jump onto another train to survive. After achieving this, they cross paths with the train carrying Alice and her team, who face an imminent crash. Alice is seriously injured, but one of her allies helps him recover. In the next test, both groups face another deadly game and lose several members. Those who survive reach the final stage. Arisu and Usagi make it, so they finally meet again. At that moment, Alice reveals to her wife that she is pregnant. This gives them motivation to continue winning and return to the real world.
Who is Behind Everything?
At the end of the second season, Sunato Banda (Hayato Isomura) and Yaba Oki (Katsuya Maiguma) decided to become citizens of Borderland, so they continue with the games. Although they are satisfied with their choice, Banda seeks to make games more interesting, and for that, he needs Arisu, whom he considers the best player. To bring him back to his world, he contacts Ryuiji Matsuyama and manipulates him into kidnapping Usagi. Ryuiji has been obsessed with the afterlife since one of his students died trying to prove one of his theories. After arriving in Borderland, Matsuyama stays close to Usagi and follows Banda’s instructions, but hesitates when she asks him to murder the pregnant woman. The last test involves visions of several possible futures, so Alice’s strategy for everyone to survive begins to fail when each player behaves selfishly. In addition, Ryuiji is responsible for manipulating the players so that they do not follow Arisu’s instructions.
What Happened to Alice and Usagi?
Due to the decisions they made, the situation becomes complicated for the players. Arisu looks for a way to save everyone. Even if he succeeds, he must stay behind. But that does not ensure his wife’s survival, since those who won thanks to his sacrifice face an earthquake and imminent death. When Banda offers him citizenship, Alice rejects him and tries to rescue Usagi. As Arisu fights to get his wife back, Banda visits the real world to murder Alice. Ann stops him, but Banda doesn’t give up, so the Watcher must intervene. After defeating the Watcher in another card game, he rescues his wife and baby from the vortex of death. Meanwhile, Ryuiji Matsuyama allows himself to be carried away by death.
The protagonist of “Alice in Borderland” returns to the real world and reunites with Usagi, who overcame the trauma of his father’s death. The couple resumes their lives and looks for a name for their baby. At the end of season 3, the survivors are shown in the real world. Shuntarō Chishiya (Nijirō Murakami) and Hikari Kuina (Aya Asahina) also appear. The third season closes with a clue about the future of the Netflix series. The story moves to New York, United States, where a waitress named Alice serves customers while the news reports on the increase in seismic activity in various parts of the world. Does it mean there will be a spin-off series?
Arisu’s Choice
In the climax, the mysterious Watchman appears, played by Ken Watanabe. He reveals that Banda must not have had that much power and offers Arisu one last card game. The result is peculiar: two wild cards, and with them a choice. The option is brutally simple. Arisu can jump into the vortex and die, or return to the real world with Usagi and the son they are expecting. The series leaves no room for doubt: he chooses life, accepting the weight of an uncertain, but human, future.
Borderland as Contemporary Purgatory
The third season reinforces the theory of Borderland as a purgatory. A space between life and death where games are tests of will. Those who choose to stay become wandering citizens, shadows tied to this plane. The Watchman is revealed to be a psychopompic figure, a kind of futuristic Charon who guides souls. An almost mythological reading that is reminiscent of the echo of classic stories, from Greek Hades to Dantesque limbo.
Epilogue: A World That Shakes
When everything seems resolved, the series throws a disturbing clue: global earthquakes announce the arrival of new players in Borderland. Among them is a mysterious woman named Alice, from Los Angeles. An international spin-off on the way? It wouldn’t be the first time: it already happened with franchises like Train to Busan. Furthermore, this insinuation connects with current events. The natural disaster as a metaphor for climate change turns the series into a mirror of our own catastrophes. As if games were the dream translation of what we are causing on our planet.
Closure: The Ordinary as Resistance
The outcome is based on a simple but powerful idea: choosing a common life is not giving up, it is surviving. Arisu prefers to raise her son, share routines with Usagi, and experience everyday life. An almost revolutionary gesture in the face of Borderland’s grandiloquence. And here the inevitable question arises: what will happen when someone chooses to return to chaos because normality is unbearable? Maybe that’s the next monster.
