Golden Thread Tarot Deck via Labyrinthos
It's all been leading to this.
The Tower: disaster, destruction, upheaval, trauma, sudden change, chaos, when upright. From Labyrinthos: The Tower is a symbol for the ambition that is constructed on faulty premises. The destruction of the tower must happen in order to clear out the old ways and welcome something new. Its revelations can come in a flash of truth or inspiration ... The old ways are no longer useful, and you must find another set of beliefs, values and processes to take their place.
What can you do with the Third Act - the Resolution?
What can the agent expect?
To begin with, all the minor players should be off the board by this point. In the Confrontation, as indicated by the III of Pentacles (inverted), multiple groups and powerful individuals were vying for possession of the McGuffin. That led to conflict, and conflict is the engine of plot - but it also crowded the board. Ultimately this is a confrontation between your agent and the Conspiracy, not your agent, the Conspiracy, the KGB, the CIA, the Pope, and your best friend's mum, even if she does happen to be the best bang-and-burner in the business.
Perhaps one or two minor players step in to complicate the Resolution, or perhaps the after-effects of their actions still resonate. Even so, anyone who isn't a vampire or joining the Conspiracy should be out of the way at this point. Some of them may be messily out of the way, and that's fine. One or two could be feral vampires, or ghouls, or what-have-you. That's also fine. What they cannot be is independent actors with direct influence on the narrative.
So that bang-and-burner might have left a bomb behind that will go off in the final scene, complicating that scene. What she won't be doing is interfering in that scene and snatching the McGuffin. Why? Because that leads to a downbeat ending where the agent not only doesn't win, but also doesn't make the Conspiracy lose. Any ending that results in the main character becoming a third wheel in their own story is a bad ending.
Now, as we're letting the cards guide us we know that the Tower suggests that the Conspiracy's ambition - whatever it may be - is based on faulty premises. What does that mean for the plot? It means that even if the Conspiracy has the McGuffin and intends to use it for the Conspiracy's final victory, it will not work as expected.
Let's look at an example: recent Netflix K-Horror zombie apocalypse series All Of Us Are Dead.
In that series - and this isn't a spoiler, it appears in the first few minutes of the very first episode - a scientist comes up with a virus which he thinks is a miracle drug that will give his son the strength he needs to stand up to school bullies who are making his life a misery. In fact, what that scientist ends up doing is creating a zombie virus that, despite his best efforts, spirals out of control, as zombie viruses are wont to do.
That's the Tower in a nutshell. The plan was to create a mind control toxin, and it ends up creating flesh-eating zombies instead. The plan was to launch a rocket that would bring the Russian satellite system under Conspiracy control, and instead the rocket is spiraling towards Paris. The plan was to use the magic ritual to summon Death, and instead they got Dream.
What this means for the agent is they still have the same basic problem to solve; they need to get the McGuffin away from the Conspiracy. However, if the agent should fail then the Conspiracy's plan doesn't work as intended. The next few episodes could have the agent running one step ahead of a zombie apocalypse, or in a 24-style race against time to stop Paris from going up in a cinder, or a supernatural break-in to rescue Dream. If the agent should not only fail but also fall, then it's the next character's job to do those things.
Mechanically, if the agent is laboring under conditions that will kill them if not resolved, then the Resolution is their final chance to deal with, say, that vampire bite, or the internal bleeding, or the zombie virus. There ought to be a clear chance to do so, and the agent should know going in what they have to do to make that happen.
Don't fall into the temptation of making it a false rumor, 'your princess is in another castle' moment. As Director you must always be scrupulously fair. Make it difficult to get by all means, but the time for red herrings is over and done.
One possibility is to make it an either/or situation. The agent has a chance to get the zombie virus cure that will save their life, but to get it they have to let the Conspiracy's agent escape. Or they can kill the Conspiracy's agent, but inevitably succumb to the zombie virus.
By this point the agent has probably burned most if not all their Edges and Pushes, and the Difficulty for most tests will be high. So don't put too many tests between the agent and that final resolution, but make sure the tests they do face keep them on the edge of their seats.
Also, it's a good idea not to repeat story beats. If the agent already had an exciting car chase to get here, then don't have another exciting car chase. It will inevitably feel stale. An exciting gun battle, but only if there hasn't already been an exciting gun battle, and so on. The final moment should always be something new, something exotic. Holmes didn't battle Moriarty on the streets of London; he tracked the Napoleon of Crime to the Reichenbach Falls, where they had a confrontation between titans.
Going back to the cards for a moment, I suggested in the first of these posts that the player ought to have the option of using one in a free Push. That carries through, so in the Confrontation the agent might use the III of Pentacles (inverted) as a Push. Here we have the Tower. Bearing in mind that the agent has probably burned through most if not all of their advantages by now, that free Push is looking pretty special. But how to use it? A flash of inspiration, perhaps, or maybe that bang-and-burner's bomb sweeps the board clear. However, the Director should insist on fairly strict interpretation, since this is a Push that might make or break the entire narrative. Of course, if the agent can't come up with something then the Director can claim that card for herself ...
That's it! Next time, something completely different.
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