• Warning: Major spoilers ahead for “Joker: Folie à Deux.”
• The shocking final scene adds another twist to Arthur Fleck’s story.
• “Joker: Folie à Deux” is in theaters now.

“Joker: Folie à Deux” is the sequel to Todd Phillips’ gritty 2019 thriller “Joker,” which grossed more than $1 billion and earned Joaquin Phoenix a Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of the legendary DC Comics villain.

The film’s enormous success led Warner Bros. gave Phillips and Phoenix complete freedom to go even further outside the typical conventions of the superhero genre for the sequel. They did this by turning “Joker: Folie à Deux” into a musical starring Lady Gaga as Joker’s love interest, Harley Quinn.

But the most daring aspect of the film is its shocking ending, which arguably closes the book on this interpretation of the Clown Prince of Crime.

Here’s everything you need to know about the “Joker: Foil A Deux” ends. Be warned: spoilers ahead!

The film’s finale takes place in a courtroom

The film is not only a musical, but also a courtroom drama, as Arthur Fleck (Phoenix), who is incarcerated at Arkham Asylum, is put on trial for the five murders he committed in the first film.

Facing District Attorney Harvey Dent (Harry Lawtey), Fleck’s attorney, Maryanne Stewart (Catherine Keener), has prepared a defense that Fleck is insane and that the Joker persona emerged from Fleck due to mental trauma.

In Arkham, Fleck meets Lee Quinzel, a pyromaniac who falls in love with Fleck after watching a popular TV movie about his actions from the first film. Fleck falls hard for Lee. She influences him with her charms and sex appeal to get off his meds and become Joker again, even persuading him to fire Stewart and defend himself in his trial as Joker.

When the trial reaches the closing stages of the argument, Fleck, dressed as the Joker, comes clean and admits that there is no Joker persona. He indeed committed those murders, he says, and even admits to a sixth: the murder of his mother. Lee, who sits in the front row of the court dressed as Harley Quinn, is disgusted and walks out of the courtroom. As the guilty verdict is read out by the jury, a massive explosion occurs in the courtroom, leaving a huge hole to the outside. The explosion kills some and injures others, including Dent, who has burns on the side of his face. A disoriented Fleck escapes from the courtroom through the giant hole in the wall. A fan of Fleck, dressed as Joker, encounters him and, with the help of another friend, throws Fleck into a car and drives away. As the friends hope for chaos and anarchy in the future, a frightened Fleck jumps out of the car and runs away.

Fleck ends up at the steep stairs near his old apartment, immortalized in the first film. There he finds Lee. He tells her that now that he has escaped, they can be together and raise their child. But Lee declines his offer, still angry about admitting that he is not the Joker. She runs away and Fleck is arrested by the police and sent back to Arkham.

The shocking final scene shows who Arthur Fleck really is

In the final scene of the film, Fleck is watching TV with other prisoners when he is told that he has a visitor. As he walks to the visitors’ area of ​​the prison, a fellow inmate, who we’ve seen near Fleck around Arkham throughout the film, follows him.

He stops Fleck in the hallway and says he has a joke for him. The prisoner delivers the punchline by stabbing Fleck in the stomach several times. Fleck falls to the ground and dies while in the background we hear the prisoner give a sinister laugh and seemingly give himself a permanent smile by slitting both sides of his mouth.

It’s now clear that Fleck was never the Joker, but his actions inspired this inmate, who would supposedly become the legendary villain to take on Batman. Fleck would be just a forgotten chapter in Gotham’s eventual disintegration into crime.

Phillips says he’s not making “Joker 3.”

By the end of the film, it’s clear that Phillips and Phoenix are done making “Joker” movies. But what about continuing the saga by shifting the perspective to Lady Gaga’s Harley Quinn character?

Phillips was asked the question on the red carpet.

“It’s not really where this movie is going,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “I feel like my time in the DC Universe consisted of these two movies.”

Only time (and how the film performs at the box office) will tell if we’ll see a continuation of the DC Comics world in this gritty setting.