Episodes 01

The games’ next stage starts when the King of Spades, an expert marksman, begins shooting players indiscriminately. The King of Spades’ game arena is the whole city, and his presence is marked by a blimp with his face card that follows him. Arisu, Usagi, Kuina, and Tatta hide together, while Chishiya and Ann flee separately. Still searching for answers, Arisu decides to play against the King of Clubs, with Usagi, Kuina, Tatta, and Niragi as his teammates. Kyuma, the King of Clubs, introduces himself and his team as “citizens” of the country.

Episodes 02

Kyuma explains that all face-card games are deathmatches against citizens. The King of Clubs game, “Osmosis”, is a points-based game where players have the opportunity to increase their points in certain ways, including via “battling”, where if two opposing players touch, the player with higher points takes 500 points from the losing player. The team with the highest points at the end wins. At first, Arisu’s team takes the lead, only to be surprised by Kyuma and his team’s fearlessness and willingness to die in order to help their team win. Kyuma’s team takes the lead of 500 points, with seemingly no way for Arisu’s team to catch up.

Episodes 03

Kyuma and Arisu, who have grown to understand each other, have a chat while waiting for the countdown to run out. Arisu realizes that Kyuma and his team were once regular players and fears this means that clearing all the games won’t let them return home. Arisu asks to shake Kyuma’s hand. When the latter does, he loses 500 points, putting Arisu’s team in the lead. It’s revealed that Tatta smashed his hand to give his points bracelet to Arisu, who could use the accumulated points to win one last battle. Kyuma and his team accept their deaths, and Tatta dies of his injuries. Elsewhere, Chishiya plays the Jack of Hearts game in a prison, where players have to correctly guess the playing card suit on the back of their collars to avoid being killed and at the same time find the Jack of Hearts, who is hiding among them.

Episodes 04

The Jack of Hearts is found by Chishiya and two other players, a serial killer and a con man. The serial killer and con man want to torture the Jack for information, but he commits suicide, ending the game. Kuina leaves Arisu and Usagi to find Ann and Chishiya. Arisu is depressed after Tatta’s death, speculating that as all gamemasters seem to be former players, winning the game will just lead to them also becoming gamemasters, but Usagi urges him to help her hunt. They find a community outside of Tokyo that was slaughtered by the King of Spades and watch a film where a girl explains that the fireworks everyone saw before entering weren’t fireworks. They are then separated when the King of Spades attacks again. Arisu is rescued by Aguni and his new friend, Heiya.

Episodes 05

Before the change, Heiya is a girl who lives a frivolous life. She wakes to find herself in her first game, “Boiling Death”. She is the only survivor, but she loses her leg in the process. Now she is determined to survive any way she can. Arisu joins Aguni and Heiya to set a trap for the King of Spades, but the plan fails, and Arisu is separated from them. Ann hikes out of the city but finds only forest, surrounded by giant craters. Kuina survives the Jack of Spades game but struggles alone. Usagi decides to help a young boy whose visa is expiring by taking him into the Queen of Spades game and protecting him. Arisu also enters the game, reuniting with Usagi. The Queen of Spades game is “Checkmate”, a where chasing and tagging someone from the opposite team transfers them to yours, and the team with the highest number of members by the end wins. Usagi’s team starts to lose when the other players decide to stay with the Queen of Spades.

Episodes 06

Usagi confronts some of the players, asking if they’d really prefer to stay in these games, instead of holding out for the possibility of going home and starting over. Usagi’s argument works, and the players work together, winning the game. Arisu and Usagi find hot springs in the remains of a stadium; they bathe together and share a kiss. Chishiya and three others play “Balance Scale”, a mathematics/logic game against Kuzuryu, the King of Diamonds and a former Beach executive member. Chishiya realizes that Kuzuryu has been trying to figure out if all lives have equal value; he gives Kuzuryu the chance to kill him, but Kuzuryu decides to let Chishiya win.

Episodes 07

Kuina and Ann reunite in the Queen of Clubs game and win together. With two face games left, players start converging in Shibuya. Niragi, Arisu, and Chishiya meet at the Shibuya crossing. Niragi drags the other two into a gunfight, during which Arisu shoots Niragi and Chishiya is shot saving Usagi’s life. The King of Spades arrives. Arisu and Usagi team up with Ann, Kuina, Aguni, and Heiya. While Arisu prepares a trap, the others engage the King of Spades, who defeats them one by one. Aguni and Arisu blow up the King of Spades with an explosive, and Aguni ultimately shoots him in the head. With the rest of their friends injured and near death, Arisu and Usagi go to the final Queen of Hearts game to end things.

Episodes 08

Mira is revealed to be the Queen of Hearts, and her game is “Croquet”, where Arisu only needs to play three rounds without quitting, regardless of who wins or loses the game. Mira reveals that she designed the Seven of Hearts game that killed Arisu’s friends. This enrages Arisu, until he realizes that if he kills Mira, they’ll never be able to finish the game. Mira’s psychological taunting breaks Arisu’s mind, and he hallucinates that he’s in a mental hospital with Mira as his psychiatrist, trying to convince him to quit. Usagi manages to snap Arisu out of his mental breakdown by cutting her wrist and convincing him to come back to save her. Mira is touched that their love was able to break Arisu out of the hallucination, and she finishes the croquet game with Arisu. The last game beaten, all players are given the choice to become “permanent residents” or not. Players who are still alive and who choose not to stay then wake up in the regular world, where they are survivors of a meteorite crash in Tokyo. Arisu’s brother tells him that his heart stopped for one minute, during which he was at the border between life and death. The survivors don’t remember their experiences in the other world, but some recognize each other, including Arisu and Usagi, who meet at a vending machine and decide to take a walk together. The last shot is of a table of playing cards, with focus on the joker card.