Disney’s 2023 movie Haunted Mansion is primarily a horror comedy, but its Tater Tot payoff packs a surprising emotional punch. Based on the Disney theme park attraction of the same name, the movie wasn’t well-received critically, garnering only a 37% score on Rotten Tomatoes, yet it has become a huge audience pleaser. Haunted Mansion is full of dazzling special effects, has a fun New Orleans setting, and features a great ensemble cast with great chemistry. By all accounts, the 2023 release is a huge improvement on Disney’s 2003 The Haunted Mansion movie starring Eddie Murphy.
LaKeith Stanfield plays Ben Matthias in the Haunted Mansion cast, and the character is an astrophysicist turned tour guide who helps Gabbie (Rosario Dawson) with a ghost problem in her New Orleans mansion. Ben is hard-up and depressed after not working much following the death of his wife, Alyssa, who was a ghost tour guide herself. This led to Ben’s fixation with the supernatural. While Haunted Mansion is a wacky comedy full of slapstick humor, there’s a lot of heart at the center of the film, and the cat named Tater Tot in Haunted Mansion’s final scene is a perfect example of that.
Tater Tot Is A Callback To Ben’s Wife In Haunted Mansion
In the Haunted Mansion ending, after the crew has defeated the Hatbox Ghost, Ben returns home to his New Orleans house where he finds a seemingly stray cat. Ben looks at the collar and sees the cat’s name: Tater Tot. That might seem like a totally random name for a cat, but it’s actually a reference to Ben’s deceased wife, Alyssa. It’s established in flashbacks that Alyssa not only loved tater tots, but they were her favorite snack, a fact by which Bruce Davis (Danny DeVito) is particularly taken aback. However, the name isn’t just a coincidence, Tater Tot has a lot more meaning and encapsulates the movie’s underlying theme.
How Tater Tot The Cat Symbolizes Closure For Ben
Haunted Mansion is ultimately about grief, as the whole movie concerns Ben still mourning his deceased wife while fighting off the ghosts in the titular location. As a result, the cat at the end of the movie can be seen as a ghost wink and a sign from Alyssa in the afterlife. Ben essentially became a paranormal tour guide to be close to Alyssa after her death, despite being skeptical of the paranormal. When Harriet (Tiffany Haddish) realizes that the dead can communicate with the living, that gives Ben hope that he can speak to Alyssa again, which is also how the Hatbox Ghost manipulates him.
While Ben doesn’t get to speak to Alyssa again, he chooses to believe that the cat is Alyssa speaking to him through a ghost wink, whether it really is her or not. The cat could also be seen as a sign that Alyssa has given her blessing for Ben to move on. After adopting the cat, Ben then visits the mansion where he reunites with Gabbie, who is also widowed, and helps Ben through the grieving process throughout the movie. The Haunted Mansion ending hints at a future romance between Ben and Gabbie, and that wouldn’t have happened without Tater Tot showing up at Ben’s front door.
