Joker: Folie à Deux End explained: The joke is on us

Note: Full spoilers for Joker: Folie à Deux are below.

The highly anticipated and long-awaited sequel to 2019's $1 billion-grossing “Joker” is finally here: “Joker: Folie à Deux” is now in theaters. Joaquin Phoenix reprises his Oscar-winning role, this time alongside Lady Gaga as this universe's version of Harley Quinn. And this time it's a musical.

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

Big spoiler warning before we move on. If you haven't seen Joker: Folie à Deux yet, 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 prisoner, looking into the camera and bleeding to death. In the background, his attacker takes a knife and cuts himself a new smile, similar to how he is portrayed in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, played by Heath Ledger, suggesting that this could be the new Joker, someone who is ready to slip into the role that Arthur created but was unable to embody.

Good God, how does he even manage to get Arthur to kill him on his own?

A prison guard, who is probably in cahoots with the murderer, tells Arthur that he has visitors. At first this seems to be the preparation for a big reveal. Is it someone from his past? Harley Quinn? Harvey Dent? Someone? But no, Arthur follows him into an unprotected hallway and is stabbed repeatedly in the stomach.

What happens shortly before?

A few things.

The final hour – and we mean an entire hour – of Joker: Folie à Deux is a gritty courtroom drama. At a certain point, Arthur fires his lawyer (Catherine Keener) and begins representing himself. He speaks with a southern accent for an entire scene, which is admittedly pretty funny (and more than a little confusing).

While the jury was reading its verdict, a car bomb exploded outside the courtroom. Arthur briefly escapes, aided by some acolytes, and goes to Harley Quinn, who feels that his courtroom confession that the Joker is not his true personality, but something he is displaying and taking full responsibility for six murders takes over, a betrayal was of herself and of her love. She leaves him on the “Joker Stairs” from the first film, where he is promptly arrested again and sent back to prison.

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. Not only does he lack the seriousness of Billy Dee Williams, Tommy Lee Jones, or Aaron Eckhart, but one also wonders how he rose through the ranks so quickly that he's already Gotham's district attorney before he turns 30.

Does he become Two-Face in the film?

Well, that's an interesting question. After the car bomb goes off, expect to see the carnage it caused. And you expect to see Harvey's face half blown away. It is, after all, an R-rated film. But as the camera pans around to assess the damage, he is seen with cuts (or something) on ​​one side of his face. But you can't really see him well, and it would have been much clearer that the bombing had torn half of his face off. Like much of “Joker: Folie à Deux,” it fails to fully immerse itself in the matter. Maybe he was turned into Two-Face. Maybe it wasn't him. Who knows.

Is there anything else we should know?

The prison guards with whom Arthur had a good relationship (led by Brendan Gleeson's Jackie Sullivan) also feel betrayed by Arthur. They attack him in the shower before the verdict is announced, possibly sexually harassing him in the process (as in the Harvey Dent thing, that's pretty unclear). They also murder one of his friends; Arthur is in his cell listening to them kill this guy.

But nothing really comes of it; Arthur doesn't talk about the abuse he suffered or the fact that his friend was killed in prison. There are no charges against the guards, nor does anyone else admit this. It's just something that happens for no real reason, isn't explored further in the film, and then is just left out entirely.

Good Lord.

Yes.

Anything else?

Yes, at one point Harley tells Arthur that she is pregnant with his child after a brief tryst in prison. He brings it up again later. But it's very unclear whether they even had sex or whether she tells him the truth about her pregnancy. Honestly, it's an odd wrinkle to put in there, especially when they don't explore it in any meaningful way – or at all, really.

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

We can't imagine that happening, although there are certainly still things at play – perhaps Harley's daughter (if there even is a daughter) can become the protagonist of this universe, Harley Quinn, and the guy who killed Arthur becomes the Joker of this universe. There's also the Harvey Dent/Two-Face and the question of whether Brendan Gleeson's character will continue to rape and kill prisoners (you know, something every Joker: Folie à Deux viewer is curious about). But this film is so relentlessly unpleasant that it's hard to imagine anyone wanting to come back for Thirds.

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