In
Joker, Sophie's fate is left very much up in the air following a sinister confrontation with Arthur in her apartment. The next thing we see is the future Clown Prince of Crime laughing maniacally as sirens can be heard outside. So, he totally ended up killing her, right? Well, not according to the film's director!
"He doesn’t kill her, definitively," Todd Phillips revealed. "As the filmmaker and the writer I am saying he doesn’t kill her. We like the idea that it’s almost like a litmus test for the audience to say, ‘how crazy is he?’ Most people that I’ve spoken to think he didn’t kill her because they understand the idea that he only kills people that did him wrong. She had nothing to do with it."
"Most people understood that, even as a villain, he was living by a certain code. Of course he didn’t kill this woman down the hall." The director further confirmed that Sophie survived her encounter with Arthur by detailing a deleted scene which would have showed her alive and well watching Joker's interview with Franklin Murray on television.
Apparently, he cut the sequence because he wanted Joker to be told solely from Arthur's point of view, and cutting to what was happening with Sophie obviously would have distracted from that somewhat.
How do you feel about Sophie surviving the events of Joker?