The second season of “Alice in Borderland” is a delight for all lovers of gore. Not only do more people die than in the first installment, they also do so in a more explicit way, even with greater sadism. Now, at the same time that the corpses – or part of them – are scattered in this apocalyptic world, the questions multiply.
For all the people who got lost with the passing of the chapters and couldn’t understand the end, we are going to explain in the following lines, in the simplest way, what happened in the second season and also what they want to tell us with that stranger closing.
Obviously, we will spoilers from the series directed by Shnsuke Santo (“I Am A Hero”), so if you haven’t seen the hit Netflix series yet, it’s best to come back to this space after you do.
What happens in the end?
As we have seen, each survival game has a human being named after a playing card. Due to the inspiration in “Alice in Wonderland”, the final battle could only be against the Queen of Hearts, better known as Mira (Riisa Naka). Important fact: she was the one seen on screen in the abandoned control room in the first season.
Arisu (Kento Yamazaki) and Usagi (Tao Tsuchiya) continue to fight up to this point, with some injuries. The battle with the King of Spades in Episode 7 left many casualties and Kuina (Aya Asahina), Ann (Ayaka Miyoshi), Aguni (Sho Aoyagi), Akane (Yuri Tsunematsu) and Chishiya (Nijirô Murakami) are no longer there or barely have breath to survive a few hours. In fact, Mira hopes that Usagi’s bleeding will get worse and so she uses delaying tactics.
In this context, the main characters continue to ask themselves the most relevant question: if the last game is survived, is it possible to return to the real world? As we have seen in each of the challenges, there are certain characters who repeat that reality is the competition itself. This is because the players became “citizens”. In other words, they went from fighting for their lives to acting as game hosts.
Arisu hopes that Mira has the answer, but she doesn’t want to tell him the truth. For this reason, she tries to convince him that it was all an illusion generated by a trauma: having lost his two great friends, Karube and Chota, in a car accident. Consequently, he would be another patient in a psychiatric institute and she would be the attending physician. There’s a certain hypnotic cadence to this sequence, but Usagi cuts her face to show it’s not a fantasy. At this moment the last hope of the Queen of Hearts is broken, the protagonists show her true feelings and Miran is pierced by the death ray that comes from heaven, accepting her end, although without revealing much more.
Arisu is the big winner because he never gave up. In the end, that’s what the system rewards. In such a way that the players who survive are offered a choice: accept life in this world or return to the one they call “real”. Naturally, the psycho Banda (Hayato Isomura) and his new friend Yaba (Katsuya Maiguma) decide to stay while the rest ask to return.
Do they really come back?
As we see, after each player decides their fate, the main group wakes up in the well-known hospital. Arisu learns that a meteorite fell on Tokyo, partially destroying it. Those who did not die were sent to Borderland, a place that serves as purgatory.
However, there is a key detail: they have forgotten any past together. That is why Arisu and Usagi no longer have a bond, because in this reality they are two strangers. Even so, when they meet in the vending machine, it seems that they maintain a bond that they cannot explain. Will they stay together? There’s no way to know, but the writers leave it there as a possibility.
Will there be a third season?
A final scene has raised many questions. The breeze messes up a series of cards that are on a table and only the joker or Joker remains. This is interpreted as the new enemy of the group. In other words, in a way, the game is not over yet.
If you are not a fan of the world of cards, you should know that the Joker can always change the game. It is a very special letter. It can improve a very bad hand or even enhance a very good one. Of course, the image will always lead us to the character of Batman, the king of tricks and riddles. So we could assume, for example, that the group that survived is not yet in reality and was fooled.
The end of the series is not very different from the one that can be seen in Haro Aso’s manga, on which it is based. According to the page SK Anime, the big difference is that the Joker has an enigmatic encounter with Arisu, while in the Netflix show it is only hinted at. This suggests that the producers are keeping a letter in case another season is approved. The final word, as is often the case with the streaming service, belongs to the viewer.
“Alice in Borderland”: we answer all the questions left from the second season | the stimulus