Tarot Motifs / Live-Action TV

• Some time in the '80s or '90s, All My Children featured a storyline involving a Tarot reading in which the Tower appeared. The reader fudged the reading and told the recipient it meant something good, but another character (Opal?) later upbraided her for it, saying (rightly) "You and I know that is the worst card in that deck!^note Well, some might rank the Nine or Ten of Swords as worse than the Tower, but it's a fair assessment." Very refreshing to not see Death automatically (and incorrectly) used, for once.
• Episode 2.02 of Ashes to Ashes (2008) has a murder occurring among a gypsy community. Of course, the local Wise Woman has to read Alex's cards, telling her she's due to meet someone "tall, some would say handsome, some would call him the Devil made flesh". She then draws the Hanged Man for Gene - symbolizing self-sacrifice, paradoxes, and being caught between two worlds.
  • Becomes Fridge Brilliance and a Call-Forward in Season Three when it's revealed that Alex is in Dead Copper Purgatory, created by Gene, the psychopomp guardian who helps lost souls cross over, and does meet a tall, handsome Devil made flesh in Jim Keats, who may possibly be Satan himself.
• Bones has some Tarot imagery in it, most obviously in an episode that centers around a tarot reader. Overarching the entire show is a character named Temperance, and one of the central aspects of the show is her close professional relationship with someone who is very much her opposite.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: in "Restless", a tarot card which features hands is presented as Buffy's. Later it shows her friend. This fits with her being Manus in the "super slayer" spell.
  • Exaggerated with a WMG that each episode of Season 5 is a Tarot Card... and works!
• Carnivàle kicks off with the tarot imagery right from the opening credits, with a deck created especially for the show. It shows a deck of cards, then uses historical footage to make parallels: the Great Depression with The World; the Dust Bowl for the Ace of Swords; the KKK and Nazi Germany for Death; Babe Ruth and Jesse Owens as Temperance; the U.S. Capitol Building as The Tower; and FDR as Judgment. The cards themselves are all based on famous paintings. Too bad it's not a real deck and, according to Dan Knauf, HBO will never let them create or market the deck.
  • The character of Sofie is, at the beginning, the Carnivale's tarot-card reader and fortuneteller. She is frequently seen reading cards, and in the pilot, gives Ben a prophetic reading. The Moon in the "Past" position, with a flashback of Ben healing a dead kitten as a child; Death in the "Present" position, highlighting Ben's healing powers and his mother's condemnation of what he is; and The Magician reversed in the "Future" position, showing Ben's denial of his powers and ignorance of what that really means in the grand scheme of things. At the end, Sofie is concerned about Ben's reaction and asks what he's hiding, provoking a vision of Justin shouting "TELL ME!", which won't happen until the series finale, and not even to Ben, but to Sofie.
  • Another significant reading occurs in "Cheyenne, WY", in a flashback Iris has of Justin raping Apollonia, proving he is Sofie's father. Unfortunately, very little of the reading is visible, but the Temperance card is one highlighted aspect, showing the subtext of the scene (the merging of opposites, synthesis, bringing of harmony).
• In the Castle episode "Famous Last Words", while investigating the murder of rock singer Hayley Blue, Castle and Beckett listen to a song that she wrote and recorded one week before her death. One of the lines was "The cards we're dealt will never disappear/Death she draws near." Alexis observes that Hayley was into Tarot, and Death in the Tarot doesn't mean actual death, but transformation and change. This clue turns out to be a key to uncovering the killer.
• In Doctor Who, one of the Doctor's many, many Names to Run Away from Really Fast is "The Hanged Man".
• Father Ted used the ominous misinterpretation of Death for laughs. Ted visits a fortune teller during a carnival and she draws Death. He gasps, then's told it's not actually bad. She draws Death again, then one more time. Then lampshades it with "There's only supposed to be one in each pack!"
• An episode of Inspector Rex featured a Serial Killer who would "use" a Tarot deck to choose how to kill his victims. "Use" since he would not use any of the cards' actual meaning and instead just interpret them in the most literal way possible: Three of Swords? Stab victim three times. The Tower? Toss the victim off a tall building. The Chariot? Run the victim over. And so on.
• Kamen Rider:
  • Kamen Rider Blade draws primarily from standard playing cards, but each of the four Kamen Riders is named for the Tarot suit that corresponds to their playing card suit: Blade = Spades/Swords, Garren = Diamonds/Coins^note Name derived from "Galleon", Chalice = Hearts/Cups, and Leangle = Clubs/Wands^note A liangle is a kind of staff. Furthermore, it could also be said that each of these characters' respective Character Arcs correspond with their Minor Arcana. To wit:
    • Blade begins as something of an Idiot Hero. Over the course of the series, he learns to start thinking a little and making his own choices, rather than doing what he feels he has to.
    • Garren is Blade's (and later Leangle's) Big Brother Mentor for much of the series, but his mental (and later physical) health being manipulated by material means is the primary source of his early-series Face–Heel Turn. An emotional shock prompts him to Heel–Face Turn again, and he spends the rest of the show helping the other Riders attempt to maintain their own health while fighting to save humanity.
    • Chalice is the only one of the Riders to not actually be a human at all, instead being a shapeshifting primordial creature who is only able to assume human form because he defeated humanity's ancestor before the show began and assumes said ancestor's form. As such, learning to understand and reciprocate emotion is the major crux of his development.
    • Leangle was an Ordinary High-School Student until he was forced to become a Rider. The problem is that the monster he fuses with to assume his Rider form has a nasty habit of poisoning his mind to manipulate him into doing what it wants him to. Thus, he requires great spiritual strength to be able to break the monster's hold on him and break free of the Heel–Face Revolving Door he had been stuck in.
  • In Kamen Rider Ryuki, Tezuka is a fortune teller who reads tarot cards, bringing this trope into play several times. Happens again in the Rider Time Ryuki special where he draws The Tower before being killed by Shibaura, with whom he is in love.
  • One episode of Kamen Rider Drive featured a Victim of the Week whose boyfriend, a fortune teller, had disappeared. The Roidmude of this episode leaves tarot cards behind as clues.
• Midsomer Murders: In "The Witches of Angel Ridge", the first Victim of the Week has her cards drawn for her at the start of the episode. She is found with The Devil card on her body. The Tower card also figures into the episode as a tall tower is the scene of her death. The second murder victim is hanged upside down to match the "The Hanged Man" card.
• Reaper included one escaped soul that acted as a fortune teller with card based powers. She tells Sam's future, then legs it after drawing three Devils in a row. Includes some very good foreshadowing when she brings up conflict with his father.
• A Season 5 episode of Schitt's Creek has ditzy waitress Twyla doing a tarot reading for Alexis and predicting death and drowning, causing Alexis to flee. Later, Twyla sees Alexis and says that she thinks the deck is cursed because she predicted drownings for a number of people, but she also tells Alexis that she flipped the Ten of Cups and saw a ring of gold that meant properity for Alexis and her family.
• The first musical episode of Xena: Warrior Princess, "The Bitter Suite", used Tarot symbolism in sequences that took place in "the land of Illusia" - a sort of embodied form of Xena and Gabrielle's subconsciousnesses. Callisto appeared as the Fool (and spun the Wheel of Fortune), Joxer as the Hanged Man, Gabrielle was dressed up to look like the Empress, et cetera.

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