3 Alice in Borderland Theories That Explain How Story Might Continue After S2 Finale

The news that Alice in Borderland has been renewed for a third season, likely landing on Netflix next year, came as a surprise to anyone who has watched the survival thriller based on Haro Aso's hit manga.

While the show has performed well on the streaming platform and garnered a sizable following, the Season 2 finale felt like a fitting (and complete) ending to the story of Arisu, Usagi, and the other players.

Changing only a few moments in the manga's ending, the finale showed that Borderland was in fact a kind of purgatory, the place between life and death for those who had been victims of the meteor disaster that blew up Tokyo.

After Arisu won the final game with Queen of Hearts, the players were given the choice of staying or leaving. And those who chose to leave woke up in the hospital with no memory of what had happened to them during the two seasons of the series.

So where does the story go from there? There's no way Alice in Borderland could continue without bloody card games, right?

Here are three plausible theories that explain how the characters could return to Borderland in Season 3.

1. Retry

The most likely scenario is that Season 3 will be based on the two-volume sequel to the original manga, Alice in Borderland: Retry. Haro Aso created Retry in 2020, the same year the Netflix series premiered.

Retry picks up a few years after the events of the original manga and follows Arisu, who has become a psychologist and married Usagi, now a professional mountaineer. The couple is waiting for their first child and when Usagi goes into labor, Arisu rushes to her side and gets into an accident that sends him back to Borderland.

There, the memories of the previous visit come back to Arisu and he has to enter the deadly games once more to return to his wife and baby.

2. Joker

The main difference between the manga ending and the Season 2 finale is the mysterious character of the Joker, who didn't appear in the show. We only see his signature card in the final moments.

This leads us to speculate that the players never actually left Borderland, and the hospital is just another game arena where Joker, who is described in the source as ‘the sole ruler over all life,’ is ready to play a whole new set of games with them.

3. Experiment

A somewhat wild theory is that the surviving players may want to re-enter Borderland voluntarily.

In the Season 2 finale, we see that even though they have forgotten the games, the experience has shaped the characters' personalities. Arisu and Usagi quickly find their way back to each other, and they may subconsciously seek out other friends from Borderland.

When small pieces of their memories start to come back and bother them, the survivors might decide that they have to go back to Borderland to get answers. So they might devise a plan to stop their hearts in a controlled environment and return to the alternate Tokyo.