‘Joker 2’ Ending Explained: The Joke’s On Us

Note: There are full spoilers below for “Joker: Folie à Deux”

The highly anticipated, long-awaited sequel to the $1 billion grossing “Joker” (from 2019) has finally arrived with “ Joker: Folie à Deux ” now in theaters. Joaquin Phoenix is reprising his Academy Award-winning role, this time joined by Lady Gaga as this universe’s version of Harley Quinn. And this time, it’s a musical .

This “Joker” is a lot – it’s a courtroom drama and a prison yarn and a full-bodied musical, with Joker and Harley singing along to old standards. But how does it end? That’s what we’re here to talk about.

Massive spoiler warning before we go any further. If you haven’t seen “Joker: Folie à Deux,” go watch it and come back later. This article will still be here. We promise.

How does “Joker: Folie à Deux” end?

It ends with Arthur Fleck (Phoenix), in prison and alone, having just been fatally stabbed by another inmate, looking towards camera and bleeding to death. In the background, his attacker takes a knife and cuts himself a new smile, in a manner similar to how he is portrayed in Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight,” as played by Heath Ledger, suggesting this might be the new Joker, someone who’s willing to step into the role Arthur created but couldn’t embody.

Good lord, how does he even get Arthur alone to kill him?

A prison guard, likely in cahoots with the murderer, tells Arthur that he has a visitor. This initially seems like the set-up to a big reveal. Is it somebody from his past? Harley Quinn? Harvey Dent? Anybody? But no, Arthur follows him into an unprotected hallway and gets stabbed repeatedly in the stomach.

What happens right before this?

A few things.

The last hour – and we do mean a full hour – of “Joker: Folie à Deux” is a grim courtroom drama. At a certain point, Arthur fires his attorney (Catherine Keener) and starts to represent himself. For an entire scene, he speaks with a southern accent, which, admittedly, is kind of fun (and more than a little baffling).

As the jury is reading their verdict, a car bomb goes off outside the courtroom. Arthur briefly escapes, aided by some acolytes, and goes to meet Harley Quinn, who feels that his courtroom confession that the Joker isn’t his actual personality but something that he puts on for show, taking full responsibility for six murders, was a betrayal of himself and of their love. She leaves him on the “Joker stairs” from the first movie, where he is promptly arrested again and sent back to jail.

Harvey Dent is in this movie, right?

He is, although he is played by Harry Lawtey, an actor in his late 20s who looks even younger than that. Not only does he lack the gravitas of Billy Dee Williams, Tommy Lee Jones or Aaron Eckhart, but you kind of wonder how he rose in the ranks so quickly that he’s already Gotham’s district attorney before he turns 30.

Does he become Two-Face in the movie?

Well, that’s an interesting question. After the car bomb goes off, you expect to see the carnage that it caused. And you expect to see Harvey’s face half blown off. This is, after all, an R-rated movie. But as the camera pans around to survey the damage, you do see him with cuts (or something) on one side of his face. But you don’t really get a good look at him, and it could have been much more explicit that the bombing had taken off half of his face. Like much of “Joker: Folie à Deux,” it fails to fully commit to the bit. Maybe he was turned into Two-Face. Maybe he wasn’t. Who knows.

Anything else we should know about?

The prison guards that Arthur had an okay relationship with (led by Brendan Gleeson’s Jackie Sullivan) also feel betrayed by Arthur. They attack him in the shower before the verdict is read, perhaps sexually assaulting him in the process (like the Harvey Dent thing, it’s pretty unclear). They also murder a buddy of his; Arthur is in his cell and listening to them kill this guy.

But nothing really comes of it; Arthur doesn’t talk about the abuse that was inflicted upon him or the fact that his friend in jail was killed. There aren’t charges brought against the guards, nobody else acknowledges it either. It’s just a thing that happens for no real reason, isn’t investigated further by the movie and is then just dropped altogether.

Jeez.

Yeah.

Anything else?

Yeah, at one point, Harley tells Arthur that she’s pregnant with his child, after a brief jailhouse tryst. He brings it up again later. But it’s very unclear if they even had sex or if she’s telling him the truth about her pregnancy. A weird wrinkle to throw in there, honestly, especially if they don’t explore it in any meaningful way – or any way at all, really.

So there probably won’t be a “Joker 3?”

We can’t imagine that happening, although there are certainly things still in play – maybe Harley’s daughter (if there is a daughter at all) can become that universe’s mainline Harley Quinn and the guy who killed Arthur will become that universe’s Joker. There’s also the Harvey Dent/Two-Face of it all and whether or not Brendan Gleeson’s character will continue to rape and kill inmates (you know, something that every “Joker: Folie à Deux” viewer is curious about). But this movie is so unrelentingly unpleasant that it’s hard to imagine anyone wanting to come back for thirds.

“Joker: Folie à Deux” is in theaters now.

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