Joker ending explained: the Arkham scene and the question of reality
Spoilers ahead: this article discusses the ending.
Joker ending explained has to deal with two things at once: what happens on screen and whether any of it happened at all. Todd Phillips's 2019 film ends with Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) laughing in Arkham State Hospital, and the final scene leaves the whole story open to doubt.
Phillips has said the film is open to interpretation, and the ending was built to support more than one reading. Here is what happens and the main ways to read it.
What happens at the end of Joker
Arthur appears on Murray Franklin's talk show and asks to be introduced as Joker. On live television he confesses to the subway killings and then shoots Murray (Robert De Niro) in the head. He is arrested as riots spread across Gotham.
Rioters crash into the police car carrying him and pull him out. In an alley nearby, a masked rioter shoots Thomas and Martha Wayne in front of their son Bruce. Arthur wakes on the bonnet of the car, smears the blood from his mouth into a smile and dances as the crowd cheers.
The Arkham scene
The film then cuts to Arthur in Arkham, laughing during a session with a therapist. She asks what is funny and he says she would not get it. A short time later he walks down a corridor leaving bloody footprints, and an orderly chases him through the halls.
The footprints suggest he has killed the therapist. The line about a joke she would not get, said right after the image of the Wayne murder, hints at what he is thinking about.
Joker ending explained: was it all in his head?
This is the central question in any Joker ending explained. Earlier the film reveals that Arthur's romance with his neighbour Sophie was imagined, so it has already shown that we cannot trust what we see. The writers deliberately framed parts of the story as Arthur's delusions to make him an unreliable narrator.
Phillips has repeated a reading he heard from viewers: that the whole story is a joke dreamed up by a man in Arkham, who might not even be the Joker. He has not endorsed it as the answer, saying instead that the film is open to interpretation.
- Literal: everything happened, and Arthur ends up in Arkham after the riots.
- Imagined: the story is Arthur's fantasy, told from his cell.
- Mixed: some events were real and others, like the Sophie romance, were not.
Is Arthur the Joker from the Batman stories?
Phillips said he deliberately left open whether Arthur becomes the Joker Batman will face or simply inspires someone else. Phoenix has said he believes Arthur is the Joker.
What the ending is saying
The film links a lonely, ignored man to a city that turns his violence into a symbol. The riots happen because people see what they want in him, which is the same thing the film does to its audience. Joker won the Golden Lion at Venice in 2019, became the first R-rated film to pass a billion dollars worldwide and won Phoenix the Academy Award for Best Actor.
Questions people ask
Does Arthur kill the therapist at the end of Joker?
The bloody footprints strongly suggest it, but the film does not show it.
Was Joker all in Arthur's head?
Possibly. The film shows that some events were imagined, and Phillips has said the ending is open to interpretation.
Who killed Bruce Wayne's parents in Joker?
An unnamed rioter in a clown mask, not Arthur.
What is the joke Arthur won't tell?
He doesn't say. The scene cuts to the Wayne murder just before, which suggests he is thinking about it.