‘Alice in Borderland’ Season 2 Episode 7 Recap: This Time Baby I’ll Be Bulletproof

Let’s get a few things out of the way right up front.

Do people who aren’t gymnasts or trained professional wrestlers fly a dozen feet through the air turning corkscrews all the while after being kicked or thrown by even a very strong person? No, they do not. 

Can someone survive being strafed by an automatic weapon at point blank range, long enough to crawl around and pine for the person they love? No, they cannot. 

Is it feasible for — let me count here — nine major protagonists and antagonists to survive being shot, stabbed, beaten, run over, bashed against concrete, set on fire, blown up, launched through a plate-glass second-story window, or all of the above, and live long enough to tell the tale, or at the very least have poignant last words before they die? No, it is not.

Does any of this make this episode of Alice in Borderland any less badass? No, it does not.

Hands down the most action-based episode of the entire series so far, this installment of AiB breezes through several of the remaining face-card games in brief opening montage just to get to the goods. We watch Ann and Kiuna team up to win a lethal version of dodgeball in the Queen of Clubs game, while strangers (at least I’m pretty sure I didn’t see any recognizable faces) perform a high-rise rope climbing exercise for the Jack of Clubs and race through some kind of narrow corridor chased by an unseen beast for the King of Hearts. This last one kind of irked me: The single hardest betrayal-based game, one that apparently involves some kind of minotaur-in-a-maze, and we barely stick with it for thirty total seconds of screentime? C’mon, guys!

But it’s whatever. The meat of the episode, really the only important thing about it besides the very end, is the reconvergence of all the main characters and the subsequent battle against the King of Clubs.

It starts with a Mexican standoff between Arisu, Niragi, and Chishiya. Arisu shoots Niragi when Niragi turns his gun on Usagi, and Chishiya throws himself in front of Niragi’s bullet to save her. Everyone survives, somehow.

Then the King of Spades shows up, along with the usual fleeing crowd of cannon fodder. To their credit, many of these anonymous people try their best to take him down, including one rando whom I really thought had him dead to rights by running him over with a car right into another car and bailing just before both vehicles explode. The King of Spades survives, somehow.

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By this point Arisu, Usagi, Aguni, Heiya, Kiuna, and Ann have all reunited (Chishiya and Niragi are still alive but incapacitated) and agree to a plan: While Arisu infiltrates the second floor of a drug store and fills it with aerosol spray to help fuel a makeshift bomb Chishiya had given to Kiuna way back when, the others will serve as decoys, luring and driving the KoS in Arisu’s direction so he can deliver the killing blow.

In the process, every single person other than Arisu gets shot and stabbed and beaten, the KoS included. They all survive, somehow.

Eventually the King follows Arisu up to the second floor, but figures out something’s up and refuses to open the door. That’s when the miraculously still-alive Aguni, who’d appeared to have been shot in the head, resurfaces to tackle the King through the doors. Arisu grabs him and they leap through the window. Arisu tosses the bomb through the broken glass and Aguni shoots it to detonate it. Boom.

Again, everyone survives.

The KoS flashes back to a moment where he had to kill a mortally wounded comrade, and repeats it with the roles reversed, handing his gun to Aguni for the killshot. Aguni points the gun at himself but is interrupted by a vision of Hatter, who apologizes for having made him take on such an awful role back at the Beach.

Heiya (who survived) pines for Aguni. Kiuna and Ann (who survived) connect before Ann finally dies. Arisu and Usagi (who survived) stagger off toward the final game arena, presided over by Miya, the Queen of Hearts. The end.

The easiest way to describe this episode is that it’s a non-stop onslaught of extremely cool shit. From Ann and Kiuna walking away from an exploding blimp — the ne plus ultra of “cool guys don’t look at explosions” shots — to the amazing vistas of the increasingly vegetation-covered Tokyo deathscape to the high-octane high-impact high-stakes combat that constitutes the bulk of the episode, it’s pure sensation, and it rules.

And now only one episode remains. I deeply appreciate Alice in Borderland’s commitment to serving up huge triple-scoops of genre-thriller ice cream and slathering it with emotional-pathos hot fudge. It’s a winning formula. I’m bummed I’ve only got one scoop left to enjoy.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.