Welcome to the Heavy Spoilers show, I’m your host Paul and this video we’re breaking down Alice in Borderland Season 2. The first series ended in a big way and in it we followed several characters stuck in a simulation that was filled with deadly games and obstacles. Those that won were given specific playing cards that all helped to denote things like the game’s difficulty and themes. Spades are a physical game, clubs are team, diamonds are an intelligence test and hearts are an emotional one. The number represents the difficult and the characters had to play these games in order to collect these cards.
The survivors we followed eventually ended up in beach hotel where several of the players collect all of the cards because they believe that attaining these will send everyone home.
They ended up having to play a literal witch-hunt in order to get the elusive ten of hearts.
In the end it was revealed that the victim Momoka was actually the witch herself and that this was all an elaborate ruse controlled by the game makers. Before they could place her on the fire of judgment the Niragi showed up and they duked it out whilst the place burned around them. They eventually threw her body into it and found footage of both her and Asahi who had revealed herself as the dealer during the game. These are characters that organised games to extend their visas meaning that they didn’t have to constantly take on challenges in order to stay alive.
Now it turned out they’d found the game master’s lair which Arisu and Usagi travelled to. Here they met Chi along with Kuina. They discovered the game masters dead, and it was revealed that they had been players as well. A woman named Mira appeared and announced that there would be new games for the face cards.
In Season 2 the characters learn that she’s the Queen of Hearts.
Now that should be you fully caught up and for the rest of the video it’s full spoilers ahead for season 2. If you enjoy the video, please hit the thumbs up button and make sure you subscribe for videos like this every day.
With that out the way, thank you for clicking this now let’s get into Alice in Borderland Season 2.
Alice in Borderland Season 2 Ending Explained
So, for the first part of the video, I wanna just go through a quick recap of the season and the games so that it adds some context to the end. If you wanna skip ahead though I won’t be mad, and I’ll even tell you what’s on the back of your neck. It’s a spade mate, it’s a spade honest.
Now I love the way the season opens with us watching violence in a game and how it’s used for entertainment which is juxtaposes the mayhem that we cut to in the simulation. From here we pick up immediately after the ending of Season 1 and watch as the survivors from the beach return.
Hunted by an anti-tank rifle the series begins with a bang and the plays pretty much become fish in a barrel. We watch as the King of spades manoeuvres through the town on his blimp and these new boss level characters become some of the main antagonists of the series. I absolutely love the plot device of these, and it adds an extra dimension to the game.
The King of Spades is different to the other ones as it has no designated area and its head Shirabi, is something that we discover more about in the Manga. He was an extremely skilled mercenary who carried with him the belief that to live is to suffer. Thus, he sees his killings as being acts of mercy and his strategy tends to be to let people gather in one place in a large number so that they’re easier to dispatch.
Now in his dying breath we see a flash of him standing over a man with a gun drawn. The manga tells the backstory if this in full and this was his war buddy Apache. They were dispatched on a job behind enemy lines, and it was revealed that this was pretty much a suicide mission that had them as sacrificial lambs.
Apache was badly wounded and though Shirabi tried to pull him out of there he begged for death. He knew it would give him a better chance of surviving but he also saw it as saving him from the pain he would spend the rest of his short life in.
He said that he’d be saving him by shooting him which is again extends to Shirabis outlook on life.
Arisu suspects that each blimp has its own game master inside of them and that defeating the Kings and Queens is the key to going home.
After arriving at the King of Clubs they were greeted by Niragi who ends up becoming the fifth player in the game.
They pretty much play hide the sausage against the King of Clubs and what we learn are the citizens of the country. They are the victors of the previous cycle that ended up winning and chose to stay in Borderland.
Unlike the other players they don’t have visas and they have permanent residency, though they do have to play in the games.
Though they could be written as two dimensional characters, it’s actually easy to become attached to them and because of their sportsmanship you kinda root for them too.
The King of Clubs Kyuma emerges as a big character from this initial game and… pffft having to edit around this dude cos YouTube’s demonetisation policy felt like its own Borderland game.
In the end he and his team lose, and the original manga actually adds some extra context to his final thoughts. It states that he lived his life to the fullest and doesn’t actually have any regrets. In the source material we learn that he arrived 5 months before Arisu and worked his way through the games.
Now elsewhere we see Chi playing the jack of hearts game at the prison. It’s basically like that bit in the office but here they have to whittle each other down to find out who the Jack of Heart is by saying which suit they are due to it being shown on the back of an explosive collar.
It starts off all fun and games but overtime the knives come out with contestants lying to each other so that they can come out on top.
Chi doesn’t have any allies in the game and thus he has to guess who’s lying to him and through process of elimination by the answers given he narrows it down to a 50/50 choice. He goes with his gut and gets it right and exposes that the true jack was communicating with another player through the four cafeteria snacks in order to manipulate the others. Exposed, he’s taken out and we also discover more about borderland itself.
So, Borderland is basically the state between life and death in which players receive several things. Either they die and continue onto death, or they live and get to either remain there or return to the world.
Those that are pulled into the city are picked because they’ve had a near death experience that we’ll talk about in a bit. Thus, they’re pulled in and, on their journey, they see what life really means to them. If they survive, they can go back and those that manage to return don’t remember anything from their time. However, the manga shows that these memories can be accessed under certain conditions.
Mira does have some fun with them, and she basically does every single theory time theory time theory time theory time that we had after the first season.
Now in the Manga she lies several times about what’s going on and initially she says it’s virtual reality. This mirrored in the show with her explaining how nanotechnology led humanity to control their whole world and in 1000 years in the future we exist of dopamine which is why you need to hit the thumbs up button.
In the source material she says that in this VR the prize for winning is to be able to stay longer and design more games.
However, she reveals that’s a f**king lie much like the manga.
She then says it’s ALIENS and androids and just talks s**t about how they’re actually in a therapy session. It perfectly recaptures the original work and I’m sure fans will appreciate how close this is.
Now in the Manga, though the therapy session isn’t real, it does make Arisu realise that he has been drugged. For the end of the show though he uses Usagi and what she means to him to power him on.
Now in reality all of the characters in Borderland have been hit by a mysterious meteorite that descended on Tokyo. Chunks of the asteroid struck people, and these are the fireworks that the characters keep referring to.
This destroyed the city leaving them critically injured and causing the borderland experience. The wounds that they gained in the experience also reflect the ones that they have in real life, and they all have this feeling like they know each other though they can’t remember why.
There’s lots of timey wimey wibbly wobbly stuff and the entire time in Borderland is just a minute in the real world. Those that were closer to the blast entered borderland first and this is why some arrived before others.
We see the borders of the borderlands in this city and witness an overgrown forest, a never-ending mountain range and some elephants.
Now out in the woods, Arisu meets Aguni who survived the events of the first season as well. Haunted by his past he has teamed up with Akane who lost her leg during a dark knight rises challenge.
What Games Are in Alice in Borderland Season 2?
Battling it out with the King of Spades he becomes a big threat for the season along with the remaining face cards.
There’s some big games and players taking an acid bath which fills in some of the past players lives. In episode 6 we see the reasons why Momoka sacrificed herself as the witch. She wanted to show that people weren’t selfish, and this inspiration ends up helping to save Chi in the end.
Slowly the face card games are played in a montage so cool you’ll be walking away from the explosions with your back turned.
Niragi shows up to take out Arisu and Chi and after Unagi shows up Chi does the ultimate sacrifice in order to save her.
Niragi is shot and though they want to grieve Chi, this is cut short when The King of Spades arrives looking like Black Noir. Easily the most threatening villain they’ve faced in the series so far, he ends up wounding Akane and Ann before going head-to-head with Aguni. Kuina is stabbed with Aguni seemingly being killed as well. It felt like watching your favourite DCEU actors posting white text on a black background, and I was so glad when this guy was taken out.
Luring him to a kill room Aguni arrived and blows him up leaving him at deaths door which is when he ends his life.
He sees a vision of him standing over Apache which is mirrored in Aguni seeing his own.
It leaves just Arisu and Usagi to face off against Mira in a game of Croquet.
We have the constant head f**k play out with Arisu coming out the other side to finish the game.
Arisu doesn’t quit or forfeit the match and thus the game ends.
Mira is killed and the surviving players either have to accept permanent residency or decline it.
Aguni, Akane, Kuina and Ann decline it with Chi and Niragi choosing to stay.
Usagi and Arisu both decline bringing the conversation from the first season full circle.
He has a vision of his friends and promises to live his life to the fullest.
This is reflected throughout both the series and original work with him deciding to turn his life around and go to college when we look at how his arc progresses in that. That doesn’t happen in the show, but he decides that he won’t let anything hold him back anymore and gains a new outlook on life. Man even steps up and flirts with Usagi finally gaining game after playing the game.
Kuina is reunited with her mother and the pair share a heart to heart. I’m pretty sure that they added in her father for this scene too with him being missing originally but let me know below if I’m misremembering that.
Now we close out with it seeming like the survivors got a happy ending however we close in on the ominous joker card.
I don’t know if we’re gonna be getting a season 3 but if we do then they’re probably gonna expand more on this with it being a case of what’s actually going on with it. Now the Manga wrapped up with the games being beaten and when the Queen of Hearts was defeated the Joker appeared. It was revealed that he was the rulers of the games that was looking over everything. Now we don’t learn whether he’s a God or something else and, in all honesty, he acts more like the Ferryman from Greek Mythology. It’s said that he believed there was too much random death caused by the meteorite and thus he wanted to give everyone a second chance to return to the land of the living.
Thus, he set up this limbo between life and death and this carries a way for people to make it back up.
It also gave them the opportunity to remain in borderland so that they didn’t have to return to the world if they had miserable lives.
Now the cards inclusion here could just be a nod to the ending of the original work as he doesn’t appear in the show like how he did in that.
However, it could also hint at there being one more game that they’re all stuck in and the way it presented makes it seem like its more sinister.
How Does Alice in Borderland Season 2 End?
The Joker is of course a wildcard, one that changes everything, and the joker is of course known as being a trickster. Thus, this could all be a trick, a game within a game that robs them of hope.
I think that’s the route they could take in Season 3 with their possibly being a focus on bringing their memories back.
This could end with the Joker being revealed.
Again, it’s difficult to predict this stuff as it differs from the manga ending but that’s basically the lowdown on what this means.
Now as for my thoughts on the series I think this topped the first and throughout I was constantly gripped by just how tense the games were. The series really hit the ground running from episode one and it felt like a constant game of cat and mouse.
Alice In Borderland doesn’t give a f**k about your favourites either and I was shocked at how merciless they were with some of the deaths at points.
This was a bloodbath but much like the first season we also had some really great human moments.
It could be so easy to turn this into mindless violence, but it’s paced so well with each over the top scene being mirrored perfectly with a more toned-down human one.
Every character feels like they’ve grown and there’s several discussions between the people who want to remain in borderland and those that want to return home.
The game is of course a metaphor for real life with people scrambling over the top of each other just to get slightly further ahead than everyone else. They’re constantly knocked down and beaten but there are some that see the simplicity of the city as being more manageable due to it having more straightforward rules.
However, there’s also the fact that people are killing each other just to add another day and there’s genuine hope that they can make the game world better.
It really adds so much to the season and this mystery box constantly kept me coming back for more, making it an easy binge.
Now I think that some people might be a bit put off by the pacing because the games don’t play out as quickly as they did in the first season. However, I think there’s a lot more complexity to them and the character building that they do by dragging them out actually adds more to it. The reveals in the collar game were so good and I love how the series also changed up the locations too. We got far beyond the usual city stuff we had last time, and it added so much more variety.
Anyway, really enjoyed it and I hope you had fun with the breakdown too.
In the end this was great, and it gets a….
9/10
Anyway, that’s the video and obviously I’d love to hear your thoughts on the series and what you think will happen next time.
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If you want something else to watch, then make sure you check out our breakdown of perfect scene in Spider-Man Homecoming. We break down the entire thing so it’s definitely worth checking out if you wanna know more.
With that out the way thank you for sitting through the video, I’ve been Paul and I’ll see you next time. Take care, Peace.
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