Diksha Sundriyal
Prime Video’s ‘Jackpot’ takes the audience into a near future where the Great Depression has destroyed the economy of the country, leaving everyone desperate and broke. To give people some hope, the state of California conducts a Grand Lottery each month in LA. The winner gets a lot of money that can change their lives forever, and Katie happens to be a winner. She is set to receive $3.6 billion, but there is a catch. To keep her money and her life, she will have to survive the attack from almost every person in the city who is out to kill her and claim her money. Luckily, she finds Noel, who agrees to help her for a small cut, but soon, even he has to accept that things are much more difficult for the two of them to handle. After many twists and turns in the film, things finally end on a better note, but the post-credits scenes have a few more laughs and revelations in store for the audience. SPOILERS AHEAD
Katie and Noel are Spoiled by the Money
Winning a lottery of more than three billion dollars is a huge thing, and as expected, it changes everything for Katie, starting with her wardrobe. The first thing she and Noel do is to open a “Free 4 All Protection Agency.” They know that the lottery is going to happen every month, and the winners will need all the help they can get. If it weren’t for Noel, Katie would have died within fifteen minutes of the announcement of her lottery. But not everyone is as lucky as her, and she wants to give the same chance she had to everyone else. And that, too, without any hidden ulterior motive.
Katie and Noel continue the streak of doing good things by further opening a self-defense and stage fighting class, a home for kids with shitty parents, and a pizza place where the plate is a trash can, though they might have to shut down the last business because they are sued for copyright issues. But even with all this, $3.6 billion is a lot of money. They could open ten more things like that, and they would still not be running low.
In the first mid-credits scene, we see them on their super yacht. This is a reference to something Katie had said to Noel earlier when she still suspected him of killing her and taking her money. She said he looked like someone who would buy a super-yacht for themselves, while he said he was nothing like that. And yet, in the end, they are on a super yacht because who doesn’t want one for themselves? Katie and Noel remark that money seems to have changed them, but that is as they sip martinis and ask for their dolphin sandwich. Perhaps they have finally started to feel the power of money and are going down the same dark path that they know other billionaires tread upon. Perhaps they are a bit greyer than they’d imagined.
Machine Gun Kelly Gets a Panic Room Inside a Panic Room
Katie and Noel aren’t the only ones who are changed by the events of the lottery day and want something new for themselves. In the second credits scene, Machine Gun Kelly appears on the screen, talking with his security provider. He is clearly shaken by the events that transpired that day and doesn’t want to end up in the same situation as before. He asks if he can get another panic room inside the panic room because, clearly, one was not enough. This time, his demand is justified if it wasn’t the first time. He does have a lot to panic about, especially considering that people know about his panic room and might want to use it to save themselves, just like Katie and Noel did.
Another thing that he wants is the dart with which Katie hit him to render him unconscious. To keep him from opening the safe room and letting others in, she shoots him with Noel’s wasp venom gun that renders temporary paralysis in a person. While most people try to evade getting shot, Kelly has a completely different experience with it. It did serve the purpose and rendered him incapacitated for a good amount of time, saving Katie and Noel until Katie’s Airbnb host showed up and woke him up by throwing him in the pool. To Kelly, it acted on a completely different level, and he is so blown away by it that now he wants to shoot himself with the darts. Turns out that the pain turned into pleasure for him, and he wants more of that!
The Grand Lottery Prepares for Another Run with More Changes
While the two mid-credits scenes are mostly for laughs, it is the scene at the end of the credits that opens the possibility for a sequel. In this, we meet Johnny Grand, who reveals that the Grand Lottery scheme is being expanded to other cities. This means that LA is not the only place that will find itself in chaos when a winner is decided. It is unclear which city he is talking about, but clearly, it is someplace outside of California, showing that other states have also opened themselves to the new law of the lottery. This means that if we get a sequel, it will take us to another major city in America.
To make things more exciting, Johnny Grand reveals that a lot of new rules have been introduced with the new iteration of Grand Lottery. The rules pass over the screen in a blink to keep the audience and the people about to participate in the lottery from reading it all at once, which makes sense considering how things have been made even more dangerous. It’s a bunch of new things, including the fact that the first person to kill the winner doesn’t necessarily become the winner. They will have to continue to fight for it till sundown, and whoever has the ticket at sundown will be the winner. There are other rules as well, like allowing ten-year-olds to hold lottery tickets and allowing convicted felons to participate in the lottery, among other things. In short, for the next winner, the stakes are going to be much higher than they were for Katie. To sweeten the pot, the prize will be much higher as well.
Clearly, the lottery thing has turned into a ‘Hunger Games’ kind of situation, and the higher-ups want to milk it as much as possible. They might be giving away billions of dollars, but they are also making a lot of money out of it, especially by selling weapons with which to attack the winner. They don’t care who wins and how many people die as long as it remains entertaining, and it wouldn’t be a surprise if, in the next film, it is revealed that the events of the lottery day are televised with people betting on whether or not the winner will survive the day. Johnny Grand’s promise to make things more exciting in the next games is not to be ignored, as it will be bloodier and more unpredictable than any lottery day before.
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