A spoiler warning for those who haven’t seen the ending sequence of Alice in Borderland Season 3, but damn, that was crazy. I mean, we saw Cate Blanchett’s introduction in the finale of Squid Game Season 3, so Netflix’s gameplan of globalizing all their popular IPs is not alien to us, but what they did with Alice in Borderland seems like overstepping. But I am not here to beat a dead horse, so allow me to go down that rabbit hole (pun intended) to theorize about what that “Alice” name drop could mean for the future of the franchise, and why the show really needs another protagonist/antagonist.
Ever since Arisu, the lead protagonist of the show, defeated the face cards and destabilized the hierarchy of Borderland, the Watchman of the realm, played by Ken Watanabe, had been looking for new “citizens” to organize the games. In Season 3’s ending, the Watchman told Arisu that there was something really big coming their way, which was going to flood Borderland with players. In simple words, a major disaster was going to hit the mortal realm, and bring the souls of all those people whose lives would be hanging by a thread to Borderland. But managing all these people all by himself would be difficult for the Watchman, which was why he needed efficient foot soldiers by his side. When two former players of the previous tournament chose to become citizens of Borderland, the Watchman granted their wish and made them organizers of the next tournament. However, in the end, he was quite disappointed with one of the citizens, Banda. He got obsessed with Arisu and was willing to break all the rules of the realm to convince Arisu to become a citizen. In the end, the Watchman had no other option but to kill Banda to stop his madness, but you see, it didn’t bring an end to the Watchman’s hunt to find the new face cards for his realm, especially the Queen, who was previously defeated by Arisu at the end of Alice in Borderland Season 2.
The Watchman really wanted Arisu to take the role and prepare the realm for the big event, but in Alice in Borderland Season 3’s ending, he made it abundantly clear that he was quite satisfied with his mundane life, and no matter how painful the human world was, it was the only place where he found happiness. He was not the kind of person who sought a thrill in the suffering of others. Instead, he hated it. He never ever wanted to be the reason for anyone’s pain, which evidently made Arisu different from other humans. The brief conversation between Arisu and the Watchman felt like the Watchman was really looking for a successor for the realm, as he seemed tired of watching over this twilight zone between life and death. Maybe he finally wanted to embrace death himself, but couldn’t leave until he found a replacement. Indeed, Arisu was the perfect man for the job, but his rejection of the Watchman’s proposal complicated the matter.
My theory is that the Watchman will task Yaba, the second citizen of Borderland, to conduct the next round of the tournament and, in the end, offer the winners the same choice the Watchman gave to Arisu, that is, to go back to their miserable life in the land of the living or stay back in purgatory and rule the realm. This brings me to the possibility that one of these new players is going to be our titular Alice, who, as you all know, works as a waitress in Los Angeles, California. I mean, you can tell what that means, right? No one really has “waiting tables” at the top of their list of dream jobs, so obviously the prospect of becoming a queen and ruling over hell (if I dare say so) is going to intrigue Alice. And if you are still wondering why the show’s ending didn’t reveal her face, it’s because unlike Squid Game, the makers of Alice in Borderland, haven’t cast the character yet. All we know is that Alice is an American woman, who’s going to join the next round of the Borderland tournament. Well, in a way, she’s just “clickbait” right now.
Alice’s arrival in Borderland opens the door to multiple possibilities for the next season. The easiest one is that we can speculate that she will play the games with the rest of the players who will face a near-death experience because of the unprecedented series of earthquakes across the globe. The second possibility is that Alice can play alongside Arisu or Usagi, thereby fulfilling Netflix’s wet dream of capitalizing on the global success of Alice in Borderland. Or maybe Alice will be the next grand antagonist of the show, who will try to separate Arisu and Usagi like the former face cards, but will she be able to do so? I think we all know the answer to that. I won’t deny the possibility that the fourth season of Alice in Borderland featuring players from different parts of the world sounds like an intriguing idea in theory, but what’s the catch? Haven’t we seen enough of these games and the players’ animalistic greed to survive? Will bringing on new faces change anything? I mean, obviously they can introduce new games, but in the end, the destination remains the same: death. The Watchman already told us. No one escapes death. Even if they win the game, they are going to meet their fate. By winning the game, they’ll just buy some time for themselves. Honestly, I don’t see any point in stretching the plot in the name of “fan service.” Being a fan of the show myself, I still believe that the ending of season 2 was quite satisfactory for me. But now Netflix is doing the same that they did with Money Heist. They’ll keep on making trashy seasons of the show, and in the end, people won’t even bother. But hey, who am I to complain? Well, these are just my thoughts on the introduction of Alice in the show. But do let me know what you think about it. How can Alice change the dynamics in Borderland?
