5 unanswered questions after watching ‘Weapons’

Weapons presents a mind-boggling premise: the town of Maybrook is in inexplicable shock as 17 students from third-grade teacher Justine Gandy's class wake up in the dead of the night, and vanish without a trace. This Zach Cregger horror movie immerses fans into the mystery of the unseen with a sinister plan.

Presented in a non-linear format, the story pieces together odd and possibly supernatural occurrences in the town as the answer to the mystery unravels. By the end of the movie, fans are privy to the mastermind's motives, but many questions, from the floating gun to the mysterious little tree, go unanswered.

Starring Josh Brolin, Julia Garner, Alden Ehrenreich, and Amy Madigan, the movie received tremendous praise for its storytelling and left certain details open-ended to the audience's imagination.

Disclaimer: All opinions in this article belong to the writer. Spoilers ahead.

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The floating gun in Archer's dream and other unanswered questions from Weapons

1) What is the floating gun in Archer's dream?

Josh Brolin plays Matthew's father Archer (Image via YouTube/Warner Bros.)

One of the biggest unanswered questions from Weapons is: what does the floating rifle from Archer Graff's dream mean? The movie sets the scene, with Archer sleeping fitfully in his missing son's bed. In his dreams, he sees the weapon floating over Alex Lilly's house. Fans know from the beginning that something is weird about Alex's house, as he is the only child in that class not to be kidnapped.

However, they soon realize that the missing children are in that house too, so his dream might have just alluded to the fact. The gun, which could just be a symbol for the movie's title, displays the time the children vanished, 2:17 am. However, fan theorists were quick to make a connection to the allegory of a school shooting, which this movie seems to hint at. Even the director isn't certain,

"I think what I love about [the scene] so much is that I don’t understand it. I have a few different ideas of what it might be there for, but I don’t have the right answer. I like the idea that everyone is probably going to have their own kind of interaction or their own relationship with that scene," Zach Cregger, interview with Variety, August 8, 2025.

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2) What is Gladys' story?

Gladys is a mystery throughout (Image via YouTube/Warner Bros.)

Gladys is introduced as Alex's great aunt and his parents' caretaker. Her eccentric demeanor suggests something else is going on, and fans are proven right when she is revealed to be the one behind the children's disappearance. She feeds off their life force to stay alive, but director Cregger intentionally keeps her origins a mystery. However, fans can piece together some things from her hints.

For starters, is she posing as Alex's relative to feed off his parents and then the other children? She seems to have been around for a really long time, given away by the 1800s lilt to her vocabulary. However, she is still figuring out how best to optimally feed off human life forces, and is surprised that Alex's parents aren't enough to survive.

Her contradictions make her origins one of the biggest unanswered questions from Weapons.

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3) Did Gladys really die?

The captive children attack Gladys (Image via YouTube/Warner Bros.)

All the scary scenes pay off in the movie's climax, as Alex uses Gladys's hair and her incantations to reverse the spell and release his classmates from the basement. One of the most bizarre unanswered questions from Weapons is why Gladys didn't bewitch Alex in the first place, because his bravado became the reason she was defeated in the end.

The children unleash their fear and rage on Gladys, ripping her arms and legs and leaving her bloodied on the floor. However, given how little fans know about Gladys' origins, nobody knows for sure if she is dead or can come back in another form. This leaves the story open for a sequel (or prequel), and director Cregger alluded to it, saying,

"I can’t help it: I have another idea for something in this world that I’m kind of excited about. I’m not going to do it next, and I probably won’t do it after my next movie, but I do have one and I’d like to see it on the screen one day," Zach Cregger, Variety.

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4) What do the mysterious little tree and the symbols in Gladys' bell mean?

Gladys has artefacts to help her rituals in Weapons (Image via YouTube/Warner Bros.)

Gladys carries around a mysterious black tree with thorny branches and a bell with weird symbols on them. There is little explanation for these items, although they are important in her rituals. She performs a ritual by poking her finger with the tree's thorns, using her blood and her targets' personal artefacts to attack them.

The bell, which is another important aspect of her rituals, has an inverted triangle and the number 6 on it. While conclusions can be made about their significance, these ritualistic artefacts posed unanswered questions about Weapons. Fans can take it at face value as something she uses, or make their own rules about their usage.

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5) Why did Alex's parents not recover from being possessed after 2 years?

Alex's parents bore the brunt of Gladys' schemes in Weapons (Image via YouTube/Warner Bros.)

The movie does a time skip, showing things back to normal two years after the incident that shook Maybrook. The children who were possessed by Gladys go back to school and slowly get better, with some of them getting their speech back. However, fans realize that Alex's parents did not recover from Gladys' ritual.

The adults are still in a comatose state and institutionalized, with Alex moving in with an aunt far away. This poses unanswered questions from Weapons' premise: were they possessed beyond repair? Did it matter that they were possessed for a longer time than the children, and hence their recovery is uncertain? Did the children recover at a faster pace because they had youth on their side?

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Weapons was released in the US on August 8, 2025.