Joseph's victory is shortlived when Kars emerges from the lava unharmed, having formed an insulating shell around him, and in one swift movement he slices off Joseph's hand. Kars reveals that he and other Pillar Men were part of a fourth race of humanity living underground, which he exterminated when they retaliated against his thirst for power and the creation of the Stone Masks. Joseph attempts to fight back, but Kars has discovered how to use the Hamon himself, at a higher potency that harms Joseph as if he were a Pillar Man. Just as Kars prepares to deliver the coup de grace, Joseph subconsiously holds up the Red Stone of Aja just as Kars strikes. The energy causes the volcano to erupt, launching them both into the sky. Kars plans on escaping with his wings, but Joseph's gloating distracts him enough such that his severed arm flies up and grabs him, throwing Kars into the path of other debris which push Kars out of the Earth's atmosphere. Kars tries in vain to return to the Earth to take his revenge on Joseph, but the vacuum of space initiates one last evolutionary response by turning him to stone. Drifting forever in the void, the immortal Kars eventually stopped thinking entirely. Back on the Earth, Joseph accepts that everything is finally over and he loses consciousness as the chunk of rock plummets back to the ocean. Stroheim watches on in horror, and later reports back to Speedwagon. On February 28, 1939, Joseph Joestar is pronounced dead. Weeks later, Erina, Lisa Lisa, Smokey, Speedwagon, and Messina pay their final respects to Joseph, when he walks up behind his grandmother to surprise her, wondering why no one bothered to meet him at the airport. Everyone is shocked, and he reveals that he survived the fall and landed near Venice, where Suzi Q, his new wife, nursed him back to health, and Stroheim even fitted him with a new prosthetic hand. However, Suzi Q forgot to tell everyone that he was not dead, infuriating him. Years later, Joseph, Suzi Q, and Lisa Lisa, after revealing that she is his mother Elisabeth, move to the United States, where Elisabeth marries, again, to a Hollywood screenwriter. Erina lives out the rest of her life teaching at an elementary school, dying in 1950 at the age of 81. Speedwagon dedicates the rest of his life and fortune to researching medicine and science, dying of a heart attack in 1952 at the age of 89, having never married. Smokey Brown pays his way through college and studies political science, ultimately becoming the first black mayor of his hometown in Georgia. Stroheim never sees Joseph, again, and dies an honorable death on the frontlines at the Battle of Stalingrad. In 1987, a 67-year-old Joseph lashes out at a Japanese tourist at JFK Airport, still sore that his beloved daughter moved to Japan after marrying a Japanese man, before he flies out to Tokyo to see her. Four years earlier, a strange coffin is salvaged from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of the Canary Islands, engraved with the name "DIO". Back in the present in Tokyo, a young man wearing a school uniform and cap sits in a jail cell, an ominous aura about him.