Summary

• The Card Counter explores a dark past and the sins that haunt its characters. The ending takes a hard turn, leaving audiences shocked or confused.
• Cirk's plan for revenge against Maj. Gordo is fueled by fury, but Bill understands that they both participated in the torture at Abu Ghraib.
• Bill's final confrontation with Gordo leads to tragedy, but La Linda's understanding gesture suggests she forgives him and understands his darkness.

Paul Schrader's The Card Counter explores a dark storyline and its ending is even darker, and here is the Card Counter ending explained. The story revolves around William "Bill" Tell (Oscar Isaac), a gambler with a dark past. While on the casino circuit, he meets La Linda (Tiffany Haddish), who offers to front him money to be part of her stable. At first refusing, Bill soon meets Cirk (Tye Sheridan) a young, troubled man with ties to Bill's past, namely a man named Maj. John Gordo (Willem Dafoe), and Bill agrees to work for La Linda in order to win enough earnings to set Cirk on the right path again.

As with most of Schrader's movies, as the writer/director wrote Taxi Driver and American Gigolo, The Card Counter focuses on a man grappling with the sins of his past and the darkness within. The Card Counter isn't an easy watch, but it's a fascinating one, grappling with a subject that has seemed to be largely taboo in Hollywood filmmaking. The ending takes a hard turn that may leave some audiences shocked, or at the very least confused. With so much work happening internally in the characters rather than in external dialogue, choices may seem to come out of nowhere and scenes left open-ended.

Related: The Card Counter Cast & Character Guide

Cirk's Plan Explained (& Why It Wouldn't Help Him)

At first, Cirk and Bill's meeting seems to be a casual coincidence, but it's quickly revealed that Cirk has intentions for Bill and knows Bill's dark secret: he was a former prison guard at the infamous Abu Ghraib who worked under Maj. Gordo, a military defense contractor. Cirk reveals that his dad was a guard who had worked at Abu Ghraib under Gordo too, and, like Bill, he took the fall and did time in military prison while Gordo went scot-free. The Card Counter explains that Cirk's mom left, and his dad turned to drinking and killed himself. Cirk's plan for revenge is simple: kidnap, torture, and kill Gordo.

Cirk's plan is an over-the-top revenge fantasy of a boy who witnessed the downfall of his family; he's now filled with a righteous fury directed at Gordo. Bill, who is older, wiser, and was actually there at Abu Ghraib, understands what Cirk doesn't: they still participated in the torture. Gordo may have been in charge and he may have been the one to teach Bill and Cirk's dad his methods of "enhanced interrogation" - but they still went along with it. Corrupted and pressured by Gordo or not, the stark truth is that Cirk either doesn't want to or isn't emotionally mature enough to see that his father still tortures people.

Bill deals with it in his own way, by withdrawing from close connections with people, living a transient lifestyle and a monkish existence. But he's fully aware of the horrors they inflicted and that they deserved to do jail time, that they deserve the shame. Willam Dafoe's villainous character may have ruined Cirk's dad's life, but The Card Counter explained that his dad also ruined it himself and Cirk refuses to see that. It's why his plan won't work - the only way to get past it is to reach some sort of understanding and through understanding find peace.

Why Did Cirk Change His Mind About Seeing His Mom?

In The Card Counter ending, it appears as though Bill has finally gotten through to Cirk, though it took extreme measures in the end. Ultimately, Bill realizes his more oblique approach to getting through to Cirk isn't working and decides to scare him straight. One night in his hotel room, Bill transforms with terrifying speed back into who he was when he worked at Abu Ghraib with the pretense of enacting those very methods upon Cirk. Previously, that version of Bill had only been shown in flashbacks even more intense than scenes from The Hurt Locker.

Circk is rightfully terrified, and Bill, no longer threatening torture but still with a thick air of menace, reveals that he's been saving up money for Cirk to pay off his college debts and go back to school, telling him to forget his plan, take the money, and go see his mom. Wisely, Cirk agrees and does just that–or so it seems. The horrifying third-act twist reveals that Cirk hasn't gone to see his mom at all, but has headed to Gordo's house to put his plan into motion. Throughout the movie, it becomes clear that Bill doesn't really know what to do with Cirk or how to meaningfully communicate with him.

The gambler's people skills have gotten severely rusty over the years; the only people and scenario he truly knows how to read are other gamblers at a poker table. Cirk is driven by an internal fury much stronger and more resolute than Bill realizes. Cirk's anger is vast and deep and compounded by all the awful events of his life, along with his impotent rage at a justice system that so often fails to deliver justice to those who deserve it most. All of Cirk's rage has been funneled into the target of Gordo and it's not something that will dissipate.

It's certainly not going to be replaced with traveling the casino route and gambling. Cirk provides tells that Bill's plan to distract Cirk and help him to find meaning is not working. Gambling movies usually emphasize the glitz of casinos but The Card Counter emphasizes their seediness. The young man often makes comments about what an odd lifestyle it is and that gambling really isn't his thing, nor does he ever show any inclination in wanting to learn. Bill either can't or won't see that, so privately hopeful that a success story with Cirk will help him atone for his own sins and it leads to tragic results.

The Meaning Of The Final Scene In Prison

After the terrible, final climax in which Bill sees a news report that Cirk has been shot and killed by Gordo, promoting Bill to visit Gordo's house and torture the former Army Major, ultimately killing him, Bill turns himself in to the police. He's back in prison, this time for murder. The Card Counter ending scene shows Tiffany Haddish's character La Linda coming to visit Bil in prison, which comes as a huge surprise.

Bill and La Linda had started up a romance, but he left her high and dry, not only walking out on his poker tournament but also walking out on her, all to kill a man–and violently, at that. But La Linda comes to see him and she comes as a benevolent figure, not jilted or angry or betrayed, but seemingly with understanding. The final shot shows La Linda putting her fingertip to the glass partition that divides him and Bill does the same and the shot pans and is held to the end.

Related: The Card Counter: What Bill's Back Tattoo Means

The gesture is ambiguous but full of meaning, as it suggests that La Linda has forgiven Bill because she understands the darkness. She knew virtually nothing about him, only that he had a lot of baggage. However, Bill's murder of Gordo was sure to have been all over the news, along with his sordid background and Gordo's role in Abu Ghraib and subsequent escape from consequence, as well as Cirk's story. It is horrific and tragic, but La Linda's understanding smile and gesture to Bill seem to indicate that she now knows his full story and understands why he did what he did.

The gesture is also symbolic as a counterexample of a concept Bill explained to Cirk earlier in the movie: tilt. It's a term from poker to describe a player who gets upset or emotionally rattled during a game and, as such, lets those emotions get the better of them, adopting a foolish strategy that often involves playing overly aggressively. Bill showed that maintaining a poker face at all times is key to winning. The Card Counter ending isn't exactly subtle in indicating that it's an analogy for Cirk's emotional state and his plan for vengeance. However, since Cirk has come into Bill's life, Bill has also been tilted in ways.

Bill spent years trying to keep equilibrium in his life, able to keep his demons at bay through the perfect balance of his routine. His life ever since being released from military prison has been an attempt to try to recreate the regimented setting of prison, as well as the peace. The final shot of The Card Counter ending is symbolic of the balance Bill has regained now that he's back in prison. Bill has finally confronted his past, and has finally accepted that he is happier in prison than in the outside world as there's no danger of his pristine equilibrium being upended.

What Director Paul Schrader Said About The Card Counter Ending

While The Card Counter ending is such an emotional tug on the heartstrings with the way that La Linda holds her finger up to the glass and Bill responds, it isn't the most original shot, and writer/director Paul Schrader knows that better than anyone. In an interview with The Los Angeles Times, the filmmaker revealed one of the biggest sources of inspiration for the final scene: 1959's Pickpocket. Here's what Schrader said about the influence of the 1959 movie:

It has this idea of returning to your cage. My background, you know, John Calvin referred to the human body as the prison house of the soul and this whole notion that your body is a prison and you need to escape it. Now I don’t believe that, but that’s how I was raised. So it’s not unusual for people who escape one prison only to go in search of a new one, because they’re not ever going to be home until they’re back in prison.

Pickpocket is about a thief, Michel, who teams up with like-minded thieves to improve his craft following his mother's death, and the movie follows his struggle to resist pickpocketing. This continues even after Michel has already been arrested for pickpocketing once. Like the 1959 movie, The Card Counter follows a character fighting his demons who is uncomfortable in comfortable climates, as he has spent his entire life being used to life as a prisoner. Just like The Card Counter, Pickpocket features a shot of two people separated by bars during a prison visitation, and Schrader called the movie, "the most influential film in my creative life.”