** Spoilers for Alice in Borderland season 2 ahead!**
Alice in Borderland gave us a world of horrors—that acid-dousing scene lives rent-free in my head—and compelling mysteries. But by the end of season two, the show’s central mystery of “how did all these characters get to this world?” appeared to have been solved. However, that naturally left another question in the mind of fans: Could there ever be a season three?
How does Alice in Borderland season 2 end?
There’s a lot to take in during Alice in Borderland’s season 2 finale. As Arisu and Usagi play a game of croquet with Mira, a.k.a. the Queen of Hearts, she throws various scenarios at them to get them to crack. They’re in a simulation created by bored future humans? Nope! They’re androids who wealthy people bet on for sport? Also nope! When Arisu and Usagi press for the real truth she throws them a more plausible theory: They’re in a psychiatric hospital where Arisu is struggling to process the deaths of his friends Karube and Chota (who, from his perspective, sacrificed themselves to save him in the Seven of Hearts game.) This seems for a few minutes like the real truth of it all, but it’s not. And because this is a story about love above all else, Usagi slashes her own wrists to snap Arisu out of the illusion and both are able to return to the game of croquet. When they finish, Mira is killed, but not before telling our protagonists that they should learn to enjoy life more.
Arisu then gets to see his friends one last time (sobs) before he wakes up in a real hospital. Turns out that what really happened was a meteorite hit Tokyo—those were the fireworks in the sky everyone in the Borderlands saw—and caused utter devastation. Karube and Chota were among the first to die, but Arisu survived the initial blast and has been hovering between life and death in the hospital. The people he met in the Borderlands, including Usagi, are other survivors who ended up in the same position. Arisu reunites with Usagi even though they have no memory of each other, and the camera pans away from the hospital. It keeps panning, reaches an outdoor table where some playing cards have been left … and suddenly all the cards blow away until only the Joker remains. Roll credits!
What does the Joker card represent?
The Joker is a character in the Alice in Borderland manga that the show is based on. He’s not a villain, but rather a “ferryman” type character who guides people between the worlds of the living and the dead. A neutral and inevitable party, in other words. Perhaps the mysterious card we see is less of a cliffhanger, more of a signal that the Joker is always present in this world and the one beyond?
But all that being said, there was a sequel to the original manga where we find out what happened to our heroes in later life …
What happens in the sequel to the manga?
Poor old Arisu has another near-death experience in the sequel Alice in Borderland Retry—while his wife is in labor, no less. (No prizes for guessing who the wife is!) That could easily form the basis for a third season. Or there’s always the possibility the showrunners could adapt the spin-off manga Alice on Border Road, which follows different characters.
Bear in mind that Alice in Borderland was a huge hit for Netflix so everyone is presumably aware there’s an audience for more. (Just don’t create a reality show based on the games and we should be fine.)
Has Netflix greenlit Alice in Borderland season three?
Fans of the show got a big, very exciting surprise on September 27, 2023! After a long period of complete silence about a possible season three, the official Netflix Twitter/X account suddenly dropped this un-captioned image featuring ten playing cards, playing cards of course being the instantly recognizable symbol of Alice in Borderland:
Can you work out the code contained within the cards? Yeah, I had trouble too. (I wouldn’t survive five minutes in a real Alice in Borderland game.) Basically—look at the type of card first. The first card up there is a spade, so write down the word SPADE. Now look at the number on the card and apply that to the word you just wrote to uncover a letter. The third letter of SPADE is A, so you’ve got your A for “Alice” right there!
Here’s the full answer to the puzzle, if you’re like me and simply cannot do brain-teasers (it doesn’t help that the card suit with the three-leaf-like symbol is called both ‘club’ and ‘clover’ depending on where you are in the world!)
Card 1: 3/SPADE – A
Card 2: 2/CLUB – L
Card 3: 2/DIAMOND – I
Card 4: A(1)/CLUB – C
Card 5: 2/HEART – E
Card 6: 5/HEART – T
Card 7: A(1)/HEART – H
Card 8: 4/HEART – R
Card 9: 5/SPADE – E
Card 10: 2/HEART – E
What do you get? ALICE THREE!
This is an ingenious way to promote a new season! And not long after that little card game dropped, so did the announcement for season three. It’s officially happening and, according to The Hollywood Reporter, Kento Yamazaki and Tao Tsuchiya will be back as Arisu and Usagi! So I’ll see you in the Borderlands when the time comes …
(featured image: Netflix)
