Following the showdown with the Queen of Hearts at the end of Alice in Borderland Season 2, all the surviving players, including Arisu and Usagi, were given a chance to choose their fate. While the bad guys, Banda and Yaba, decided to become the permanent residents of the new world, the main characters chose to return to the real world. That’s when the television series reveals that Borderland was nothing but a purgatory, where the souls of the victims of the meteor strike were stuck. Well, while fans thought it to be a happy ending for our beloved characters, the Joker Card’s chilling arrival in the real world hinted at an unfinished ordeal. So, what does the Joker Card mean? Let’s find out.
Alice in Borderland: Joker Card Meaning in Manga
Unlike the Netflix series, the manga didn’t feature Joker as a card; instead, after winning the final game against the Queen of Hearts, Arisu encountered Joker as a shadowy entity. The entity engages him in a conversation, in which they ask him if they look like a ‘God or a Devil.’ A confused Arisu replies that he thinks of him as a ferryman, responsible for taking the souls of the players, either to the real world or the afterlife.
We can also say that the Joker is a supernatural entity who has been overseeing the events that occurred in the Borderlands. Additionally, a possibility also suggests that they are the orchestrator of the games that decided the fate of the ones who felt prey to the incident of Shibuya.
When the tragedy took place in Shibuya, thousands of people were gravely injured, and some of them also went into a coma. The ones in a comatose situation were taken to the Borderlands to participate in the psychological death games to fight the life and death situation.
When the main characters fought to the end, the Joker showed up and asked them to make the ultimate choice: to stay or to leave. When Arisu, Usagi, Kuina, and Chishiya decided to leave, they found themselves awakening at the hospital, with no memories of the Borderland, the people they met there, or the games they were forced to play.
What Does the Joker Card Mean in Netflix’s Alice in Borderland?
The Netflix series took a different approach and instead of showing Joker as the shadowy figure, it decided to feature Joker as the wild card. Well, it never looked as frightening as the television series made it out to be. At the end of Alice in Borderland Season 2, the cards are kept on a table, and when the wind blows, all of them get scattered except the Joker. The scene clearly hinted at the unresolved chaos that awaited.
While the previous seasons of Alice in Borderland followed the original manga closely, we can sense that the third season is going to take a different route. In the first place, Joker is a wild card and not an entity in the television series, so it means a final game needs to be played to end the brutality of the Borderland.
Now, what is the Joker card in Alice in Borderland? Far from its comical roots, it hints at a chaotic final game that won’t let the surviving players lead a normal life until they deal with it. Therefore, all we can do now is guess, guess, and guess, until the series arrives and we get to see how the creators manage to stay at par after creating all the hype around Alice in Borderland Season 3.
Shashank Shakya
