The Season 2 Finale Reveal Of Alice In Borderland Was Hidden In Plain Sight In The Show's Opening Minutes
"Alice in Borderland" is a show that easily fits into the popular mystery box subgenre. Based on the manga of the same name by Haro Aso, the series follows a group of Japanese teens who awaken in a strange new world where they are forced to participate in a series of deadly games if they want to return to their own reality.
Of course, though there are many hints early on that there is something supernatural about their experiences, Arisu (Kento Yamazaki), Usagi (Tao Tsuchiya), and the others have no choice but to go along with the increasingly dangerous games if they hope to escape from Borderland.
While the tail end of Season 2 of "Alice in Borderland" has dropped some major revelations on viewers of the Netflix series, it turns out that the answer may have been there all along for those who knew precisely where to look in the show's opening moments.
A hint was hidden in the background of the first episode
As reported by Inverse, it turns out that the solution to the biggest mystery in "Alice in Borderland" — namely what Borderland is and why the central characters are there — could have been solved with an early hint planted in the opening moments of the series. The easily missable Easter egg was spotted by a Reddit user following the release of Season 2 of the Netflix series.
The image shows Arisu in the foreground, and a woman, who turns out to be Usagi, in the background before the characters are transported to Borderland. The reason this is relevant is that the big twist at the end of Season 2 suggests that most of the central characters were struck by the same disaster, a falling meteor, in the first episode of "Alice in Borderland."
Like with the final season of "Lost," the characters of "Alice in Borderland" seem to exist in some sort of purgatory while they're in Borderland. If they are able to complete all of the games successfully, they will wake up back in their bodies in the real world, where they are currently on the edge of death. However, if they die in the other realm, they will succumb to their wounds and pass away in the real world as well.
Either way, even if it was just a tiny hint, it shows that the creators of "Alice in Borderland" had a committed direction they were going with the story from the start. Of course, it helps that the series is based on an existing manga, but that doesn't take away from how cool the foreshadowing is for fans.