This article containsspoilers for Joker: Folie a Deux.
WhenJoker: Folie a Deuxends, the world has changed.
Although likely not in the way comic book fans expected.
seems only dazed and slightly banged up.
All that jazz is kids stuff meant to entertain children and delude saps like Arthur Fleck.
He literally runs in terror from the sycophants who would crown him the Clown Prince of Crime.
Once back home, another mentally unwell fan can then gut him like a fish.
He killed the king and assumed the throne.
That is a query which occurred to me more than once in the run-up toJoker 2.
Consider back in August when Phillips was already preparing fans for a radical departure.
We wanted the character to fit in this world of Gotham that we created with the first movie.
When this quote first appeared, I pondered would it even then be Harley Quinn?
After seeing the film, the answer is elusive.
When he actually is free, however, she wants nothing to do with the bum.
He was the terrorist, the lone-shooter, the non-state actor who just wants to watch the world burn.
Instead he looked like Johnny Rotten after a three-week bender in greasy pancake makeup he forgot to take off.
Yet it still allegedly offered another window into how such a character might exist.
But then comesJoker: Folie a Deux.
Five years after the fact, the sequel intriguingly acts as a pseudo-confession.
But in the end she seems to suggest she lied about being pregnant, along with everything else.
There is no future where they are either settled down or enacting a Joker or Harley crime spree.
On the one hand, that is almost commendable.
Ironically, this approach also makesJoker 2a chore to watch as well.
Its an endlessly self-satisfied commentary only about itself.
Its watching a clown talk to himself in the mirror.
In the actual 1970s, if you wanted to deconstruct a Western, you just made it.
Joker: Folie a Deux is in theaters now.
