Alice should have stayed in wonderland – a disappointing second season for Netflix hit

*this article discusses the whole season of Alice in Borderland, so there will be spoilers from the start

TWO years awaiting for a conclusive ending to Alice in Borderland, and all we get is the overused ‘it was all a dream’ closure? To say that I am disappointed is an understatement. 

A quick note that this review does not reflect the entirety of the Alice in Borderland audience, but the view of an extremely unsatisfied follower of this Netflix series.  

Quickly recapping Season One

Ending with a cliffhanger in Season One, Alice in Borderland left its audience waiting and holding on to an array of questions. 

What was the purpose of these games? How were these individuals chosen? Why was this happening? Who was in charge? What’s the end goal? Most importantly, how do they win and escape?

A quick recap. In Season One, we were introduced to our main character Ryōhei Arisu (Kento Yamazaki) – from here on referred to as Arisu. A washed-up citizen of Japan – more invested in his video games than being a productive individual – along with a couple of friends, is suddenly transported into a realm where their lives depend on their ability to win and survive predetermined games. 

Through each stage, Arisu in turn loses and meets new friends that soon become his crew; determined to get to the very bottom of this whole ordeal. Learning along the way that each stage possesses a card that they need to collect; and that each stage is designed by gamemasters. 

At this point, it definitely sounds very Hunger Games influenced, and with all the gruesome deaths, has a touch of Squid Game. 

As frustrating as it is to not have the answers to the questions mentioned above, the ending of the first season still left a smidget of hope that we were getting closer to the truth – when Arisu and his crew learnt about the ‘the next stage’ of the game, collecting face cards: the Jack, the Queen and the King.

The Second Season plot holes

Season Two of Alice in Borderland opens with some sudden gunshots and people dying, with the camera revealing that the players are now in the King of Spade’s territory. Not given any instructions as they previously were, the main aim in this game – as deduced by the characters – is to just survive the rampage of the King of Spades, who is on a mission to just kill. 

There are no conditions or methodology on how this gamemaster behaves and carries out his kills. It just becomes the unwritten clause that players will need to terminate this King to win. 

Deciding to leave this stage till later on, Arisu and crew decide to move to another stage; and I may be mistaken here, but wasn’t the standard clause of the game that you are only allowed to leave the game if and when you have won? 

Maybe the lack of instructions allowed for this loophole to work. 

Arisu then moves on to the King of Clubs, where they are working as a team to collect more points than the gamemaster and his team. This is where a sea of plotholes start to emerge.

One of the conditions to gain points is when opponents ‘battle’ each other with physical contact; the player with the higher score on hand wins. I say on hand because the scores were literally recorded on their wrists on a futuristic bracelet capable of detecting when players join hands or touch each other. 

Now back to the main plot, as Arisu’s team is losing, one of his teammates decides to play hero and attempts to remove his bracelet, which now holds more than 10,000 points. Hoping to outsmart and outscore their opponent, the camera pans to a gruesome scene where the team member is trying to ‘remove his hand’. 

This is where an inconsistency pops up. In the instructions that the players were given, it was stated that players will need to ‘join hands’ to combine their scores. However, what Arisu’s teammate did was smash his hand enough for the bracelet to slip through his hands; and this worked. 

Honestly, I was anticipating Arisu’s teammate to completely sever his arm so that Arisu could ‘join hands’ (literally) with that arm and overpower the opponent. That would have definitely made a more gruesome and exciting scene to see. Alas, that did not happen.  

Although this teammate did eventually die in this game from the loss of blood, his death is definitely not justified throughout the series. In later episodes, we see other players like Heiya (Yuri Tsunematsu, a Season Two addition) who sustained multiple gunshots and lost massive amounts of blood, still being able to crawl her way from one place to another, surviving till the very end. 

Niragi, whom we have met in Season One, is seemingly sick and is near death in episode 2. He is beaten, shot and is coughing up blood like it was the end of the world. Yet, he survives till the very end, shot again and on the floor bleeding out but alive and still vocal.  

The inconsistency of each characters’ fate just does not make sense. 

In Season One, what really drew me to this series was when Arisu’s two best friends died in one of the earlier games. The willingness of the show's creators to kill off main characters tells me that this director is unafraid to go against the norm. Unfortunately, the reluctance to kill off more main characters is very evident in Season Two; making this series a lot more predictable and a lot less suspenseful. 

Poor plotting

Another aspect of Season Two of Alice in Borderland that was a major letdown was the poorly executed progression of the plot and the character interactions. 

In Season One at each stage, players were up against each other; survival of the fittest. For the second season, each stage is ruled and run by a King/Queen. In order to survive, players will need to be rid of these monarchs.

While this sounds like a fairly natural progression within the game, does this mean that once a King/Queen is defeated, the stage is completed for all who are within the game? 

Unlike the Hunger games, Alice in Borderland does not seem to have a past and a future. There’s no concrete evidence that this has been done in the past, nor does it feel like it will continue in the future, like we saw in Squid Game. Which highlights the purpose of this whole realm even more. 

Apart from the surviving players in the face cards stages, whom are supposed to be among the best since they passed all initial number card stages but were easy pickings in every game shown, the management of players is also questionable. 

In the Queen of Spades’ game, one player mentioned how if they are able to stay on the Queen’s team and win, they would be able to stay in her game and continue living instead of being out in the field again and risk getting shot by the crazed King of Spades. 

So, does the game continue as long as the Queen lives? What happens after she loses? Will there be a new queen? Hence the question about the future and progression of Alice in Borderland. 

On top of that, we were informed from Season One that a player cannot go on forever without playing a game, as they have a ticking clock that will expire if they go too long without participating in a game. 

Ann (Ayaka Miyoshi), is able to hike up mountains, jungle tracks and explore the land of this hornet’s nest for what seems like an eternity without participating in a game? Just seems a little too convenient for her to survive that long to show us the vast reach of the playing field. 

The end?

Unfortunately, when we reach the final stage with Usagi (Tao Tsuchiya) limping and bleeding out in Arisu’s arms and anticipating answers to our questions, we are faced with a whirlwind of more uncertainties. 

Mira (Riisa Naka), the Queen of Hearts, throws a series of potential possibilities of how and why Arisu and all the other players have been chosen to participate in these hellish games. 

Among those explanations are: an alien invasion that led to humans being captured and this game is just an experiment done to them, a future where homosapiens are now immortal and the games are just a way for humankind to experience death again, and a psychological game where everything that Arisu has experienced is nothing but an illusion. 

None of which are proven true; although my personal favourite and the one that made the most sense to me was the futuristic VR experience of death. 

Fast forward past an extremely long process (which is what I did with watching the second half of the season at 1.5 speed), Arisu wins and he returns to earth – but that’s not the end. 

We are back in Shibuya, Tokyo, where Arisu is back with his two best friends going about their day, when suddenly a meteorite strikes and destroys everything. 

Arisu goes unconscious and when he wakes up, he is in the hospital with his brother by his side telling him that he has been unconscious for a few days, but more importantly, that he was lucky to be alive as his heart stopped beating for a whole minute.

In that moment, Arisu realised that in that one minute was when that alternate Alice in Borderland universe happened. Likewise, all our other prominent characters experienced the same thing. 

Not sure how this is any different from the overused “I woke up and realised it was a dream” ending that we have used so often in our high school exams, but this freak-accident ending definitely does not leave a satisfying closure to Alice in Borderland. – The Vibes, December 29, 2022