Weapons ending explained: What happened to the missing kids?
Weapons is in cinemas now, so here’s how the acclaimed horror movie ends, including details of what happened to those missing children.
Following the success of his debut movieBarbarian, writer-director Zach Cregger is making a similarly sized splash with sophomore feature Weapons.
Set in a small town, thehorror movierevolves around the search for a group of missing children, who all ran away from home at the same time on the same night.
We gave the movie five stars in ourWeapons review, writing that the film “does everything a good horror movie should, delivering chills and scares via a story that gets under your skin, before concluding two hours of tense set-up with a truly wild pay-off.” We’re going to get into that conclusion below, soSPOILERSahead…
Where did the children go in Weapons?
Julia Garner, Alden Ehrenreich & Josh Brolin on why ‘WEAPONS’ is one of the scariest horror movies of 2025pic.twitter.com/0ifqfJgFCE
The children all ran to classmate Alex Lilly’s house in the middle of the night, where they are trapped in a collective trance in the basement.
The kids are victims of a witch called ‘Aunt Gladys’ (Amy Madigan) who has come to town, put Alex’s parents in a similar trance (that sees them self-harming and eating cold soup), while Gladys appears to be using the children to stave off death.
To cast her spell, Gladys charges Alex with the task of bringing home something belonging to every member of his class, which he duly does, enabling her to hex the 17 children and lure them to the house.
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Who dies at the end of the movie?
Weapons ends in a blood bath, with Andrew Marcus (Benedict Wong) and Terry Marcus (Clayton Farris) both dying, before Paul (Alden Ehrenreich) and James (Austin Abrams) are killed, and then finally Aunt Gladys, in truly spectacular fashion.
While under Gladys’s spell, head teacher Andrew kills husband Terry by beating him to death, then gets hit by a car and killed while on another murderous mission.
Troubled teacher Justine (Julia Garner) and angry parent Archer (Josh Brolin) then track the kids down and enter the cursed house, where cop Paul and homeless drug addict James are similarly tranced up, and doing Gladys’ bidding by trying to kill them.
An almighty brawl breaks out, ending with Justine murdering Paul in self-defence, and Archer doing the same to James.
Alex’s parents are also trying to kill their boy, but he manages to escape, and uses hair from Gladys’ wig to cast his own spell, through which the youngster sets his classmates on her.
Gladys runs for it, and in a bloodthirsty rage, the kids smash through windows and doors to get to her. The chase continues through houses and gardens until the children take her down, and rip the witch to pieces.
What happens at the end of Weapons?
With the witch defeated, the ending of Weapons should be a (relatively) happy one. But due to those ongoing trances, it remains tragic.
When the spell is seemingly broken, Alex hugs his parents, and Archer tracks down his son Matthew and embraces his boy.
But normality has not resumed, as via voiceover we learn that Alex’s parents still exist on a diet of soup, though someone else is feeding them, as he has moved to another town and is now living with a nice aunt.
The film then ends on an equally ominous note, with Archer carrying Matthew home, and the voice revealing that the kids were reunited with their parents, and “some of them even started talking this year.” Suggesting the vegetative state remains for many of Gladys’ victims.
Weapons is in cinemas now. Head here to find outwhy Julia Garner and Josh Brolin signed onto the movie, or here forwhen to take a bathroom break during Weapons.
While for more scary stuff, here’s our list of thebest horror moviesever, as well as thebest scary movies based on true stories, andfilms to get kids into horror.
