Photo: Warner Bros./Everett Collection

Note: This is a final statement. Spoilers for the end of Joker: Folie à Deux.

Todd Phillips joker I didn't have much to say other than “Don't be mean to socially awkward men, you never know what they're going through and you might get them to the point where they turn into some kind of Joker.” The most interesting thing about it, and that is perhaps a generous read, was how the banality of evil came about by suggesting that our greatest bogeymen are not agents of incredible genius and ambition hoping to impose their grand plans and ideologies on the rest of us; more often they are stupid and losers. And it's not only scary, but also sad. It was a new kind of supervillain origin story…

…Or it was, until Phillips' confused, self-loathing follow-up came, Joker: Folie à Deux, retconned much of the first film's characterization and adopted its entire place and purpose in the DC Cinematic Universe. In the final minutes of the new film, it becomes clear that the person we have been watching for the last two and a half hours and the two hours before that in the previous film was not the Joker at all. At least he was never the Joker fighting Batman. He was, as he points out to the dismay of his followers and Lady Gaga, just Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) all along. The sequel ends with Arthur's death by stabbing, which makes Arthur an additional guy the Joker had a fight with, since the guy doing the stabbing is supposed to be, yes, the Joker All Along. We never looked at an origin story. We watched to paraphrase Chris Evans' description of Pixar's D-tier efforts light yearthe origin story of man on which the Joker is based.

The first film is a supervillain origin story in the guise of a dark 1970s Scorsese homage, transforming the Joker's traditionally more cartoonish madness into a sadder mental illness. His incessant laughter is a tic, the result of repeated childhood physical trauma, and his clown schtick comes from his day job as a clown and his stand-up comedy ambitions. His turn to violence begins when employees of Wayne Enterprises' finance department harass him on the subway and he retaliates by shooting them, portraying himself as symbolic opposition to the Wayne Dynasty's influence over Gotham City. Arthur is also linked to Batman because his ailing mother, a former employee of Thomas Wayne, insists that the fatherless Arthur's real father is the billionaire captain of industry. Therefore, he visits Wayne Manor and interacts with the young Bruce, whom he previously calls his brother – he is scolded by Alfred. When the shootings – and his subsequent murderous live TV appearance as the Joker – inspire lawless mobs in clown masks to riot against the rich, one of these criminals shoots Bruce's parents outside a movie theater, beginning Bruce's own journey to become Batman . Everything about the first film makes Arthur the Joker, because why shouldn't he?

Because, I don't know, Todd Phillips is bored? He's upset? He wanted a twist? In Folie à Deux, Arthur/Joker is on trial for the series of murders in the first film, and the trial is broadcast live on television, making him the antihero to dozens of crazed freaks, most notably Lady Harleen Stefanie “Lee” Gaga Quinzel Germanotta. Between court dates, Fleck is held in the maximum security ward for the mentally insane at Arkham Asylum, a setting portrayed as sensitively as one would expect. In several scenes of the trial playing on television at the asylum, or in which Arthur returns from a long day in court with Joker-like swagger, the camera focuses on a young inmate (Connor Storrie) who takes Arthur with an obsessive glare Eyes observed. In Arthur's final statement to the jury, he sits Maron-style on a chair with a microphone and shows vulnerability, tearfully denying his ex-lawyer's “split personality” defense and saying there is no Joker; just Arthur. What happens next makes no logical or emotional sense: his fans are disappointed in him for admitting that the Joker isn't a split personality. For some reason, to them, the Joker represented rebellion and madness in a way that a Crazy guy who was literally the Joker, doing all the murders and breaking ranks in court not. For a viewer like me, it's a question of semantics. For Lee, it's a betrayal. She was always just horny Joker, not for a guy named Arthur, who is Joker.

Anyway. This young prisoner is also visibly disappointed in him. The jury makes its decision and sentences Arthur to death, and what's worse, Lady Gaga dumps him. Back at the asylum, some time later, Arthur appears to have made peace with his fate, then is told that there is a visitor for him. Could it be Lady Gaga who wants to free him? Or his prosecutor Harvey Dent, who reveals himself as Two-Face for the first time? We'll never know, because the young inmate stops Arthur in the hallway and tells him a “joke” about how he admired Joker and was let down by Arthur, before delivering the punch line, “You get what you damn deserve.” ” from the first film repeats the climax and the murder of Arthur. As the Joker we've spent the last four and a half hours with bleeds out with no one coming to save him, the young inmate laughs maniacally in the background, almost like some kind of Joker, contorting his own face into a Glasgow smile… almost like a kind of joker. The two Joaquin Phoenix joker Movies weren't an origin story for the DC Universe's Batman-fighting Joker. It was a misanthropic character portrait of a man named Arthur Fleck, who had a joker, so to speak see for him and was also a criminal and also crazy, but actually it was just someone who was stabbed by the real Joker, a young man who will presumably break out of Arkham in the future and become the Clown Prince of Crime.

Perhaps Phillips wanted to make it clear that the Joker is not a person, but a person Movement, a legal person, A spirit of anarchy that spreads like a contagion and has no loyalty. But it's also a move that, like the rest, shows contempt for its own audience Slide for two. It's a shock for the sake of a shock. It is an act of senseless violence. It's… a good point.

Wow.

Okay, maybe this was all a portrait of a budding Joker after all, only it wasn't Arthur and it wasn't the prisoner who killed him. It was Todd Phillips. He is the Joker. Making these films made him the Joker. He sows chaos and plays a dirty joker trick. That's exactly what this ending is! That's the message, that's the point, that's what he's trying to tell us! Someone call Commissioner Gordon and lock this guy up! This film was a two-hander, but not between Phoenix and Gaga. It was between Phoenix and Phillips. He was right under our noses the whole time. Todd Phillips is Joker. That means the end. This is entertainment!