Alice in Borderland Season 3 introduces plenty of new characters, like Matsuyama in Episode 1. In Episode 2, we come across Rei, a blue-haired girl who looks straight out of an anime. In the second episode, Arisu and his team have to play a new card game at a Virus Facility, this is where we come across Rei.
Portrayed by Japanese actress Tina Tamashiro, she sounds enthusiastic and bubbly but is actually pretty mysterious. Joining Arisu’s team, she helps them make a clever alliance while playing a new game, ‘Zombie Hunt.’
What is Rei’s Zombie & Vaccine Card Idea?
In the second episode of Season 3 of Alice in Borderland, the second game involves several teams competing against each other. Each player has to select another person, from within or outside the team, to play a game of cards.
Called the Zombie Hunt, each team gets seven number cards plus special cards: zombie, shotgun, and vaccine. The zombie card beats any other: whoever plays it wins, and the losing opponent becomes infected (i.e., turns into a zombie). The vaccine card, on the other hand, cancels out a zombie card in play, turning the zombie back to human (but not usable on oneself).
The shotgun card can kill zombies but only once, and it does not work on humans. The game lasts 20 rounds; players who run out of number cards are eliminated, and teams with the fewest players remaining at the end of 20 rounds will also be eliminated.
Rei proposes that all human players should publicly declare who is infected and who is safe within their team. The idea is to use their shared knowledge and the threat of zombies to secure trust, making it risky for zombies to hide or strike. She also proposes using their ‘zombies’ to find out who the other zombies are in other teams, threatening them with the use of shotgun carnage if they try to infect others.
She suggests distributing number cards fairly and offering the vaccine only among their team to foster collective survival, rather than secret betrayals. Her pitch: “We should make everyone believe we have enough vaccine cards to cure everyone,” building an alliance. She also declares that she has both the zombie and vaccine cards and uses them to her advantage.
Alice in Borderland Season 3 Episode 2: Can Rei Be Trusted?
Rei’s strategy works for a while, and it seems that Arisu and her team are getting ahead of the rest. However, given the show’s penchant for chaos, things take a wild turn when other players decide to use their shotgun cards to eliminate zombies.
They use Mr. Kazuya, a former Yakuza, who kills a zombie. This makes the zombies take to play offensively. When another ‘zombie’ player ends up dying, Arisu (who is frantically looking for Usagi) looks worried, but Rei? Well, she declares that the game is becoming more interesting.
This incident alone makes her a Red Flag. While her initial plan to encourage cooperation makes her sound hopeful, her reaction to when the cooperation starts breaking down hints that she is chaos hiding in disguise.
Furthermore, the fact that she holds both critical cards gives her power that others don’t have. She may be using the “trust” narrative as a smokescreen to manipulate outcomes. Given all this, Rei might be a fragile ally at best and helpful so long as no one tests her too much, but dangerous if her power or secrets shift.
Based on what we have seen of her so far, what do you think: should Arisu trust her or is she a hidden threat waiting to strike, who may be well left alone? Let us know in the comments below.
Alice in Borderland Season 3 is now available to stream on Netflix.
