‘Alice in Borderland’ Season 3 Ending Explained: Who Is the Joker? Do Arisu and Usagi Survive?

Three seasons. Twenty-two episodes. One empty Tokyo. Fifty-two playing cards — 54, counting the two Jokers. A whole lot of fatal games. Countless players — and countless dead bodies. And more than a few mysteries. Strictly by the numbers, Alice in Borderland has a lot going on. 

Like the Lewis Carroll books after which which writer-artist Haro Aso named the manga on which the show is based, Alice is a surreal, frequently sinister wonderland. The Borderland a place in which we now know people undergoing near-death experiences in the real world travel to a sort of abandoned limbo-Tokyo. There, they must undergo lethal competitions themed around playing cards — number cards in Season 1, face cards in Season 2, and the Joker in Season 3. You either die or make it all the way to the end.

If you’re reading this, congratulations! You’re an Alice in Borderland survivor! 

That’s no mean feat, as creator/co-writer/director Shinsuke Sato is a master at creating empathetic (or in the bad guys’ case, entertaining) characters and putting them through terrifying ordeals that end in almost certain death, for nearly two dozen episodes in a row. It’s damn hard to watch these poor people get knocked off towers or shot with flaming arrows or zapped in the brain with space lasers! But the bizarre imagery and endearing characters make it all worth it.

Now that you’ve gone through the emotional wringer, though, you probably have some questions about what exactly went down at the end of Alice Season 3. Fortunately, we’ve got answers. Read on for the who, what, when, where, how, and (hopefully) why of it all. And don’t forget the Joker! Warning: major spoilers ahead!

Who wins the final game?

When the season finale picks up, our heroes Arisu (Kento Yamazaki) and Usagi (Tao Tsuchiya) — as well as the season’s secret antagonist, the death-obsessed Professor Ryuji Matsuyama (Kento Kaku) — are still trapped in the final game. It’s a grid-based maze where life or death can depend on a roll of the dice. Through teamwork, they make it to the exit, along with their fellow contestants Rei (Tina Tamashiro), Sachiko (Risa Sudou), Nobu (Kotaro Daigo), and Yuna (Akana Ikeda). As only six of the seven survivors are permitted to leave, Arisu volunteers to stay behind so the others can live on.

Little does he know this decision makes him the winner. He watches through a viewscreen as a cataclysmic earthquake and flood sweeps over the Borderland, nearly washing his friends away. Breaking through the wall, he manages to save nearly everyone. But Ryuji, the mad professor, tries to drag Usagi down with him in his journey to the true land of death through vanishing into the whirlpool-like vortex at the center of the flood.

Who is the Joker?

When Arisu surfaces from the waters, he winds up face to face with Banda (Hayato Isomura), the grinning psycho who’s seemed like the logical candidate for the games’ missing master, the Joker. Arisu refuses Banda’s offer to become a citizen of the Borderland — but the Borderland itself stops Banda from shooting Arisu to death, blasting the killer in the head with one of its trademark red space lasers.

Then from out of the fog steps the first of the episode’s many surprise cameos — movie legend Ken Watanabe, wearing a bowler hat and dressed all in black, his eyes milky with age (or otherworldliness). He’s not the Joker, he says, just a watchman. (The credits bill him as “Elderly Gentleman.”) The Joker is merely a card that represents a concept — the passage of time, the gap between things, the border between life and death. His job is to guard that border. 

Do Arisu and Usagi live?

It’s the luck of the draw that saves Arisu. Presented with two cards to pick from, Arisu discovers that both are Jokers. Rather than ensure his death, though, the Watchman says this gives him a choice as to his fate. Naturally, he opts to return to the real world — with the ominous warning that a disaster much bigger than the meteorite strike that sent him and so many to the Borderland during the first two seasons will soon befall that world, just as it has here.

The flow of time, which halted for Arisu’s final confrontation, resumes, and he jumps in the water to save Usagi. Ryuji relents and helps save her before going under himself. Within her mind — or in some magic pocket dimension, who knows — They float off down a safer current, and the next thing you know, we’re back in our world.

Who are all those cameos?

You thought Ken Watanabe was the only surprise this finale had up its sleeve? Think again. Back in the real world, Arisu resumes his job as a counselor for people who’ve survived trauma, many of them during the same events he’s experienced. All his friends from Season 3 are thriving: Sachiko and her son have escaped her abusive husband, bullying victim Nobu is thriving as a recent graduate, Rei is a successful animator who’s reconciled with her estranged mom, and Usagi and Arisu themselves are expecting.

But wait, there’s more! A whole gaggle of Season 1 & 2 survivors — evil Niragi (Dori Sakurada), trans martial artist Kuina (Asahina Aya), military man Aguni (Sho Aoyagi), high-school archery specialist Heiya (Yuri Tsunematsu), and the mysterious Chishiya (Nijirō Murakami) with his Cheshire cat grin. All of them are doing well, with many having turned over a new leaf following their brushes with death.

Okay, but what is up with that final scene?

Remember the Watchman’s ominous warning that something even bigger than the meteorite strike that sent Arisu and so many others to the Borderland is headed for Earth? Even as Arisu and his colleagues complain of frequent tremors in Tokyo, news reports reveal low-grade earthquakes have been occurring along fault lines around the world, brought on by environmental changes. (Fracking, possibly?)

As the news reports shift to English, the action shifts to America, where at a busy cafe the camera zooms in on the name tag of a waitress named…ALICE.

What does the ending of Alice in Borderland Season 3 mean? Alice in Borderland Season 3 Ending Explained:

The meaning of the final scene seems obvious enough, right? An apocalyptic situation is about to unfold, and this American Alice will be sent to the Borderland as a result. In other words, it’s hinting at an American spinoff — much the same way that [SPOILER ALERT] the final scene of Squid Game Season 3 did. 

But beyond that, what’s the meaning of Alice in Borderland’s finale? Love. That’s always been the meaning of this show. While there are many dystopian life-and-death game shows and movies out there — from Squid Game to The Running Man to Battle Royale to The Hunger Games — they typically stand as commentary on a malevolent force at work in our own world: capitalism, fascism, conformity, the class system, culture-wide callousness towards suffering and death. 

Alice, by contrast, has never struck me as political in this way. The meaning of this show has long been that people should love one another and take care of one another, because it’s the right thing to do. Time and again, people who’ve only just met put their lives on the line, often sacrificing them, for each other. Arisu is granted his final “win” because he volunteered to stay behind so that others might live. 

Since we now know all of this is taking place on the border between life and death, the Borderland now really does feel like some kind of final testing ground for people’s character. Are you gonna go feral and launch a one-person war against everyone in your quest for victory? Or are you gonna create a real community and help it survive? Even the games are structured so that cooperation is key. The Borderland is a harsh judge, and an unfair one, but in its own weird way it’s enforcing the Golden Rule. The basic human dignity of the people around you is worth fighting for, even dying for.

Huh, maybe this show is political after all.

Will there be an Alice in Borderland Season 4?

Netflix has yet to announce if we’ll see more of the Borderland in the future. But the tease at the end certainly provides a route for a future American spinoff. Creator Shinsuke Sato has said he’d be open to making more Alice himself, while stars Kento Yamazaki and Tao Tsuchiya are both up for it as well. Tsuchiya even has a pretty cool idea for a follow-up herself. That said, it’s ultimate audience interest and Netflix budgeting that determine whether more Alice is in the cards. So to speak.

Sean T. Collins (@seantcollins.com on Bluesky and theseantcollins on Patreon) has written about television for The New York Times, Vulture, Rolling Stone, and elsewhere. He is the author of Pain Don’t Hurt: Meditations on Road House. He lives with his family on Long Island.