This article contains major spoilers for Joker: Folie À Deux.
Joker director Todd Phillips has opened up about Folie À Deux’s shock ending.
The new sequel stars Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga, taking viewers on a two-hour journey that’s part jukebox musical, part gritty prison movie, part courtroom drama and part dystopian political satire.
After all of that, the film ends on a shocking note with Joaquin’s Arthur Fleck being killed by a fellow patient, credited simply as Young Inmate in Arkham, who tells him a nonsensical joke before stabbing him repeatedly in the stomach.
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This unidentified patient, played by Connor Storrie, then goes on to mutilate his own face while laughing off screen, suggesting that he is actually the Joker character known in the Batman comics, instead of Arthur, as had previously been assumed.
Grim, right?
During an interview with IGN, Todd confirmed this theory to be the case, revealing the scene was partly inspired by one major criticism of the first Joker film in which Joaquin encounters Bruce Wayne as a young boy.
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