SPOILER ALERT: This article contains major spoilers about the ending of Joker: film A Dex“is playing in theaters now.

Joaquin Phoenix wears his clown makeup again in Joker: Folie à Deux, the sequel to his 2019 Oscar-winning performance. This time he’s joined by fellow Oscar winner Lady Gaga, who plays another iconic DC Comics villain. Harley Quinn.

The comic sequel is set after the events of Joker, with Phoenix’s killer clown Arthur Fleck on trial for the murders he committed in the first film. His lawyer, played by Catherine Keener, argues that Arthur and Joker are two different people. She claims that after years of child abuse, Arthur developed an alter ego separate from his own mind. The prosecution is led by Assistant District Attorney Harvey Dent, played by Industry star Harry Lawtey, later known as the disfigured villain Two Face in the Batman comics.

The jury sides with Dent and convicts Arthur of murder. But before the trial can continue, a bomb explodes outside the courtroom, plunging the city into chaos. Arthur briefly escapes with the help of two Joker followers, but is soon captured by the police and taken back to Arkham Asylum. Additionally, it appears that Harvey’s face was injured in the courtroom explosion, potentially preparing him to become Two Face in the future.

The film ends on a bloody note as Arthur is ambushed the next day by a laughing, clearly insane Arkham patient. The inmate, played by Connor Storrie, tells Arthur a joke and then stabs him repeatedly in the stomach. Arthur falls over, bleeding profusely and appears to be dying. Behind him, the nameless psychopath laughs uncontrollably and puts a Glasgow smile on his face with a knife.

Many DC fans have theorized that Arthur’s killer could be an homage to Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight, as both bear the same gnarly scars around their mouths. Todd Phillips’ Joker and Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy are set in different time periods and universes, so it’s unlikely that Storrie’s character is at all related to Ledger’s.

In The Dark Knight, Ledger’s Joker backstory is largely unknown and he offers varying accounts of how he got his facial scars. At the beginning of the film he says that his father injured him while drunk as a child, but later he says that he inflicted the scars on himself after his wife was given a Glaswegian smile because of her gambling debts. “The Dark Knight” is also set in the modern 2000s era, while the “Joker” films are set in the ’80s, providing little evidence that the “Folie a Deux” character is anything more than a nod to Ledgers Oscar-winning role is.

It appears Phoenix is ​​ditching his red suit and clown makeup with “Folie à Deux.” The Joker films existed in their own world and had no connection to Matt Reeves’ The Batman or James Gunn and Peter Safran’s rebooted DC universe. Therefore, it is unlikely that Phoenix’s character will be revived or revisited. The next time we might see a live-action Joker is when Barry Keoghan finally reprises his role from the final scene of The Batman, perhaps in Reeves’ sequel in 2026.