“Joker: Folie à Deux” Ending Explained: What Is the Sequel’s Connection to Batman?

Joaquin Phoenix and director Todd Phillips’ sequel includes even fewer references to DC Comics than 2019’s ‘Joker’ did

Warning: Spoilers for Joker: Folie à Deux follow.

Joker: Folie à Deux is the highly anticipated follow-up to a 2019 film that retold an iconic Batman villain’s origin story. But how much does the sequel incorporate DC Comics source material?

Starring Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck a.k.a. Joker and directed by Todd Phillips, the two films draw inspiration from DC Comics characters, rather than provide a canonical (or extended cinematic universe) rendition of the Joker’s origin story. Their intent is to use the fictional Gotham as a reflection of our real world.

Audiences may have been surprised at how few references to Batman lore Phillips and co-writer Scott Silver utilized in 2019’s Joker. Recognizable character appearances included Thomas and Martha Wayne (played by Brett Cullen and Carrie Louise Putrello, respectively), who are killed by a man in a mask amid riots caused by the Joker’s chaos. Their young son Bruce (Dante Pereira-Olson) and Wayne family butler Alfred (Douglas Hodge) also briefly meet Arthur.

Related: Joaquin Phoenix Says Joker 2 Weight Loss 'Felt a Bit More Complicated': 'Probably Shouldn't Do This Again'

All of those characters are missing from Folie à Deux, in which Arthur is facing the death penalty for his crimes in the first film. At Arkham State Hospital where he’s incarcerated, he “not only stumbles upon true love, but also finds the music that's always been inside him,” per an official synopsis. 

Lady Gaga takes over from Margot Robbie as that true love, a singing-and-dancing Harleen "Lee" Quinzel a.k.a. Harley Quinn. Also in the Folie à Deux cast is Harry Lawtey as district attorney Harvey Dent, determined to bring Arthur to justice for the five murders he committed in Joker. (No one is aware that Arthur also killed his mother, Frances Conroy’s Penny.)

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Related: Joker: Folie à Deux First Reviews Praise 'Real Spark' Between Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga

Spoilers for the plot of Folie à Deux follow: those hoping for Phillips’ tale to tie into a new or existing cinematic Batman may be disappointed. The sequel not only includes fewer references to DC Comics source material, it even goes so far as to establish that Arthur Fleck has no connection to Gotham’s Caped Crusader. 

Arthur’s trial is peppered with twists and turns — and lavish musical numbers, which Phillips, Phoenix and Gaga have explained are outward expressions of the characters’ inner madness — that ultimately lead to his guilty conviction. Before the jury can finish reading his sentence, though, all hell breaks loose: a car bomb destroys much of the courthouse wall, killing and injuring many inside.

Among those harmed is Harvey Dent. In the movie’s only overt nod to the comic books, in which Dent becomes Batman enemy Two-Face, the character is seen crumpled and dazed following the explosion with the left side of his face severely burned.

After Arthur escapes the courthouse and finds Lee, she ends their love affair because during the trial he had denounced that Arthur Fleck and the Joker are two different people. She walks away as a heartbroken Arthur is taken back to Arkham.

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It’s there that Folie à Deux’s nihilistic final scene unfolds. Led from his cell by a guard who wanders off, Arthur is confronted by another previously glimpsed inmate who proceeds to tell him a joke and stab him in the gut repeatedly. As Arthur collapses in a bloody heap and dies, the mystery man cackles — and, out of focus and almost out of frame, cuts his own mouth into a wider smile. 

In an early audience screening, as reported by /Film, Phillips said the film would "leave you with a very unsettling [feeling].” Presumably addressing both movies’ connection to Batman, he added that Folie à Deux’s ending "clarifies a lot of things that you might have had questions about in the first movie.”

Arthur’s death at the hands of a maniacal inmate with smile-like scars (much like Heath Ledger’s Joker in Christopher Nolan’s 2012 hit The Dark Knight) implies that said inmate is the Joker who becomes Batman’s archenemy. Or, depending on interpretation, the ending serves to remind audiences that violence begets violence, and that it matters less who Arthur’s killer was and more what Arthur inspired or exposed in Gotham society.

Phillips also reportedly quipped, “If you don't understand it, email me.”

Joker: Folie à Deux, which costars Brendan Gleeson, Leigh Gill, Zazie Beetz, Sharon Washington and Steve Coogan, is in theaters now.

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