The ending of Joker: Folie à Deux has become quite controversial, so let’s dive in, shall we?
Warning: heavy spoilers for Joker: Folie à Deux follow, including its ending.
Joker: Folie à Deux has proved to be controversial, which is saying a lot considering the amount of press the original Joker garnered. Social media is currently flooded with people saying they walked out in the middle, enraged that the film wasn’t what they were expecting. In all honesty, we weren’t big fans of Todd Phillips’ supervillain sequel, but this writer was particularly taken by the final 20 minutes.
Joker: Folie à Deux again follows Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) locked up in Arkham having gone on a murder spree in the previous movie. His trial is fast approaching and his lawyer (played by the incomparable Catherine Keener) wants to argue that Arthur and Joker are separate personalities in order to get Arthur out of Arkham and into a hospital. In Arkham, Arthur meets Lee (Lady Gaga), who is already obsessed with Joker and the two begin a violent, chaotic relationship.
Phillips’ mix of musical and courtroom drama doesn’t quite work, but there are a lot of interesting things here. Joker: Folie à Deux is about whether Arthur truly is the Joker or whether there’s still some redeemable side to him.
In the final act, Arthur, now representing himself in court, tearfully admits that there’s no Joker, only Arthur. He admits to killing his mother, a detail he’s kept secret until now, and finally takes responsibility for all the horrible acts he’s committed. On hearing this, Lee storms out of the courtroom. We find her in her apartment, holding a gun to her head.
After this, things get a little more ambiguous. A car bomb goes off outside the courthouse, leaving a huge hole in the side of it, allowing Arthur to escape. He eventually finds Lee on the steps, but she has no interest in him now that he’s plain old Arthur. She won’t talk to him, only singing even when Arthur pleads with her to stop. She also implies that her pregnancy isn’t real – it was all just a part of her demented fantasy romance with the Joker.
So what does this all mean? There are several ways to read the film’s deeper themes, even if they aren’t explored all that meaningfully.
Somewhat surprisingly, it seems that Lady Gaga’s Lee is the more interesting of the two leads. While the attempts to explore Arthur and his mental health on a deeper level fail – mostly because he’s confined to the courtroom for most of the film’s runtime – Lee’s transformation into Harley Quinn is much better handled.
One of the most obvious readings is that Lee represents the audience. She fell in love with Joker after watching a TV movie made about him and has even committed herself to Arkham in the hopes of meeting him. She’s only interested in Joker, and as soon as Arthur admits there’s no Joker, she loses interest and leaves. Now, we don’t know whether this is what Phillips was indeed intending, but judging by the several walkouts, the audience aren’t particularly happy what he’s produced.
There’s also the question of what happened to Lee after she put the gun to her head. Most of the musical sequences, which are only happening in Arthur and Lee’s minds, are clearly not real, but the line begins to blur towards the end. Did Lee in fact shoot herself? Is the all-singing version of her at the end merely a figment of Arthur’s imagination?
Or does the gun represent Lee killing that part of herself, transforming fully into the maniacal Harley Quinn, complete with chopped hair and more outlandish, smudged makeup? There doesn’t appear to be a definitive answer.
Then there’s the shocking, final scene. Arthur’s back in Arkham and as follows a guard to see a visitor, another inmate jumps out and stabs Arthur multiple times. The inmate even carves a smile on his own face, seemingly out of frustration that that Arthur has rejected his Joker persona. The camera stays on Arthur as he lies on the floor, bleeding to death.
Phillips has already said there won’t be another Joker, so it makes sense to kill Arthur off in the end. Phillips has already talked about his themes, saying that Arthur has “never been this thing that’s been put upon him, this idea that Gotham people put on him, that he represents. He’s an unwitting icon.”
I never thought I’d say this, as someone who didn’t warm up to either Joker film, but Phillips is right on the money here. Just as the people of Gotham made Arthur into a symbol, so did certain members of the audience in 2019. Arthur Fleck, or the Joker, suddenly gave a voice for people who felt like they’d been forgotten and ignored. It empowered them, even if that empowerment was – in the film – rooted in violence.
It clearly created a false idea of what Joker: Folie à Deux would be about and what it would offer audiences. The decision to abandon the Joker at the end has understandably alienated a lot of the fans of the first movie, who walked into the cinema expecting more Joker, more violence and more empowerment. It probably didn’t help that Warner Bros was trying hard to hide that Joker: Folie à Deux is a musical in its marketing.
The takeaway here seems to be that Joker: Folie à Deux was always set up for at least a partial failure – and if reports are accurate, the blame game has already begun at Warner Bros. There’s a lot of fascinating elements to Phillips’ ambitious but misguided sequel, but regrettably, thoughtful discussion of them is almost in danger of being drowned out by the angry reactions to it.
Joker: Folie à Deux is now in cinemas.
