He’s dressed in all white and within a white room, chuckling to himself. He appears to have been institutionalized in the interim, presumably in Arkham, his handcuffed hands working a cigarette. Was It All in Joker’s Head?After a pause, we see Arthur (sans Joker makeup) in a cell being interviewed by a shrink. Watch Joaquin Phoenix and director Todd Phillips respond to the criticism that Joker is a "dangerous" movie: He preens for the crowd, a hero, an idol, a criminal celebrity. He stands atop the car and uses the blood from his mouth to draw a Joker smile across his face. After a lifetime of being ignored and abused, Arthur Fleck is now someone who is being celebrated. Meanwhile, Joker wakes up aboard the hood of the smashed patrol car and sees the anarchy he’s helped unleash. (Remember, Thomas Wayne is a mayoral candidate who previously made disparaging remarks about the clown-masked protestors on TV.) The gunman draws on Thomas Wayne, calling him by name, the latter only managing a “No, pal!” before the gunman says, echoing Joker’s line before he killed Murray Franklin, “You get what you f*****g deserve!” The gunman shoots Thomas dead and then turns his gun on Martha, killing her too - while also breaking her pearl necklace (maintaining the long tradition of portraying the Waynes’ murders). Their escape doesn’t go unnoticed by a clown-masked gunman who follows them into the alley. Thomas guides his wife and son through the crowd before they sneak down a side alley to avoid rioters.
There’s a glitzy movie theater playing a double bill of Blow Out and Zorro the Gay Blade, attended by Thomas, Martha and young Bruce Wayne, who exit the theater and into the chaos. We see rioters turning a more posh part of town into chaos. The movie intercuts with scenes of similar anarchy elsewhere in Gotham. Throngs of masked looters and rioters start to swarm around Joker. The duo delicately extract Joker from the backseat and lay him reverently on the hood of the crashed police car. YES NOThat’s when an ambulance driven by two clown-masked rioters slams into the cop car, knocking out Arthur Fleck/Joker and more grievously injuring the policeman driving the patrol car. It brings a smile to his painted face despite the cop who’s driving him castigating him for the madness he’s inspired. As he’s driven off by a GCPD officer, Joker watches as Gotham - the city that has thus far been so cruelly indifferent to him - collapses into fiery anarchy. The shocking televised murder grips the media just as Gotham’s protests against the rich and powerful explode into full-on violent rioting. What Happens at the End of Joker?It is in an atmosphere of growing civil unrest in Gotham City that Joker appears on Live With Murray Franklin - and kills the talk show host on air as retribution for previously mocking him. So let us all break down as best we can then what happened - or appeared to happen - in the closing moments of director Todd Phillips’ award-winning comic book movie. Given how open to interpretation Joker is, we’ve deviated from our usual Ending Explained approach to include multiple takes on the film’s ending from IGN editors who have seen the film. Given his reputation as an unreliable narrator, it should come as no surprise that the Joker’s solo movie is a story rife with ambiguity that might make viewers question how much truth there is to what is depicted in the DC film, including its deliberately murky ending.