Todd Phillips gives definitive answer on the fate of Zazie Beetz’s character in Joker

One of the movies that has left me pondering it for sometime afterwards this year was Joker.

An exceptionally dark, intelligent and unexpected look at what would make a man – Joaquin Pheonix’s Arthur Fleck – break down to the point that he becomes comics’ greatest villain.

But one of the biggest mysteries to fans was the fate of a major – though little seen – character in the movie, Zazie Beetz’s Sophie Dumond.

In the movie you may recall she became the only stabilising part of Arthur’s life and when he realises that their relationship was a construct of his imagination Arthur visits her and her daughter and it was left open what her fate was with some believing he killed them but others – myself included – believing that he left them unharmed.

Well, now writer/director Todd Phillips has shed some light on the events… and it’s good news for fans of Beetz’s: “He doesn’t kill her, definitively.”

“As the filmmaker and the writer I am saying he doesn’t kill her. We like the idea that it’s almost like a litmus test for the audience to say, ‘how crazy is he?’ Most people that I’ve spoken to think he didn’t kill her because they understand the idea that he only kills people that did him wrong. She had nothing to do with it. Most people understood that, even as a villain, he was living by a certain code. Of course he didn’t kill this woman down the hall.”

I never thought he did kill her because, as Phillips says, Arthur, when he becomes the ultimate agent of chaos, only goes after the ones he believes wronged him and, even if their relationship wasn’t real, her importance to him was.

It’s actually kind of sweet in a dark, twisted sort of way. And I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Man, I can’t wait to see this movie again.

What say you all? Do you agree? Did you see the outcome differently? I want to hear it…

Source: Indiewire