Here’s what we know. On a bright Tokyo morning, a meteorite crashed into the bustling Shibuya district, causing localized but still massive damage and casualties. Among the survivors were a number of people found to have gone into cardiac arrest upon the meteorite’s impact and subsequently revived by medical teams or other survivors. 

When they awaken, many of the heart attack victims report dreaming while in the borderland between life and death. Their dreams all contain certain common elements: a journey, an abandoned city, games, fireworks — what we in the audience know to be the lethal, playing card–based competitions endured by our heroes Arisu (Kento Yamazaki) and Usagi (Tao Tsuchiya) during the show’s first two brutally dystopian seasons. 

Arisu and Usagi’s memories of those experiences are minimal, in Arisu’s case nonexistent. They’ve met, fallen in love, and gotten married all without the benefit of knowing what they went through together in the Borderland. They’re just two nice, attractive young people, and sometimes that’ll do it.

Others are more aware of that other world, or more determined to become aware. In the former category, there’s Ann (Ayaka Miyoshi), an ex-cop and Shibuya survivor now living in a sanitarium. She tells Arisu, who helps counsel other survivors, that she remembers where they all went, and can get back there with the use of a certain drug.

Professor Ryuji Matsuyama (Kento Kaku) didn’t experience the phenomenon, but he believes in it. Working on a research project in which survivors are interviewed about their dreams, he asks leading questions about the game-world, until its real-world representatives finally invite him to a “seminar” where his questions will be answered. 

What they didn’t mention is that you have to survive a lethal game of Old Maid first, in which a losing hand means instant death by electrocution. (The makeup effect here is super gnarly, all bloodshot bug eyes and weird distended grimaces.) Ryuji wins, and is welcomed to the Borderland by Banda (Hyato Isomura). A real-world serial killer who survived the games and chose to stay in that world along with his fellow sociopath, the well-dressed con man Yaba (Katsuya Maiguma), he’s implied to be a higher-up in the new power structure there. 

Could he be the Joker, the sole remaining card in the deck that determined the players’ fates, and which is now used as a calling card by the games’ representatives on our plane of existence?

Arisu soon has occasion to find out. After briefly being confronted by the illusory Banda in a highway overpass late one night, Arisu discovers Usagi has gone missing. The only clues are both supremely eerie: a blurry bit of security camera footage showing her walking off with Professor Matsuyama (after his victory in the game and arrival in Borderland), and a troubling phone call in which Usagi, who’d been having constant nightmares about her father’s suicide, says only “Arisu, I’m sorry” before hanging up and going dark.

When Arisu learns that Usagi has been drugged, and further that she’s undergoing a second cardiac arrest, he takes Ann up on her earlier information and has her inject a heart-stopping drug into his system. Within seconds he’s in an abandoned Tokyo, following directions to a shrine. Inside he finds games and booths from a carnival midway, a handful of new players, and an announcement that the game will now commence.

In other words, we know an awful lot, don’t we?

Adapted by writer-director Shinsuke Sato from the manga of the same name by Haro Aso, Alice in Borderland is one of the most complex, complicated, convoluted TV shows I’ve ever covered. The obvious point of comparison is Squid Game, but with more players, way more games, and way more uncertainty as to what the hell is even going on. 

This premiere clears a lot of that uncertainty right up. Obviously it’s possible the show is just straight-up lying to us, but it certainly appears as if Arisu’s adventure’s in Borderland took place during a near-death experience that plunged many people into a sort of shared consciousness where the games took place in classic “if you die in the dream, you die in real life” fashion. 

Now, this obviously still leaves a lot of questions unanswered. If this is just some dream world, why do all the games involve guns, booby traps, and other relatively realistic means of killing people? Why are they themed around a deck of playing cards? Is it connected in a direct way to the meterorite, in the sense that its origin is extraterrestrial? How is Banda able to pass to and fro? Has this happened before, and if so where and when and how often?

But still, given the show’s adamant refusal to answer a damn thing for nigh on two seasons, this return felt like finding the answer key to a chemistry exam. What’s more, there’s no new normal to familiarize yourself with that takes more than two seconds to get accustomed to: “Oh wow, Arisu and Usagi are married now? Cool, good for them.” And other than Ryuji, there aren’t any new characters to familiarize yourself with, not yet anyway. This may be the easiest Season 3 premiere I’ve ever had to review, from a “recapping the action” perspective.

To me, however, the standout moment isn’t any of the explanations receive. It’s not even the disgusting electrocution sequence, as fun as that is if you’re a gorehound. It’s Arisu’s long twilit walk from the sanitarium to the game zone through the cobalt-blue streets of empty Tokyo. It’s then that it truly feels we’re on the border of some new and terrible thing. At least, so I hope.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.