Queen of Hearts: Croquet
Also known as lawn billiards, croquet has been widely popular in England since the 19th century. Mira Kano explains that winning or losing this game doesn’t matter—the clear condition is simply to complete three rounds of croquet without quitting. Mid-game withdrawal results in immediate game over. Bringing weapons is allowed; the only rule is to finish all three rounds. This means that even if players lose, as long as they see it through, they clear the game. Croquet is played using wooden balls and two mallets. Players must guide their ball through six hoops in sequence, and the first to hit the finishing stake wins.
Continuing from Episode 7, the only participants in the Queen of Hearts game are Arisu and Usagi. Although it’s a croquet match, the atmosphere is unsettling—winning isn’t necessary. They only need to complete three rounds. Arisu and Usagi are suspicious, wondering what trap the game master might have set. Even though Arisu is completely inexperienced at croquet and loses the first round, they discuss whether the dealer’s real plan is to stall for time. Watching Usagi, who is bleeding heavily and on the verge of collapsing, Arisu is desperate to finish quickly.
Midway through, the game master suddenly suggests taking a break for tea. Arisu seizes the chance to ask whether completing the game would allow them to return to the real world. His friends died for unclear reasons, and he is determined to uncover the truth for their sake.
Mira begins explaining the truth behind Borderland, warning Arisu to prepare himself. She speaks of a future world with nanotechnology, renewable energy, induced pluripotent stem cells, virtual reality, cryonics, and terraforming. She reflects that people in Arisu’s time still saw technology as romantic and full of hope—an era where rapid progress was still being made. Then Mira reveals that she is talking about “the world a thousand years in the future.” Over the next several centuries, humanity achieved breakthroughs in nearly every domain. Nothing remained unpredictable; humans gained near-total control over their existence and became virtually ageless. At this moment, Arisu notices a camera behind Mira.
Beyond the camera, it is revealed that players in the far future are controlling this virtual reality experience. Experiencing games from a thousand years ago has become the most popular form of entertainment. Because humans in that era have achieved near-immortality, their will to live has weakened. Worlds filled with death threats and apocalyptic crises deeply attract these future humans. But then Mira claims she was just making it up—
The real truth, she says, is that genetic engineering caused massive mutations in plants, resulting in the overgrown cities they see. Another theory suggests that aliens abducted humans to extract their memories and threw them into this game as an experiment. Yet another rumor among players is that a nuclear war made the surface uninhabitable, and wealthy elites living underground sent androids with artificial memories to the surface to compete in games—betting on which ones would survive. Of course, she adds, this is also a lie.
In the end, the game master never intended to tell Arisu the truth. Especially when mentioning the Seven of Hearts game where Arisu lost his friends, Arisu becomes enraged and wants to kill her. But he realizes this is exactly what Mira wants—to provoke him into killing her so the game cannot end, leaving them waiting for death and experiencing ultimate despair.
The Queen of Hearts tells Arisu that the world he sees isn’t real—it’s an illusion. The reason this absurd setting and games feel real is that the players’ brains are generating this imagined world. Usagi insists this can’t be true—if everything is an illusion, how can she be physically present with Arisu? The Queen explains that it’s because Usagi doesn’t exist in Arisu’s real world.
Mira reveals that she is Arisu’s psychiatrist in the real world. He suffered severe trauma after losing his friends and is currently undergoing treatment. Arisu seems to recall images of himself in a hospital. Usagi, too, is a patient receiving treatment due to the loss of someone she loved. Mira urges Arisu to think back to the moment of the fireworks—his friends were actually killed in a car accident on the streets of Shibuya. Arisu carries immense guilt, and what he truly seeks is not the answer to this world, but understanding who he is—why he is alive and the meaning of his existence. Having grown up lacking love, he has always been searching for answers, which led his mind to create this absurd game to find a reason to live. Now, Arisu starts to feel that he shouldn’t have survived and that life is meaningless.
Mira begins to persuade Arisu to give up the game. In fact, her entire story was meant to brainwash him into withdrawing. Usagi urges Arisu not to treat the game as unreal—because she is still here. She cuts her wrist to jolt Arisu back to reality and asks him to protect her. When it comes to reasons for living, everyone has different answers—some have one, some don’t. Even when they lost their way, they still moved forward together, and that’s enough. Arisu’s purpose is to help Usagi find her own reason to live.
Hearing Usagi’s words, Arisu chooses not to take the pill to withdraw. Instead, he takes Usagi’s hand, wanting to spend each day with her again. It seems Arisu has no intention of quitting—he will continue protecting Usagi.
Touched by their love, even Mira is moved. She completes the final match with Arisu, which lasts until evening. After Mira finally wins and ends the game, she believes Arisu will eventually find the answers he seeks and his true self. She hopes he enjoys the game of life.
Fireworks suddenly light up the sky around them. The surviving players are given two choices: become permanent residents of Borderland or decline. Arisu is brought back to the moment in the real world when he was with his friends in Shibuya. On the streets, everyone is a stranger, and Arisu realizes his friends didn’t die in a car accident—they were killed in a meteor explosion.
Arisu wakes up in a hospital, confused why he alone survived. He hears that when rescuers found him, his heart had stopped for a full minute. But that one minute felt to Arisu like an eternity spent in a distant world. Arisu’s father cried upon hearing about the accident. It seems every player in Borderland had experienced clinical death—each walked the line between life and death and returned changed. However, in the real world, none of them know each other (though interestingly, each survivor’s injuries match the ones they sustained in Borderland).
When Arisu encounters Usagi in the hospital, they don’t recognize each other. Yet Arisu feels a strange sense of familiarity, as if they’ve met before. On a table outside, a deck of playing cards is scattered, and among them lies a single Joker.