When Travis sees himself, he sees the person ready to attack with a violence that surprises him, and that person is still him. What is beneath his calm surface with a semi-ex? How comfortable is he looking at his past, nearly assassinating her candidate? It’s almost as if his polite manner with Betsy covers up his vestiges of rage, and his fear of that rage. Travis saw himself but not who he expected to see. Then, we’re back in Travis’ POV, seeing all the brightly lit signs on the streets, but something happened.

His forehead, eyebrows, and eyes come into view and the scoring goes ominous. As he continues driving, he glances in the rearview mirror and sees a portion of himself. He is driving in the city, a place that maybe has become less frightening to him.

When Travis pulls away, he feels content. With a smile, he indicates, in a way, their interaction was both something and nothing to him, but that now, he is free, not just from her, but from the emotional circus he got into with her. As Betsy struggles to say something about their past and ultimately asks how much money she owes him, Travis makes a show of clearing out the meter for her ride. Travis, for his part, keeps a respectful distance from Betsy, no flirting, and even says he hopes Palantine wins. Knowing he saved Iris makes her feel closer to him again, as if they share similar morals and are on the same side. There is a feeling Betsy still likes Travis, or, at least, has regrets about how badly things unraveled. He kills her pimp, her client, and the bouncer at the brothel. He gets away and goes later to find Iris. He goes to a rally for Palantine to shoot him, but Secret Service agents see him with a gun. The crescendo of Travis’ violence builds quickly. With Iris, he hires her as a prostitute, using their time to try and convince her to leave prostitution. His systemic rage starts to merge with his interpersonal fury.

Travis hatches his plan to kill Palantine after a date with Betsy goes badly, and he causes a scene in her volunteer office. Travis has significant relationships with two women in the film, Iris being one, and the other, Betsy ( Cybill Shepherd), a volunteer for Palantine. In a way, Travis’ philosophy is anarchist, but authentically, he is struggling with figuring out his identity in a new urban structure of a world, 1970s New York City, that he is navigating alone after experiencing the trauma of war on another side of the globe. He plots to kill a regional political candidate, Charles Palantine ( Leonard Harris). His mental instability is furthered by him not having access to support or counseling. Travis is an interesting antihero because his heart ends up in the right place, to protect someone being exploited, but he is drawn to violence as a means of fixing what he sees as a system of intensifying social and economic problems.

A taxi driver 2017 ending