‘Tarot’ Movie Ending Explained: What Happened to Paxton?

If you’re in the mood for horror this weekend, Netflix has you covered. Tarot, a 2024 movie released by Sony in theaters in May, is now streaming on Netflix, thanks to Netflix’s Pay 1 deal with the studio.

Written and directed by Spenser Cohen and Anna Halberg, the Tarot movie is an adaptation of the 1992 novel Horrorscope by Nicholas Adams. (Petition to fire whoever decided to throw out that fantastic title in the movie adaptation!) It’s your typical supernatural slasher, following a group of college students who find themselves being slaughtered by occult forces after they mess around with an old Tarot deck they find in a remote mansion. When will the kids in horror movies ever learn?

Though Tarot was not well-liked by critics, the film was a box office success, earning $49 million at the worldwide box office, more than six times the film’s estimated production budget of $8 million. Tarot is sure to be a hit on Netflix, too. The film has already been trending in the streamer’s Top 10 Films carousel, after just one day of streaming.

But when you get to the end of Tarot on Netflix, you may find yourself thrown by the Tarot ending. Never fear, Decider is here. Ready on for a complete breakdown of the Tarot plot summary and Tarot ending explained.

Warning: Spoilers for the 2024 Tarot movie ahead. Duh!

Tarot movie plot summary:

A group of seven college friends—Haley (Harriet Slater), Grant (Adain Bradley), Paxton (Jacob Batalon), Paige (Avantika), Madeline (Humberly González), Lucas (Wolfgang Novogratz), and Elise (Larsen Thompson)—rent out a remote mansion in the woods for a weekend to celebrate Elise’s birthday. We learn that Haley just dumped Grant on the ride up to the mansion, despite all of their friends thinking they are perfect for each other.

While poking around the mansion for spare alcohol, the friends find a wooden box that contains old, hand-painted tarot cards. Haley, who’s into astrology and tarot, reluctantly agrees to read her friends’ horoscopes with them. Elise gets The High Priestess card, and is told she will “climb the ladder of success.” Lucas gets The Hermit, and is warned against following the wrong tracks. Madeline gets The Hanged Man, and is warned against running away in fear. Paxton gets The Fool, and is warned against been boxed-in, bull-headed, and impulsive. Paige gets The Magician, and is told she’ll be pulled in two directions. Grant gets The Devil, and is told he will need to face his demons and make a sacrifice to save someone he loves. Finally, Haley reads her horoscope and gets the Death card. She wryly comments that this is what she always gets, and that love will be the death of her.

The friends return to their college campus, and almost immediately start dying in ways that reflect their horoscope readings. Elise is crushed by a ladder, and Lucas is hit by a train on the tracks. The remaining friends find a woman online named Alma Astron (Olwen Fouéré) who claims her friends will killed by tarot cards. They pay Alma a visit, and she tells them the tarot deck has been cursed by an 18th century Hungarian astrologer, who once did a correct reading for a count that his pregnant wife and child would die in childbirth. When the prediction came true, the count killed the astrologer’s child in revenge. In turn, the astrologer killed herself and used dark magic to bind herself to her tarot deck, forever cursing anyone who uses it. Alma tells the college students that the only way to break the curse is to destroy the tarot deck.

On the drive back from Alma’s house, “The Hanged Man” appears and kills Madeline, after she does indeed, run away. The friends realize Alma is telling the truth and that the curse is real.

Haley, Grant, and Paige decide to go back to the mansion to destroy the cards. Paxton insists on hiding in his dorm room until the curse is over. Unfortunately, this bull-headed behavior leads to him being “boxed in” by the dorm elevator, where he is terrorized and presumably killed by The Fool.

At the mansion, the friends try to burn the cards, but they won’t burn. They call Alma, who tells them they need to sever Alma’s tie to the cards before they can destory them. Alma performs a ritual and asks to speak to the astrologer. The astrologer does indeed show up, and promptly does a reading for Alma, cursing her and killing her. Also, Paige gets sawed in half and killed by The Magician. Things are not going great!

Tarot movie ending explained:

Haley comes up with a new idea: Read the astrologer’s horoscope. Because anyone whose horoscopes are read by the cards is cursed, right? It’s time for the curse-r to become the curse-e. While the Devil shows up to torment Grant, Hayley does a frantic reading for the astrologer, and pulls the death card. She succeeds in severing the astrologer from the cards, and is able to destroy the astrologer and the cards. Grant survives too, and Haley—who previously admitted she broke up with Grant because the cards told her the relationship was doomed—realizes that she can change her fate. There is also some dead mom backstory that doesn’t really matter. The couple reconciles and presumably get back together.

In the final scene of the movie, Haley and Grant are walking along the road back to town when a car pulls up to them. For a moment, they worry the curse has not been broken. In fact, the person driving the car is their friend Paxton.

How did Paxton survive in the Tarot movie?

That’s a great question! Tarot co-writers and co-director Spenser Cohen and Anna Halberg offer a half-assed explanation that Paxton survived his attack from The Fool because his roommate opened the elevator doors, causing The Fool to disappear. Uh, OK? So if anyone had intervened during those other attacks, the other kids would have been fine? How was The Hanged Man able to attack Madeline in front of her friends, then? Why didn’t The Hanged Man disappear when they saw him? Yes, she did run away, but they all saw him first!

But, apparently, the implication is that the kids needed to be alone in order for the tarot attacks to work. It’s a bold move to introduce this new rule for the universe in the literal last scene of the movie. For me, it left me feeling disoriented and dissatisfied by the jarring vibe shift. But, sure. We’ll go with it.