This article contains spoilers for Season 3 of Alice in Borderland.
If Alice in Borderland’s recent finale left you scratching your head, then you are not alone. The dystopian sci-fi thriller wrapped up a long-awaited third season by teasing the prospect of a fourth adventure set in the United States.
The show ended on quite the Squid Game-esque cliffhanger: Arisu (Kento Yamazaki) and Usagi (Tao Tsuchiya), safe in Tokyo, watch news of escalating earthquakes worldwide, tied to a series of climate disasters. We cut to a Los Angeles bar where two men enter and order lunch, casually discussing sports as the TV plays quake reports. Their waitress’ name-tag reads “Alice” and the show makes a point of making sure we see it, but we never get to see her face before the credits roll.
The suggestion is that the show will return in some form, perhaps with a new protagonist — Alice — taking over from Arisu, whose journey chasing Usagi down the rabbit-hole to Borderland is finally over. Season 3 featured several references over the course of its 6-episode run about future games. Banda and Oki Yaba discuss how they need to find better players. The Watchman, who later kills Banda for his rule-breaking chaos, warns Arisu of “countless others arriving soon” as the realm braces for a future apocalypse — or perhaps just a grand reset. Either way, players entering Borderland in the aftermath of the next disaster will be unlikely to recognize the dystopian Tokyo that hosted Arisu and Usagi’s games.
Netflix’s wildly popular Squid Game ended on a similar note. In the finale’s epilogue, In-ho encounters a representative of the Squid Game organization (with a cameo from Cate Blanchett) in the United States, playing ddakji in a back alley in a Los Angeles suburb. The scene hinted at what Netflix went on to later reveal: Squid Game: America is officially in development for the streamer with production reportedly starting in December in Los Angeles. The spin-off will be helmed by director David Fincher and is set to explore the games from an American cultural perspective, rather than revisit the South Korean storyline.
However, as I write, no such American version of Alice in Borderland has been announced by Netflix. That hasn’t stopped fans from voicing their concerns. Some worry that shifting the story to a U.S. setting would dilute the show’s distinctly Japanese elements, from its manga roots and cultural nuances to the Tokyo-centric dystopia that defined the original series. Some lament the Americanization trend seen in other Asian hits, arguing that not everything needs an American version.
Others draw parallels to Squid Game’s aforementioned expansion, calling it a cash-grab that risks losing the essence of Haro Aso’s source material. Reddit threads and fan forums echo the sentiment, with discussions criticizing the finale’s U.S. tease as a “forced” move that undermines the satisfying closure for Arisu and Usagi.
While Alice in Borderland has been praised for its emotional payoff and high-stakes games, this potential pivot has sparked debates about cultural adaptation versus preservation, leaving viewers divided on whether Borderland should expand globally or bow out on a high note.
For now though, Alice in Borderland: America is mere speculation.
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