Alice in Borderland season 1 catapults viewers into a dystopian nightmare where survival hinges on outsmarting lethal challenges tied to a mysterious playing card system. The story tracks a group of ordinary people thrust into an abandoned urban sprawl, forced to confront their limits as they navigate a reality governed by unseen forces and ruthless consequences. Infused with psychological tension and high-octane action, this tale probes the depths of human instinct under pressure, setting the stage for a relentless quest to uncover the truth behind their predicament.
Adapted from Haro Aso’s manga, the series launched on Netflix on December 10, 2020, striking a chord with its blend of suspense and survival stakes reminiscent of Squid Game. Its eerie, deserted cityscape amplifies the isolation and danger faced by a diverse cast of players, each bringing unique strengths to the fray. Netflix reported 18 million households streamed it within 28 days, a testament to its global draw. This opening arc escalates from raw survival to a broader mystery, steering toward a pivotal hub known as the Beach.
Arisu’s Mysterious Arrival
Season 1 of Alice in Borderland follows Ryohei Arisu (Kento Yamazaki), a young, jobless man who is completely hooked on video games. One day, while hanging out with his two best friends, Chota Segawa (Yuki Morinaga) and Daikichi Karube (Keita Machida), they accidentally cause a commotion in Shibuya and end up fleeing from the police. In an attempt to hide, they duck into a public restroom. Suddenly, the power cuts out, and when they step outside, they find Tokyo completely deserted—no people, no sounds, just an eerie emptiness that leaves them unsettled.
As night falls, the trio notices distant lights leading them to a mysterious game arena. Inside, they discover a stack of phones displaying the rules and difficulty levels of the games they must play, which are categorized by playing cards. Their first challenge, called Dead or Alive, is represented by the Three of Clubs. In the arena, they meet Saori Shibuki (Ayame Misaki) and another woman who joins at the last second.
The game forces them to choose between two doors labeled “live” or “die”, with only moments to decide. Arisu, noticing subtle clues in the room’s layout, deciphers the puzzle and leads his friends and Shibuki through the ‘live’ door to safety. However, the other woman chooses incorrectly and is instantly killed by a laser from above. During the chaos, Chota suffers severe burns on his leg while trying to escape, leaving him unable to walk properly.
After narrowly escaping the arena, the trio discovers a chilling new rule on their phones: “visas”, countdown timers that determine how many days they have left to live before they must enter another game or face execution by deadly lasers from the sky. With Chota struggling from his burns, Arisu and Karube decide to join another game to extend their visas, while Shibuki stays behind to care for Chota’s injuries.
The second game, the five of spades, titled A Game of Tag, unfolds in an abandoned apartment complex, where Arisu and Karube encounter new players already navigating the challenge: Yuzuha Usagi (Tao Tsuchiya), an athletic climber; Shuntaro Chishiya (Nijiro Murakami), a cunning strategist; and Morizono Aguni (Sho Aoyagi), a tough and intimidating fighter. This game is a high-stakes version of hide-and-seek, where players must avoid two armed killers while searching for a hidden room containing buttons that will deactivate a bomb set to destroy the entire building.
With time running out and the killers relentlessly hunting them down, the players are picked off one by one, intensifying the pressure. Arisu struggles to keep his composure under these dire circumstances but eventually stumbles upon the hidden room. Chishiya, having found the room through another route, waits to observe the others, likely calculating how their actions might reveal additional clues or threats. Meanwhile, Karube teams up with Aguni to take down one of the killers in a brutal fight.
Just when all hope seems lost as the second killer closes in, Usagi arrives in time to help Arisu. Working together, they press the buttons with mere seconds left, successfully preventing the explosion and securing their survival. As the game concludes, one of the attackers is killed in Aguni’s fight, while Chishiya remains eerily calm, unfazed by the chaos. After regrouping outside the building, Karube stumbles upon a walkie-talkie left behind by one of the attackers. The device contains a cryptic message that directs them toward a place called the Beach.
Deadly Games and Betrayals
The next morning, Karube shows the message he found to Chota, Arisu, and Shibuki. Unfortunately, With their visas nearing expiration, Chota and Shibuki must join another game. The group heads to a botanical garden, where they enter a seven of hearts game called Hide and Seek. However, the game has a cruel twist, only one player will survive. At the start, each participant is given a headset with facial recognition technology that assigns them an animal role: three sheep and one wolf.
The game’s rule is simple but brutal—whoever holds the wolf status at the end is the sole winner. The catch? The wolf status transfers every time a player makes eye contact with another participant. This mechanic causes immediate chaos as the group scrambles to outmaneuver one another. In a desperate attempt to avoid being marked, Arisu hides in the bushes and tries to break his headset, but it is indestructible.
As the game nears its final moments, Arisu makes a heartbreaking decision. He willingly transfers the wolf status back to his friends, believing he does not deserve to survive. However, Karube, Chota, and Shibuki reject his sacrifice, instead choosing Arisu as the one who should live. In a gut-wrenching conclusion, Arisu watches in horror as Karube dies right before his eyes, followed by Chota and Shibuki meeting the same tragic fate.
Reeling from the Seven of Hearts’ tragic end, where he lost Karube, Chota, and Shibuki, Arisu spends a sleepless night grappling with guilt. By the next day, he wanders aimlessly, drowning in grief. While scavenging for food, he is discovered by Usagi, who convinces him to keep moving forward. She offers him hope and companionship, and together, they head toward the next game arena—an abandoned bus parked in an underground tunnel. There, they meet three other players and are forced into a Four of Clubs game called Distance.
The objective seems simple, reach the finish line. With no clear instructions, Arisu, Usagi, and two others assume the finish line is at the tunnel’s end and sprint forward, leaving behind a participant with an injured ankle. However, their journey takes a horrifying turn when they encounter a panther, which swiftly kills one of their group members. Despite the growing danger, Arisu and Usagi push forward, determined to escape.
As they near what they believe to be the tunnel’s exit, they spot a motorcycle with fuel and decide to use it to return to the bus, thinking it will help them complete the game while also saving the remaining player. But in a shocking revelation, they realize they have been running in the wrong direction. Suddenly, a massive flood rushes through the tunnel, threatening to engulf them. In a last-second act of survival, Arisu drives the bus just in time, escaping the deadly wave. In the end, the game’s real goal was not to run but to stay inside the bus all along. While Arisu and Usagi survive, another player does not make it.
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The Beach and Power Struggles
Still determined to uncover the truth behind Borderland, Arisu and Usagi follow a group of players wearing matching wristbands, recognizing them from a previous game. Their pursuit leads them to a massive building filled with dozens of players, only to be captured and brought before the Beach leader, a man named Takeru Danma a.k.a Hatter (Nobuaki Kaneko).
Hatter reveals the Beach’s mission is to collect every playing card, believing that once all the cards are gathered, a way out of Borderland will be revealed. He also points out that none of the face card games have surfaced yet, hinting at an even deadlier challenge ahead. With no other option for survival, Arisu and Usagi reluctantly join the Beach, preparing for the next stage of their harrowing journey.
Arisu joins a four of diamonds game, Light Bulb, alongside other Beach members, meeting Rizuna Ann (Ayaka Miyoshi), a forensic expert with sharp investigative skills, and Hikari Kuina (Aya Asahina), a skilled fighter with a surprising past, both recruited by Hatter’s group. Together, they navigate the challenge and successfully survive. After the game, Arisu is unexpectedly pulled into the Beach’s inner circle, where Hatter drops a major revelation—only one card remains uncollected: the elusive Ten of Hearts, which has yet to appear.
With his visa nearing its end, Hatter boldly enters the next game to secure his survival. Hours later, his body is brought back to the Beach, dead, with whispers of a brutal defeat. The official story claims he died during the game, but the truth soon emerges: he was actually killed by Aguni, his closest ally, as an act of mercy. With the leadership in turmoil, the remaining executives gather, and Aguni is appointed as the Beach’s new leader. He also inherits the stack of playing cards that Hatter had painstakingly collected.
In the aftermath of this sudden power shift, Arisu gets caught up in a risky scheme devised by Chishiya and Kuina, who plan to steal the cards from Aguni. However, Arisu soon realizes he’s been set up—Chishiya and Kuina are using him as bait. The plan backfires when Aguni catches Arisu red-handed and locks him in a room, leaving him to die when his visa expires at midnight. Meanwhile, Usagi finds herself in a dangerous battle of her own, fighting off an assault from one of Aguni’s enforcers, the sadistic Suguru Nirag (Dori Sakurada).
As Chishiya and Kuina continue their search for the cards, they uncover a crucial clue—Hatter’s collected cards aren’t secured in a traditional safe as expected. Instead, they are hidden in a small hole in the wall behind a painting. Chishiya deciphers the secret using a code engraved on a ring Hatter always wore, which reads “Boss”. With this breakthrough, they successfully retrieve the entire deck, unaware of the chaos about to unfold.
The Witch Hunt Massacre
That same night, the tension at the Beach reaches a boiling point when glowing laser walls suddenly rise around the building, signaling the start of a game. Everyone is forced into the hotel lobby, where they learn they are trapped inside a Ten of Hearts game called Witch Hunt. The rules are announced, and within moments, panic erupts as a girl named Momoka Inoue (Kina Yazaki) collapses in the crowd, a knife plunged into her chest by her own hand.
The players are given just two hours to complete the game. Their objective? Identify the “witch” responsible for Momoka’s death and throw them into a bonfire to win. However, Aguni and his militants seize control, assuming the witch is a living player. They adopt a brutal strategy: execute everyone to ensure the witch is among the dead. Chaos descends as dozens of players are slaughtered in a violent rampage. Amid the massacre, Usagi desperately searches for Arisu, determined to save him. After an intense struggle, she and a few allies manage to track him down and break him free.
As chaos erupts, the entire building of the Beach begins to go up in flames. Amid the destruction, Kuina finds herself locked in a fierce battle against a dangerous militant known as Takatora Samura, a.k.a. Last Boss (Shuntaro Yanagi), a ruthless swordsman. Meanwhile, Chishiya takes a different approach to survival, managing to take down the sadistic Niragi using a flamethrower. With time running out and the mystery still unsolved, whispers spread among the survivors—Aguni’s ruthless orders and haunted glare made him the prime suspect as the witch, especially after someone recalled his closeness to Momoka before her death.
Arisu takes center stage and delivers a shocking revelation: Aguni isn’t the witch. He explains that Aguni didn’t kill Momoka. Instead, he killed Hatter out of mercy after watching his descent into madness. Just as the room erupts into confusion, forensic expert Ann steps in to support Arisu’s claim. She presents undeniable evidence: Momoka’s fingerprints on the knife suggest she took her own life, but a video later suggests her death was more than it seemed.
Despite Arisu’s compelling argument, Aguni resists, refusing to accept the reality of the situation. But in a final act of redemption, he chooses to sacrifice himself, taking out Niragi in order to protect the remaining survivors. At the same time, a flashback unveils crucial hidden truths—Momoka and her friend Asahi Kujo (Mizuki Yoshida) had left behind a desperate, hidden message. The footage reveals that they had been coerced into becoming dealers, helping manipulate the deadly challenges in exchange for extending their visas.
Back in the burning arena, the game reaches its frantic, heart-pounding climax. Aguni, weary yet unyielding, makes his last stand amidst choking smoke and collapsing beams, before Momoka’s lifeless body is finally thrown into the crackling bonfire, officially ending the Witch Hunt game. As the remaining survivors—wounded, terrified, and gasping for air—flee the blazing wreckage of the Beach, Chishiya, cold and calculating, wastes no time in securing the final card for himself, his smirk barely visible through the haze.
The Truth Behind Borderland
The next day, while searching for answers, Arisu and Usagi uncover a battered phone clutching Asahi’s final recording. In her final confession, she confirms that she and Momoka were dealers tasked with rigging games, stretching out their visas, and ensuring the brutal system remained intact. But the most shocking part? One clip reveals them sneaking through an underground facility where the so-called game masters monitored everything.
Driven by restless determination, Arisu and Usagi track down the secret location, navigating eerie tunnels slick with dampness and dread. They arrive only to be met with a horrifying sight—all the game masters are already dead, each executed by a precise laser shot to the head, their lifeless bodies slumped over flickering control panels. Before they can process what this means or catch their breath, Chishiya and Kuina arrive, having followed their own trail of clues to the same shadowy hideout.
But the biggest twist is yet to come. As they piece together the puzzle, they realize that Mira Kano (Riisa Naka), a high-ranking executive at the Beach who always seemed too composed, is unmasked as a mastermind behind the games, her subtle manipulations now clear in hindsight. Appearing on a massive screen, Mira delivers a chilling message: the next stage of the games is about to begin. This time, players must hunt down and defeat the face card games—an even deadlier challenge that will push them beyond anything they have faced before.
