The Ending Of Taxi Driver Explained

Played to terrifying perfection by Robert De Niro, Travis Bickle is one of cinema's most iconic characters. He wears that green Army jacket, has a penchant for asking rhetorical questions, and sports an intimidating mohawk. And sure, he starts off the film with a full head of hair, but that can't cover up the crazy in his eyes.

A Vietnam War vet living in 1970s New York, Bickle has trouble sleeping at night, so he gets a job driving a taxi. He spends hours and hours inside that cab, cruising up and down the streets of Manhattan, watching the pimps, the pushers, and the prostitutes, and dreaming about the rain that will wash them all away. He seems to especially hate black people, as he gives the death stare to every African-American he sees. 

Aside from a few cabbie colleagues, Bickle is completely cut off from the world. His only true companion is the journal where he shares his increasingly demented thoughts. And Bickle has a lot to say about the world: He writes about his loneliness, his contempt for humanity, and we quickly realize he's got some major issues when it comes to mental health. Every sweltering day and every steamy night, his grip on reality gets shakier, his anger just keeps roiling and boiling (like an effervescent tablet), and sooner than later, it's all going to spill over.

After the incident with Betsy, Travis quickly meets three people who will change his life forever. The first is an antsy, foul-mouthed man with bushy eyebrows and a bad attitude (director Martin Scorsese). He climbs in the back of Travis' cab and has him drive to a dingy apartment complex where he can spy on his wife. As it turns out, she's having an affair, and her jealous husband begins ranting and raving about how he's going to blow her away with a .44 Magnum. Travis is already dealing with some dangerous thoughts, and running into this would-be murderer certainly doesn't help.

Inspired by the man's misogynistic monologue, Travis meets up with a weasley gun dealer (Steven Price), and it's no coincidence that he purchases a .44 Magnum. Of course, that monster gun isn't the only weapon that Travis walks away with — he buys four firearms, and it's clear he's planning something big and bloody. But talking the talk and walking the walk are two very different things. And yeah, Travis is a veteran who's clearly scarred (both physically and mentally), but getting face-to-face with your target and pulling the trigger is a whole lot different than shooting an enemy soldier from a distance.

So does Travis have what it takes for coldblooded murder? Yeah, he totally does. While Travis is picking up groceries at a convenience store, a thief walks up to the register and demands all the money. That's when Travis pulls out a pistol, points it to the thief's head, and sprays his brains all over the counter. But Travis is just getting warmed up, and there's more killing to come.

Travis Bickle hates women. He hates black people. He hates everybody he passes in the streets, everybody in New York City. And now, the taxi driver is going to do something about it. He gathers up his guns, tapes a combat knife to his boot, and shaves his head. Sporting a mohawk and his green Army jacket, Travis is ready to strike out against the world.

And he's going to make a difference. He's going to be noticed. He's going to kill Senator Charles Palantine, Betsy's boss and the man running for a presidential nomination. The senator is holding a rally nearby, and Travis plans on giving him an endorsement made of lead. He knows he's not going to survive, and he's fine with that. He's written a farewell letter to his parents, he's left money for Iris, and now, he's going out in a blaze of glory as Betsy watches, sitting just a few seats away from Palantine. Picking Betsy's boss as his target is no coincidence.

But you know what they say about best laid plans, and as Travis makes his way towards the senator, he's spotted by a Secret Service agent. Realizing the jig is up, Travis bolts for it, leaving the rally behind. However, Travis hasn't spent weeks conditioning his body and practicing at shooting ranges for nothing. If he can't kill a politician, he's going for the next best thing: a pimp.

Now that Travis has murdered three people, he's definitely going to prison. Or at the very least, the Secret Service is going to identify him as the man who tried to kill Senator Palantine, and he's going to wind up behind bars... right? Right?

Well, after the shootout, the film jumps forward in time, and we get a glimpse of Travis' apartment. His wall is covered in newspaper clippings with headlines that read "Taxi Driver Battles Gangsters" and "Taxi Driver Hero to Recover." And as the camera pans across the room, we hear voiceover narration from Iris' dad reading a letter to Travis and thanking the man for rescuing his daughter. He even lets Travis know that Iris is back in school and "working hard."

In other words, Travis has become a hero. He's evaded the feds, and now, people see him as the guy who fought the mob and saved a kid. He's like a cab-driving Batman (with no moral quandaries about killing). And then, in the final few minutes of the film, Travis and Betsy reunite. She climbs into the back of his cab and asks how he's doing. Travis doesn't have much to say, but after dropping her off, he doesn't let her pay for the ride. Instead, he just smiles and rides off into the darkness.

This creep, this racist, this killer — everybody loves him now. He's carried out his homicidal fantasies, and now everybody in New York City is patting him on the back. Travis might be psycho, but society thinks he's a-okay.

While it's totally cool to think that Travis Bickle dies at the end of Taxi Driver, there are three people who strongly disagree with that interpretation: director Martin Scorsese, actor Robert De Niro, and screenwriter Paul Schrader. In fact, De Niro has spent the last couple of decades pushing for a Taxi Driver sequel, saying, "I'd like to see where Travis is today. There was something about the guy — all that rage and alienation, that's what the city can do to you."

Schrader, for his part, has expressed no interest in revisiting the grimy world of Travis Bickle. When De Niro pitched his idea for a part two, Schrader said it was "the dumbest idea" that he'd ever heard. Why? Well, as he explained to De Niro, "that character had died not more than six months after that movie was over. He was on a death trip and was gonna succeed the next time."

Later on, in an interview with Sofia Coppola, Schrader reasserted his belief that Travis survived the shootout, saying, "A number of people have attributed the ending of Taxi Driver as a fantasy. I don't have a problem with that ending, but it's not what I intended." And in a commentary track for the film, Scorsese himself said that Travis made it out of the gunfight alive and was doing just fine... well, as fine as a lunatic gunman who's on the verge of another murderous breakdown can be.

Whether you think Travis lives or dies at the end of Taxi Driver, both endings are pretty bleak. Either he murdered a bunch of people before dying in a brothel, or he cheated justice and was made a legend by a culture that worships violence. But rest assured, if Travis Bickle survived that shootout, he's definitely going to strike again.

In the last few seconds of the film, after Travis drops off Betsy, he drives away in his cab, accompanied by Bernard Herrmann's jazzy soundtrack. But that's when Travis starts getting really fidgety. He shoots a strange glance up at the rearview mirror, right as the soundtrack hits a high-pitched, unsettling note. It's a disturbing moment, and Martin Scorese put it there for a reason. As the director explained, "I decided I'd put something on [the ending] that shows that the timer in Travis starts to tick again, the bomb that's about to explode again."

In other words, Betsy better stay away. Everybody better avoid this cab. People better run when they see the taxi driver coming. Travis Bickle isn't a hero, and he isn't healed. Sooner or later, he's going to explode again, and when he does, it's probably going to be even bloodier than before.

Near the end of Wes Craven's horror comedy masterpiece Scream, the cinephile killer lets everybody know that "Movies don't create psychos. Movies make psychos more creative." And that's definitely true for John Hinckley Jr. A lonely and mentally disturbed man, Hinckley was absolutely obsessed with Taxi Driver, a movie he watched at least 16 times.

Hinckley dressed like Travis, he ate the same disgusting food as Travis, and he listened to the film's soundtrack constantly. Most disturbingly, he started collecting guns. When he was later asked why he bought so many firearms, Hinckley replied, "I bought so many handguns because Travis bought so many handguns. Ask him. Not me." And just like Travis, Hinckley grew obsessed with wreaking vengeance on the world he despised.

Worse still, he grew obsessed with Jodie Foster, who played 12-year-old Iris. A few years after the film, when he learned Foster was starting college at Yale, Hinckley began stalking her — sliding notes under her door and constantly calling her on the phone. And just like Travis wanted to free Iris, Hinckley wanted to rescue Foster from the "scum balls" controlling her life.

So naturally, he borrowed another Travis Bickle move and decided to murder a politician. When his plan to kill Jimmy Carter didn't work out, he decided to take aim at President Ronald Reagan, and on March 30, 1981, Hinckley shot Reagan and three other people, and while nobody died, press secretary James Brady was partially paralyzed for life. 

Needless to say, people don't act the same way when you shoot the president as they do when you shoot a pimp, and Hinckley was immediately arrested. But in a weird twist of events, Taxi Driver was actually screened during Hinckley's trial, and he was found not guilty by reason of insanity. Over 30 years later, Hinckley was released in September 2016, but of course, part of the deal is that he can never contact Jodie Foster again.