From the very beginning of Alice in Borderland Season 3, Ryuji Matsuyama, an assistant professor of psychopathology, had been consumed with the idea of learning about the land of the dead. After the Shibuya meteor incident, Ryuji interviewed a plethora of victims only to find out that all these survivors saw a similar dream in their subconsciousness while they were lying on the hospital bed. Ryuji believed that they were stuck inside a purgatory between the mortal realm and the realm of the dead, where the people struggling with their lives played a number of games to win a chance to come back to the land of the living. However, this was just a theory, and Ryuji needed concrete evidence so that he could share his research paper with the scientific world. And therefore, to gather evidence against his claims, Ryuji made a deal with the devil and visited the land of the dead to meet with its ruler.
Spoiler Alert
This purgatory, or borderland, is quite similar to the rivers Acheron and Styx, which, in Greek mythology, separate the land of the dead from the living. Most ancient cultures believe that after a person dies a physical death, their soul is taken to this threshold to cleanse them before their fate is finally sealed, whether they will be sent to hell or heaven. Now Borderland works in a similar way. Whenever a person suffers a near-death experience, their subconsciousness is transferred to Borderland, where they are given a chance to win their life back. If the players successfully reach the finish line, that is, survive those life-threatening games, then they are given a choice to either become a citizen of Borderland and stay in the purgatory forever or go back to their miserable mortal life. Also, it is to be noted that time flows differently in the afterlife. While the show doesn’t give us an exact value, it hints that 2 minutes of cardiac arrest in the real world can amount to weeks and months in Borderland.
In Greek mythology, the purgatory is under the watch of a psychopomp, Charon, who carries the souls from the land of the living to the land of the dead. In Alice in Borderland Season 3, we are introduced to a similar spirit, the Watchman (Ken Watanabe), who manages the souls in the afterlife and guides them to the vortex of the dead. The character first showed up when a face card, Banda, tried to kill Arisu, the lead protagonist of the show, even though he had won the tournament. At first, I believed that it was Banda and Yaba, the two humans who’d chosen to remain citizens of Borderland, who were the Jokers, but the Watchman’s brief conversation with Arisu suggested that he might be the real Joker. Joker’s true role is to fill the gap between life and death, meaning he is the threat connecting the two realms. So, either the Watchman’s the Joker himself, or the Joker’s nothing but an ideology that governs the land. Much like the card itself, the psychopomps are often considered to be faceless or identityless entities known by their title, not by their name, which means they are interchangeable, but their job is absolute.
The Watchman further told Arisu that the Joker is neither the ruler of Borderland nor the master of any of the games, which means if the Watchman is the Joker, then he cannot really design anything. He can just watch and execute the rules already chalked out by a higher entity. If we compare it with Greek mythology, then the psychopomp is a mere servant to the ruler of the Underworld, that is, Hades. This means a superior, godlike entity had already established the rules of Borderland, and the Watchman’s job is just to watch over the rift between life and death. He told Arisu he merely kept watching so that he didn’t have to pass through the dead’s door. This hints that the Watchman had made a deal with the ruler of the realm in exchange for his own immortality.
I believe every time a winning player chooses to become a citizen, their fate is automatically transferred to the Watchman. It is to be noted that he doesn’t become their master, and they are free to do what they want to. The citizens have the power to design the games, but if they dare break the rules of the realm, then the Watchman is obliged to take action against them. And with Banda dead, the Watchman was likely left with only one citizen, which explained his need to convince Arisu to become a citizen so he could prepare the realm for what was about to come. The Watchman told Arisu about an impending catastrophe that was going to flood Borderland, and he wouldn’t be able to manage all those players by himself, which was why he needed him. Unfortunately, Arisu turned down his proposal and went back to the mortal world. However, if the massive tremors are going to hit the planet anytime soon, then it is likely that Arisu and his partner, Usagi, will return to Borderland in Season 4.
But what is the Watchman’s role going to be in the next season? I think he is going to first convince a few players to become citizens of the country, and this may include Ann, a former player, who can see citizens in the real world. In the season’s ending, Ann stopped Banda from killing Arisu while he was stuck in his subconscious. The Watchman already has Yaba, though I don’t think these two will be enough to organize the next tournament with so many players arriving in the realm. It’s possible that the Watchman will once again give the former winning players a choice to become a part of Borderland so that they can help those stranded souls get a chance to go back to life. Well, whatever the case might be, I believe in the end, the Watchman is going to retire from his post. Something changed in him when Arisu refused to choose the realm of the dead. Maybe the Watchman too would realize that a brief and fulfilling life is always better than meaningless immortality.
