A movie putting it's main character through hell does not mean they dislike them or just want to make them suffer. Sometimes that suffering is important as, through them, we can get a better look at a darker aspect of humanity that is often not explored and doesn't have a neat happy ending at the end.

One thing Joaquin Phoenix and Todd Phillips made sure to point out multiple times in interviews and during the filming of this film was that this Joker wasn't the Comedy Crime Prince and never was going to be. Arthur Fleck was a pitiful mad who snapped one day and committed some atrocious crimes as a result of being let down by a society who didn't really understand to deal with him. From the ending of the first one, you can take what follows in two different ways. This man stays locked in Arkham and inspired the Joker movement years later, or maybe he escapes somehow and becomes the iconic Joker down the line. If you stop the story there either of those work.

But the movie made a billion dollars. And people demanded to see more. And the only way to do the previous film justice was to continue it's themes and give them the downer ending they were always leading to. Arthur does not become the leader of a movement, he is shown to be out of his depth from beginning to end and never gets the support he really needs.

In this way, the movie works less as a sequel and more as an Epilogue to the first film. Reflecting on it's themes of isolation, loneliness, and failures of the mental health system and showing the only way they would end for Arthur, painfully.

The movie's central question is not "Does Arthur deserve to be free? the central question of the film is "Does Arthur deserve to live, despite his terrible crimes, and is he allowed to empathize with himself and everything that led to the events of the first film?" I'd say all the events give the answer clearly as "Yes he does." but he's continued to be let down by the Government and their poor handling of mental health.

In the first film we saw the failures of Social Services. In this film, we see the failures of Mental Health Facilities and the Judicial System in regards to Arthur. Arkham is a Hellhole where Arthur is abused and doesn't receive the proper help he needs to become a better person. The Law wants to put a man who's clearly mentally ill and not well to death, just because they feel they have the moral right to.

That's why they focus on the failures of Dent's case against Arthur. How he hired a Physiatrist who didn't ask the proper questions about how Joker was sexually abused as a child, how all the killings he did were clearly with provocation, and about his delusions which we clearly saw in the first film. How Arthur was no threat to anyone who didn't cause him pain themselves. Instead they allow Dent's flimsy case to be used against Arthur, and the Judge allow Arthur to drop his lawyer (someone who actually gives a fuck about him and only wants the uncomfortable details of his life to be out there so he can be empathized with as a person) and defend himself, knowing he isn't mentally fit to do so and would only makes things worse for himself.

Harley Quinn not being a devoted follower of The Joker isn't supposed to just subvert your expectations. It's to portray a troubling demographic of True Crime fans. The type who say they'd love to dine with Jeffery Dahmer, or have sex with Ted Bundy given the chance. Who admire psychopaths for having the courage to do the insane things they wish they could, but could never truly care for them as people. Lee didn't care about Arthur, she liked the idea of the Joker. And when he decides he no longer wants to be that, she's over him.

This is why he renounces the Joker identity at the end of the film. He never wanted to be The Joker, he never wanted to inspire a movement, he wanted people who cared about him and loved him and never getting anything but abuse led to him doing a horrible thing, that he truly regrets. But instead of taking that into account the system still fails him and gets him sentenced to death.

This movie was never going to be about Joker escaping from Arkham with Harley Quinn and becoming a Bonnie and Clyde or Natural Born Killers duo. That would be against the point of the first film which showed a man who gets completely let down by society, and continues to be let down by the sequel. As Harley says herself "It was all just a fantasy, and you stopped believing". The fantasy is that The Joker was ever going to be free after what he did, or they were going to become the crime couple people expected.

Arthur deserved to be placed in a proper mental hospital and finally be surrounded by people who truly understand him and want to see him do better. Instead he's flung around by people who are either using him for their own gains, or don't understand him and just want to see him suffer. The movie allows the only person who truly cares about him to be discarded (his Lawyer) by another failure of the system and it ends badly for Arthur.

When Arthur dies it highlights that his life was a pure tragedy from beginning to end. Never truly being loved or understood. And only inspiring future psychopaths ,like the man who kills him while cackling like a certain Monster Clown, an identity that might just get passed down from person to person until one day one of them faces a man who has decided to become a Bat.

The movie knows this isn't what the audience wanted or expected. The point of the film is that this was never on the cards for this version of The Joker. He was a man let down by the world, and in the sequel the world continues to fail him up until the moment he dies. It's a bleak film but it's bleakness is a reflection of the genuine reality around us. And I thank them for going this route and taking this risk.