I still remember the first time I watched Usagi scale a wall in Alice in Borderland. It was 2020, and I was just a normal player—someone who clicked play on Netflix because a friend said it was like Sword Art Online but with more crying. Five years later, in 2026, I am still here, still theorizing, still waiting for one mystery to break my heart or heal it. The show has finally reached its third and final season, and it has a chance to resolve the one Usagi question it has held back since the beginning: what really happened to her father?

Alice in Borderland follows a video-game enthusiast and his two friends who find themselves transported to an alternate Tokyo. There, they must participate in perilous games for survival. I have watched every game, every betrayal, every impossible choice. But Usagi's father has always been the quietest mystery. Her backstory hit me harder than any game. Her father, Shigenori, was the one who taught her to climb. They went on trips together. She had those bright, windblown memories with him. Then he decided to climb Mount Everest without supplementary oxygen. He succeeded, but the climbing community called him a fraud. The humiliation broke him. He disappeared, and everyone presumed he died by suicide. But the show never gave us a body. It never gave us a funeral. It only gave us Usagi's grief, and a quiet, nagging hint that Shigenori might still be out there.

That hint has grown into a full-blown theory. What if Usagi's father ended up in the Borderlands? What if he became a player, or worse, one of the final bosses? I have seen dozens of fan threads asking the same thing. Season 3 can either confirm or debunk all of it. And after the Joker twist that ended the previous chapter, the Netflix series has plenty of narrative directions to choose from. 🃏

One of the season 3 posters already teased something strange. If you look closely, there is a mysterious character in a wheelchair. The poster does not name them. Some viewers think it is a secondary player from earlier seasons. Others—myself included—wonder if it is Usagi's father. Why would the show hide that face? Why put a wheelchair in a story about climbing? It feels deliberate. It feels like the kind of clue that could change everything about Usagi's arc.

I know the worry. When a show moves beyond its source material, it can stumble. Game of Thrones did it. The first Fullmetal Alchemist did it. But if Alice in Borderland uses Usagi's father as a main character, it will not be pointless. It will have a reason to exist. It will be personal. Haro Aso's Shounen manga gave us the foundation, but the final season can build something new on top of it.

Here is what I think the show could do with him:

That last option makes me cry just thinking about it. 😭 In season 2, Arisu carried Karube and Chouta with him even after they died. Usagi could do the same with her father. She could meet a version of him inside the Borderlands, or she could meet the real man, broken and changed. Either way, she would finally have to say goodbye.

The show has three seasons now. Netflix has kept the cast—Kento Yamazaki as Arisu, Tao Tsuchiya as Usagi, and many others—at the center of a story that keeps bending reality. Season 3 is not just another game. It is the final hand. If the Joker is involved, then anything can happen. A dead father can return. A memory can become a monster. A wheelchair can hide a god.

If Usagi's father is alive, the show has to explain how. Did he enter the Borderlands after his disappearance? Did he become a citizen? Did he forget her? The mystery is five years old now. It started in the manga, carried into the Netflix adaptation, and has haunted every season. I do not want a cheap answer. I want a resolution that respects Usagi's pain. I want her to leave the Borderlands not just alive, but free.

As a normal player, I cannot control what the writers do. But I can hope. I hope season 3 uses Usagi's father to give her a real ending. I hope the wheelchair character is him. I hope she gets to climb one last time—not away from her grief, but through it. And I hope, when the final credits roll in 2026, I finally understand why this mystery was worth waiting for.

Maybe the answer will be that her father was never in the Borderlands at all. Maybe the wheelchair figure is someone else. But even then, the show would have to address Usagi's past. It would have to let her grieve properly. That is the real win. The mystery has been a shadow over her story for five years. Season 3 can turn that shadow into light. And as someone who has been watching since 2020, I am ready to see Usagi climb out of it. 🧗‍♀️