Alice in Borderland Season 3 highlighted the Zombie Hunt card game as a dangerous competition filled with alliances, betrayal, and a shocking twist in the end. The latest season of Netflix's thriller series continued the story of Arisu and Usagi as they unexpectedly returned to the games after having endured and survived the Face Card rounds in Season 2. What makes these new games more dangerous is the fact that they are part of the Joker tournament (a key difference between Netflix's version and the original manga), a series of deadly rounds that includes multiple starting games, a semi-final, and a final round composed of the remaining survivors of every team.
One of the games introduced in Alice in Borderland Season 3 is the Zombie Hunt card game. Despite having a simple rule that includes alliances between zombies and humans, Zombie Hunt is far more complicated than it sounds, as it pushes the players to the limit by testing their strategy and morality in the face of death.
What Is the Zombie Hunt Card Game in Alice in Borderland?
Introduced in Alice in Borderland Season 3, Episode 2, the Zombie Hunt card game showed players being given seven cards each, and they were required to use them to play one-on-one games. The games were then played at designated tables throughout an abandoned research facility.
In each round, players must play a card matching the suit of the dealt hand, with the highest cumulative total determining the winner, who then takes one card from the loser. The twist here is that the game has three special cards: Zombie Card, Shotgun Card, and Vaccine Card.
The Zombie card is given to one person in every group, as it trumps every other card in the deck, meaning that it is an "instant win." The losing player becomes infected by the zombie, meaning that another Zombie card is given to them. The goal is to infect as many players as possible.
Meanwhile, the Shotgun cards are used to kill the zombies, and each player is guaranteed to receive one. This can be used anytime in the card games, regardless of whether the player placed a Zombie card on the table. However, the card is ineffective against humans and disappears after being used once.
Another twist involving the shotgun cards is that the losing player (zombie or not) ends up getting shot in real time, instantly killing them and eliminating them. This also meant that there's a risk that players can be killed by zombies during each round.
The last special card in the deck is the Vaccine card. As described by the game makers, it is the peaceful method of eliminating zombies throughout each round, and they are distributed randomly among members of the group. When the player decides to play the Vaccine card, it cancels out the Zombie card and turns the zombie back into a human. However, this card cannot be used on oneself, making things complicated if the player who has it is turned into a zombie.
The game has 20 rounds. Whichever faction (humans or zombies) has the most members at the end clears the game, while the losing group will be instantly killed by the red beam sky laser. Another way for the players to be eliminated is if they run out of number cards during one of the rounds.
The tournament has four teams (two of each have Usagi and Arisu as members). The game begins with the revelation that there is already one zombie in each of the other teams, meaning that only four zombie cards exist before it can spread to other players.
There are different strategies in this game, but the prevalent ones include not revealing oneself as a zombie because it increases the risk of getting killed by the shotgun card.
As Arisu pointed out, the numbers on the cards in the Zombie Hunt aren't important, and they only need one in the end to survive all 20 rounds. However, there is a solution hiding in plain sight that ultimately led to a sure win for any group.
At the beginning of the game, it was made clear that there are only four zombie cards that exist, meaning that they are outnumbered from the get-go. The big reveal here is that whoever has the zombie card needs to turn his or her allies into zombies because the likelihood of survival is higher for the infected than for the humans, because their number increases exponentially with each round.
To win and eventually survive, a leader (like Arisu) needs to build trust with a large enough group and buy into their plan, whether he or she is a zombie or not.
Who Wins the Zombie Hunt Card Game?
In an unexpected twist, Alice in Borderland Season 3, Episode 3 revealed that Arisu is a zombie right from the start, and he mapped out to plan late in the game to start infecting his teammates and other players by turning them into zombies so that they could end up winning. He revealed it to Rei, a new player who is also an expert player and human, and explained what needs to be done.
With one round left, Arisu turned the tide by instructing Nobu to infect their remaining team members (Sachiko, Shion, and Natsu), which led the trio to turn the other remaining humans in the game. Arisu's sound strategy worked, and he even helped turn Rei into a zombie to save her life and include her in his winning team.
Ultimately, the Zombies ended up winning over the humans (led by a merciless Ikeno who killed Masato in one of the final rounds - one of the most heartbreaking deaths in Alice in Borderland Season 3). The final scores are Zombies with 32 members, while humans only had 13 non-infected individuals. It goes downhill for the human side because they were instantly killed by the red laser beam.
This proves why Arisu is a master strategist in the Borderland, which also explains why the Watchmen end up giving him the choice to live or to die in the end (read more about the Joker's true identity in Alice in Borderland Season 3 here).
