Who was the kidnapper on Weapons? All about the children's disappearance

Weapons revolves around the disappearance of 17 children from a single class in Maybrook at 2:17 am., and the truth is simple: the kidnapper is Gladys, the sick “great-aunt” who moves into Alex Lilly’s home. She coerces Alex through threats, uses ritual objects tied to a potted tree, and pulls the class into a trance that hides them in Alex’s basement.

Weapons is written and directed by Zach Cregger, stars Julia Garner, Josh Brolin, Alden Ehrenreich, Austin Abrams, Cary Christopher, Benedict Wong, and Amy Madigan, runs 128 minutes, and was released in U.S. theatres on August 8, 2025.

Who was the kidnapper on Weapons?

Gladys is the abductor, and she operates from inside Alex Lilly’s family. After arriving as a frail relative, she subdues Alex’s parents, threatens Alex into silence, and instructs him to gather personal items from classmates.

She binds those items to her “tree” magic to control both adults and kids, turning the missing children into entranced bodies in Alex’s basement. The town fixates on teacher Justine Gandy, yet the film reveals that the pattern points back to Alex’s house and Gladys’s coercive rituals.

Cregger frames Gladys as a literal kidnapper and a symbolic parasite. As per a Vanity Fair report dated August 11, 2025, Zach Cregger stated:

“This foreign substance comes in and it changes everyone’s behavior… The house becomes a scary place. You can go to school and act like everything’s cool, and then you come home and you hide from a zombie parent. That felt so real to me.”

He clarifies that Gladys embodies addiction’s destructive force, and that ambiguity about her exact nature is intentional.

The spell breaks when Alex mirrors her ritual using her hair. He snaps the enchantment, the children bolt from the basement, and they chase Gladys through the neighbourhood until she is killed. The curse lifts, parents survive, and Alex is placed with another aunt while his parents are institutionalised. The children remain traumatised, which the film treats as fallout rather than a twist.

How the disappearances happened, and why it is kidnapping

The 2:17 a.m. exodus is not a case of mass hysteria. It is an orchestrated abduction using sympathetic magic. Gladys first neutralizes adults, then compels kids to converge on Alex’s home. She feeds on their vitality through the tree ritual, keeping them motionless for weeks while Alex keeps them alive with food under threat.

As per a Gizmodo report dated August 9, 2025, Cregger stated that earlier drafts had “her own chapter,” which he cut to keep her origins opaque, preserving the focus on control and consequence rather than lore. He stated:

"In an earlier draft of the script I had given her her own chapter....It was a little bit of an origin before she came to town. But I realized that it was just giving too much away. It’s more compelling to not know some of these things. So I ended up cutting it very early on in the writing process."

Cast, crew, release, and production details of Weapons

Weapons is a New Line and Warner Bros. release by writer-director Zach Cregger, with producers Roy Lee, Miri Yoon, J.D. Lifshitz, Raphael Margules, and Cregger, and cinematography by Larkin Seiple.

As per the Associated Press review dated August 6, 2025, Cregger stated that he stripped intentional jokes to keep reactions authentic, reflecting the film’s grounded tone amid supernatural elements.

The main cast includes Julia Garner as Justine Gandy, Josh Brolin as Archer Graff, Alden Ehrenreich as Officer Paul Morgan, Austin Abrams, Cary Christopher as Alex, Benedict Wong, and Amy Madigan as Gladys. The runtime is 128 minutes, and it opened August 8, 2025, in the U.S., with some markets playing special 2:17 screenings.

Stay tuned for more updates.