The game starts, and we are back in Borderland! Three years after Netflix’s Alice in Borderland concluded a highly successful two-season run, the show has returned to continue the numbingly violent story. It brings back key characters, throws them into yet another set of mind-bending games, while also layering on thick some emotional drama. However, this season, which came as a surprise addition, carries the burden of matching the confident storytelling of its predecessors. Going in, it quickly becomes clear that Alice in Borderland is not the show it used to be. Not all of that is inherently bad news, but it leaves us with a season struggling to justify its existence.
We meet Arisu (Kento Yamazaki) and Usagi (Tao Tsuchiya), now married, back in Tokyo, which is healing after what was revealed to be a meteor strike. The Borderland, at the end of the last season, was insinuated to be a kind of Purgatorial Olympics, which determined your fate in the afterlife – win and you come back to the real world, lose and you die forever.
Arisu and Usagi, who have almost no recollection of their time in Borderland, cross paths with Ryuji Matsuyama (Kento Kaku) – a researcher obsessed with the afterlife who wants to experience it for himself. He eventually finds his opening with Sunato Banda (Hayato Isomura), who, at the end of last season, chose to be a Borderland resident at Borderlands and returns now as a kind of gamemaster. Though we mostly see him wandering around as a salesman, pitching the novel experience of Borderland to desperate people. Usagi, who is still grieving the disappearance of her father, is convinced by Matsuyama to accompany him back to Borderland. Arisu inevitably follows, and we jump right back in with the Joker card now dictating the style of games. Electrifying card games, flaming arrows falling from the skies, a poisonous train ride, and more await the fresh set of characters this season.
The first and second seasons of Alice in Borderland were adaptations of the story that played out in Haro Aso’s manga, and mirrored its ending. This season, therefore, was venturing back into the Borderland blind. There were some cues to pick from the spin-off publications (like Arisu and Usagi’s marriage), but the stakes for the fresh set of six episodes needed to be wholly imagined. The previous seasons, until the final climax, operated on the principle of ambiguity. Why was Tokyo suddenly subtracted from the majority of its residents? What is the point of such elaborate games? When one finally wins, what is the ultimate reward? These questions, and more, were left unanswered for long, simmering just below all the action and anxiety. The burden of imaging a future beyond these answers transfers the anxiety from the characters in the show to the writers writing it up.
Alice in Borderland Season 3 (Japanese)
Creators: Alfred Gough, Miles Millar
Cast: Kento Yamazaki, Tao Tsuchiya, Kento Kaku, Ayaka Miyoshi, Hayato Isomura, and others
Episodes: 6
Runtime: 50 mins – 1 hour
Storyline: Arisu and Usagi return to Borderland for a final tournament, as new games await.
When there was little language to describe Borderland, it retained a kind of terrifying allure. In this season, there appears to be a constant need to assign a more definite explanation to give a more concrete closure to the story so far. The season ends up converging around ‘near-death experiences’ which can now be accessed by Matsuyama’s invention, and transport you to Borderland. It gives the whole experience of the afterlife a kind of curated sheen, lending it a material, almost consumerist, reality.
The writing this season also paces itself out unevenly, so it becomes easier to miss the confidence of the first two seasons. Arisu enters Borderland to find Usagi, and in the search for her, ends up adopting a gaggle of Borderland first-timers to help clear the games. Usagi herself becomes part of a team that expands the supporting cast. However, unlike the previous seasons, which had remarkable control over character development and catapulted even the supporting members to fame, this season renders the fresh crop as sundry produce only to be paid meaningful attention to in the final episode.
Alice in Borderland continues to be a technically sound show, and even mines some good performances from its lead actors. There is, in fact, much to be impressed with this season, though only when viewed as a standalone. When compared with its previous seasons, this season falls short.
Alice in Borderland’s latest season remains elaborate, but it becomes a simpler, more straightforward story. That may not be a bad thing generally, but it is not what catapulted Alice in Borderlands to its original fame. In hankering for a neat closure and potentially pandering to a Western market, it loses what made it unique.
Alice is Borderland season 3 is available for streaming on Netflix
Published – September 26, 2025 03:47 pm IST
