Joker: Folie à Deux’s Ending, Explained

The highly anticipated sequel to Todd Phillips’ Oscar-winning 2019 film Joker is here. However, it comes in the most unexpected of ways as a musical, Joker: Folie à Deux. The film is an exciting departure from the first, with a surprising conclusion. Here is Joker: Folie à Deux‘s ending, explained.

What Happened at the End of Joker: Folie à Deux?

The ending of Joker: Folie à Deux will seem unexpected to fans of the first movie, but the writing is on the wall throughout the sequel. The film makes an interesting choice to start the movie with an animated sequence that plays out like a Looney Tunes short about the Joker. More specifically, the animated short is about the Joker being replaced by his own shadow and eventually taking the fall for all the horrible things his shadow does throughout the short film. With this first sequence, the thematic through-line is established, and how Arthur’s actions on live television would eventually grow to be bigger and more influential than Arthur himself.

The main crux of Joker: Folie à Deux’s story is whether or not Joker is an entirely split personality from Arthur, creating an interesting meta-contextual lens through which to view the film. The original film’s events are re-examined during the courtroom sequences, feeling like a reenactment of the media frenzy surrounding the first film’s release and whether or not it would inspire real-life violence. The original Joker film, of course, would not end up inciting any incidents, with the conversation around the film being a much bigger deal than the actual film itself. In the same way, Arthur is put on a pedestal by other inmates and people watching his trial, when in reality, Arthur is a much smaller and more pathetic man than people realize.

How Joker: Folie à Deux’s Fantastical Musical Sequences Are Used as an Escape

Arthur’s struggle to live with the consequences of his actions and seek companionship with Harley Quinn (Lady Gaga) is translated into fantasy musical sequences that play out in his head. In these fantastical, dream-like sequences, Arthur can be the Joker that people think he is, creating an exciting angle for Todd Phillips to make the film. Folie à Deux is all about identity and the consequences of media sensationalism, especially in how they affect how the world of the film sees Arthur and how he perceives himself. This is especially shown in all the real-life scenes featuring Harley Quinn, who refuses to acknowledge Arthur the person and only wants to see Joker, going so far as to admit herself into Arkham despite not needing to.

The publicity of the trial and Arthur’s harsh treatment at Arkham following his trial appearances lead to him wanting to end the madness. In one of the final days of court, Arthur bares his soul to the jury and confesses to the murder of his mother (which hadn’t been known to anyone but Arthur up until that point). It’s a powerful scene from Joaquin Phoenix that leads Harley Quinn and other avid followers to become disillusioned and angrily leave the court. Arthur shatters the shadow of Joker but at a cost.

Related: Is Joker: Folie a Deux A Jukebox Musical? Answered

The End of Joker

The film’s ending is quite extensive, with the third act also serving as the climax of the trial of Arthur Fleck. The Jury reaches its verdict and finds Arthur guilty of the crimes he committed, meaning more likely than not, he’d be put to death. However, before the verdict can finished being proclaimed, a bomb goes off in the side of the courthouse. Unknowingly, Arthur influenced someone to do this when, during the previous day of the trial, he stated that he wanted to “blow it all up,” only he was talking about his life and the Joker persona more than the actual building.

In the chaos of the explosion, Arthur is picked up by one of his followers, who he quickly runs away from in fear. Visiting his old home (and the iconic stairs from the first film), Arthur is rejected by Harley one more time before the police arrive and incarcerate him once again. However, in one last final twist, Arthur is stabbed by a fellow inmate at Arkham. The unnamed inmate is featured in the background of various scenes of Joker: Folie à Deux, admiring Arthur from afar and visibly becoming upset seeing him say, “There is no Joker” in his televised court testimony.

The inmate asks if he can tell Arthur a joke, describing a scenario of a fan meeting his hero at a bar, who is now a “washed-up clown.” When asking to get him anything he wants, he tells Arthur that he “gets what he ****ing deserves,” the exact words Arthur said to Franklin Murray before shooting him. It’s a tragic sequence as Arthur falls over and bleeds to death, with the inmate scarring himself with a knife afterward, implying that the shadow of the Joker, shown in the animated sequence at the beginning, may simply be too big to kill at this point.

Joker: Folie à Deux is a bold sequel that dares to flip the generic script of the first film on its head both meta-contextually and within the movie’s world, through the lens of a musical and courtroom drama. Arthur Fleck tries to leave the shadow of “the Joker” character he created, but in the end, his influence is too powerful and gets him killed, ending the movie on a somber and unsettling note.

And that’s Joker: Folie à Deux‘s ending, explained

Joker: Folie à Deux is now playing in theaters