At least three things happen at the end of Joker: Folie à Deux we’re still in shock about. After a movie that, while not great, is at least going somewhere, director Todd Phillips hits us with several stunning revelations and events that are just begging to be discussed. So let’s do that. Full spoilers below.
Let’s take these in order. The first wild thing that happens is Arthur (Joaquin Phoenix), in his closing statement for his defense trial, just gives up. He doesn’t want to be Joker anymore. He doesn’t want to try and get away with murder anymore. He just wants to be found guilty and die. The revelation infuriates not just Lee (Lady Gaga), who leaves the courtroom before he’s done, but most of Joker’s fans, who saw his whole being as an act of defiance and anarchy. And, probably, fans of the franchise hoping to see the Joker ride again and do something super crazy.
This is the biggest sign things in Joker: Folie à Deux are going wrong because, basically, it feels like Phillips and Phoenix are giving up on the movie itself too. After two hours going back and forth about what Joker 2 is or isn’t about, both the movie and Arthur tell us—”Just forget about it, let’s get to the end.” Worst of all, it doesn’t feel particularly motivated. If the film had been seeding him giving up Joker, maybe you buy it, but it doesn’t, you don’t, and it’s bad. It’s a betrayal, both on-screen and off, of everything that the story has been working toward. And Joker: Folie à Deux is just getting started with its odd last-act choices.
Next up is the sentencing. As Arthur is slowly being found guilty on all murder charges, Phillips literally blows up his movie. An explosion goes off outside the courthouse, rocking everyone inside, probably killing a lot of people outside, and allowing Arthur to escape. Again, coming after Arthur giving up, actually setting a bomb off in your movie to advance the story sure feels like the filmmaker saying “Hey, I’m blowing all this up.” Which he then does.
It never even really amounts to anything because we don’t learn about the deaths or any fallout. Instead, Arthur quickly realizes he doesn’t necessarily like the world he’s stumbled back into, goes and finds Lee, and she dumps him. Which then adds its own set of questions. What was her endgame in the first place? Did she just want to be famous? Did she actually love Arthur or just Joker? Was she even pregnant, as she said earlier in the film? What, if anything, did she or more importantly Arthur gain from their relationship in the context of the film? We don’t know and the film tells us we shouldn’t care.
Finally, there’s the very end. Arthur is back in prison, awaiting his death sentence, when he gets a visitor. As he’s walking to see this visitor, one of the inmates who has been side-eying him the entire movie tells him a more than meta joke about a clown giving up and then proceeds to stab him multiple times in the stomach. As Arthur bleeds out and dies on camera, we see the other character in the background, laughing and possibly cutting his face, potentially picking up the mantle of Joker.
“Really? You killed him?” That was my reaction as it was happening. But it does happen and it’s a very clear message that Phillips and Phoenix do not want to make any more Joker movies. This isn’t a world with any supernatural elements. Arthur is dead. End of story. Now, could another filmmaker pick up the story with that other character as Joker? Sure. Can you imagine a world where Phillips and potentially Phoenix sign off on that, get a producer credit, and collect a check? Sure. But from Arthur giving up, the world blowing up, and then Arthur dying it’s very clear that —despite those few little crumbs—this Joker is done.
Finally, there’s the question of Arthur’s visitor. Could the visitor have been Lee? Sophie (Zazie Beetz)? Harvey Dent, who gets an almost Two-Face origin in the explosion? Or maybe a young Bruce Wayne, who we saw in the last movie? The answer is, maybe. Any of those seem hypothetically possible. But Phillips has no intention of answering that question. He wants you to think about it, to torture you with it, then to put the nail in the coffin of this franchise once and forever.
That’s our take on the insanity that is the ending of Joker: Folie à Deux—what’s yours?
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