One of the biggest questions movie-goers had after watching Joker in theater was undoubtedly “What happened to Sophie Dumond?” Director Todd Phillips has revealed Sophie’s fate, referencing the code by which Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker abides by.
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From an exclusive video via Indiewire, Phillips says:
“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.”
Although it is obvious that Arthur Fleck kills those who he feels has wronged him, the scene in question was still left ambiguous. While Sophie, played by Zazie Beetz, did not wrong him, their confrontation in her apartment is the moment it is revealed that she is not actually Arthur’s girlfriend. He made the scenario up in his head, but there were still thoughts of, “would he blame her?” Not only did the scene end before we found out what happened, but it cuts to Arthur in his apartment as emergency vehicle sirens are heard outside.
Phillips also revealed that there was a scene later in the film which showed Sophie watching Arthur on the Murray Franklin show. However, the director explains that it was pulled due to the fact that Joker is primarily told from Arthur’s POV, and “would have disrupted the film’s narrative structure.”
While there are still some questions lingering (Did he actually kill the therapist? Wouldn’t that go against his code?), at least this one is put to rest.
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