Was “Joker: Folie à Deux” Actually Based?

We know the critics and audience tend to disagree, so when was the last time everyone hated a movie this much at the same time? Especially one with the talented Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga?

Spoilers ahead.

“They made the joker get gay gang raped then killed him,” commented X user CassandraRules. The last 15 minutes of the movie had been leaked onto the internet, and fans couldn’t believe it.

Spoiler alert – he dies. Yep, the chaotic clown prince of crime is taken out in the most unceremonious way possible. He’s stabbed to death by an inmate after it’s implied that he was gang raped.

Before seeing it for myself, I asked a friend who had been expressing his excitement to see it for weeks about it. “They turned the Joker into a total pussy!” my friend complained. He had never been so upset by the last 15 minutes of a film. 

But, let’s take a step back for a second. Are we really supposed to like this guy?

Millennials, we’ve been here before. We’ve been suckered into sympathizing with anti-heroes: Dexter (okay, I still love Dexter!), Walter White, Cruella de Ville, even Francis Underwood. We’ve seen villains we thought we hated get their moment in the spotlight. Good versus evil wasn’t so obvious. It was more nuanced than that. The villain was just a poor, unfortunate soul, after all. 

Then came Maleficent, where suddenly the evil sorceress who cursed a baby to death was just upset about not getting a party invite. It’s understandable…right? (Side note: Disney would never do a live-action Sleeping Beauty because a prince slaying a dragon for a beautiful woman makes men look too good, and the only time we should watch them is when they’re dumb dads on a couch or an evil villain.)

So why, exactly, are we rooting for the Joker? Are we forgetting that this is the same psychopath who brutally murdered Robin with a crowbar and spent decades trying to psychologically torture Batman? Even encouraging him to break his moral code and commit murder?

Back in 2019, when the first Joker movie hit theaters, we met Arthur Fleck – a man beaten down by life, struggling with mental illness, and ignored by society. When he put on that Joker face, he became a symbol of defiance – confident, funny, and full of vengeance for the society that misunderstood him.

But that story didn’t come without real-world consequences. There were shootings at movie theaters, and a mass shooter in Aurora, CO, even claimed to be inspired by the Joker. Suddenly, this mentally ill man had become a symbol for angry, wounded incels everywhere. 

Now, fast-forward to Folie à Deux’s shocking conclusion. Arthur, stabbed by an inmate, dies a pathetic death, and the inmate slices a smile onto his own face, leaving the audience wondering: Was Arthur ever the Joker? Or was it all in his head? He even confesses in court that he’s not the Joker. He’s just…Arthur. A lonely, tragic figure who left behind no legacy, no chaos, and no anarchy.

Let’s be clear: Evil deserves to lose. It’s what sets heroes apart from villains. We don’t need to humanize the Joker to make him complex. We don’t need to feel bad for him because he had a tough life. 

The Joker stands for destruction, for cruelty, for chaos – and no amount of tragic backstory changes that. We’ve been led to believe that villains are just misunderstood, that they can’t help who they are, and maybe deep down, they aren’t that bad.

But here’s the truth: Some people are that bad. Some characters are meant to represent evil, and the Joker is one of them. It’s not a flaw in the writing that he doesn’t get a redemptive arc. It’s a flaw in our thinking if we expect him to. Joker: Folie à Deux didn’t fail because it made the Joker “soft.” It failed because it tried to make us forget who he is. 

Arthur Fleck, the human behind the clown mask, might have been pitiful. But the Joker? He’s a villain who deserved his downfall. He’s not a symbol of misunderstood chaos; he’s a symbol of unchecked evil. And the right thing – the just thing – was for him to lose. Because in the eternal battle between good and evil, we don’t need more stories making us empathize with the villain. We need stories that remind us that, in the end, good should win.