The new supernatural horror movie Tarot uses some familiar horror tropes and a cast of murderous entities to explore whether a person’s fate is truly set in stone and influenced by the stars, or if every person has the capacity for growth and change. Based on the 1992 novel Horrorscope by Nicholas Adams, Tarot, which is now playing everywhere, features a group of students on a weekend getaway as they discover an old deck of tarot cards in the mansion they’ve rented. One of them, Haley, performs readings for the entire group, which quickly pivots away from harmless fun.

Upon returning from their getaway, the group of friends is picked off, one by one, by a different creature based on the final tarot card from their reading. The group quickly makes the connection between the deaths and the readings, but the group continues to dwindle as the characters unknowingly act out their individual readings. After consulting an occultist who was plagued by the tarot deck in the past, the remaining friends find themselves face-to-face with the tortured spirit bound to the cards. Haley performs a reading on her, reversing the curse of the cards and destroying her.

How Haley Destroyed The Astrologer

She turned the tables on the entity killing her friends

In the climax of Tarot, Haley and Grant find themselves face-to-face with the spirit of The Astrologer, the peasant woman who bound her soul to the cards as a curse against the people who killed her daughter in the 1790s. Using a dark ritual and sacrificing her own life, The Astrologer imbued her vengeful spirit into the cards, enabling the Arcana characters within them to come to life and exact her murderous revenge against any who use the deck for readings. Because of her curse, the cards themselves can not be destroyed, leaving Haley to deal with The Astrologer herself.

Haley realizes that if the cards curse whoever has a reading done, then she should be able to reverse it onto The Astrologer herself by doing her reading. Her reading reveals that she is in pain, still tortured and grieving over her daughter’s cruel and unjust death. Haley is able to empathize with The Astrologer’s grief, as she was unable to save her own mother from the illness that took her. The reading and Haley’s empathy help to free The Astrologer’s tortured spirit, thus destroying the deck and breaking the curse.

How Paxton Survived The Fool

He appeared to have met a similar end to his friends

In accordance with his reading, Paxton foolishly separates himself from his surviving friends and is immediately stalked by the Arcana from his reading, The Fool. After playfully tormenting Paxton as he attempts to return to his room on campus, The Fool finally traps Paxton in an elevator, and seemingly kills him similarly to how his friends were killed. However, the screen cuts to black just before Paxton’s supposed death, and there is no blood spatter or body shown as there was for Elise, Lucas, or Madelyn.

Paxton appears at the very end of the movie after Haley destroys the deck and frees The Astrologer. He drives up just as Grant and Haley are leaving the mansion, noting that Haley’s reading did say that he would show up for his friends in an unexpected way. He quickly explains that right as The Fool was about to kill him, his roommate Todd opened the elevator, and The Fool simply vanished. It’s intended to be a humorous moment, even if the simplistic explanation is unsatisfying.

How The Astrologer’s Arcana Creatures Worked

The creepy entities carried out each violent fate

In Grant and Haley’s final flight through the mansion after confronting The Astrologer, it’s revealed that each of the Arcana that killed their friends is actually the same entity. It shape-shifts into its new form based on whatever the final card was of each character’s reading. The audience sees it descend into the shadows at one point and change from Haley’s terrifying Death character into Grant’s equally haunting Devil creature. It’s never stated outright, but the Arcana seem to all be manifestations of The Astrologer’s spirit, which is what’s bound to the deck and gives it its power.

Why The Characters Kept Leaning Into Their Readings

Bad decisions were made by everyone who died

It’s a common horror trope for characters to act somewhat stupidly, often separating themselves from the group or going into a very obviously dangerous location for no discernible reason. Tarot uses this trope as well, with each of the characters finding themselves alone at the time they are killed by their respective Arcana. However, it provides an explanation: they are acting on their own personality as outlined by their reading.

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For example, Madelyn inexplicably leaves the car when it breaks down knowing that the entity is outside the car. As Haley said in her reading, Madelyn tends to run from things, and sure enough that’s what she does. Haley notes Paxton is headstrong, which explains his stubborn refusal to do anything other than head to his dorm room to “wait it out” in safety. While the characters make poor decisions to wind up in their fated death scenarios, it’s explained as an element of their personality that is inescapable.

How Tarot’s Ending Sets Up A Sequel

Some of the characters survive the murderous creatures in the cards

Tarot ends with the spirit of The Astrologer released and the deck of cards seemingly destroyed once and for all. While that doesn’t necessarily point to the potential for a sequel, there was a decent amount of lore established in the movie, even if much of it came via exposition dumps. There is the potential for a prequel to Tarot, revisiting the cards’ origins or one of the other times that the deck was used, which could make for a fun period piece (for example, they were used at the Woodstock music festival in the 1960s).

The concept of tarot and the characters in the deck itself were not fully explored, so that could yield a sequel even if it’s not directly related to the deck used in Tarot. Haley, Grant, and Paxton all survived the events of the movie, so it’s possible they could return to deal with another iteration of the deck having experienced it once already. Given Tarot‘s rough early reviews though, a sequel feels unlikely even if it turns a profit on its modest budget.

Tarot Does Not Have A Post-Credits Scene

There is a brief mid-credits moment

There is no post-credits scene in Tarot, at least not in the traditional sense where a thread is dangled that teases the potential for a sequel. There is a brief scene that pops up right after the credits begin, but it’s merely a continuation of the return of Jacob Batalon’s Paxton. It involves Haley and Grant asking how he survived The Fool, and results in the silly and groan-inducing explanation that his roommate opened the elevator door and The Fool vanished.

What Tarot Implies About A Person’s Fate

It questions whether one’s destiny is set in stone

The main theme of Tarot is about fate, and whether it’s something that a person can control. It questions whether a person is resigned to being one way based on the positions of the stars or their birth month; is a person always going to be stubborn just because they are a Virgo, or is every individual in complete control over their actions and decisions? Tarot shows it going both ways during its runtime.

Elise, Madelyn, Lucas, and Paxton all fall victim to their own personality traits, and die (or in Paxton’s case, almost die) in accordance with Haley’s initial reading. Their fates seem sealed, unchangeable even though in Madelyn and Paxton’s case, they’ve recognized that they could be at risk, and theoretically know to be careful not to play out what their readings said. Haley and Grant, on the other hand, reconcile their conflict, which came to a head during their readings. Tarot leaves things on a positive note, ultimately indicating that each person controls their own destiny.

The Real Meaning Of Tarot’s Ending

Haley’s final reading and confrontation with The Astrologer layers in another bit of commentary on fate. Haley is able to reach The Astrologer by being empathetic about the tremendous loss she’s suffered. Like The Astrologer, Haley was stuck in a rut of her own grief when her mother passed away, constantly doing readings to see if her fate could be changed. However, she proves that just because a person suffers from tragedy or some other terrible fate, doesn’t mean they need to stay on that path.

Each person is capable of growth and change. Your horoscope and astrological sign might indicate that you have certain tendencies, but that doesn’t make you a prisoner to those tendencies. Each person makes their own choices every day, and that gives everyone the ability to change their fate at any time. At its heart, the ending of Tarot explains how little a person’s supposed fate has to do with the actual outcomes in their life.

Tarot (2024)

The plot centers on a group of college friends who start dying in ways that are related to their fortunes after having their tarot cards read. Before their time runs out, they have to work together to uncover the mystery.

Director

Spenser Cohen and Anna Halberg

Release Date

May 3, 2024

Studio(s)

Screen Gems , Alloy Entertainment , Ground Control

Distributor(s)

Sony Pictures Releasing

Writers

Spenser Cohen and Anna Halberg

Cast

Harriet Slater , Jacob Batalon , Avantika Vandanapu , Adain Bradley , Humberly González , Olwen Fouéré , Wolfgang Novogratz , Larsen Thompson

Runtime

92 minutes