Amy Madigan as Aunt Gladys in Weapons
By
Bill Dubiel
Published 28 minutes ago
Bill Dubiel is a veteran writer, editor, and college professor based in Buffalo, NY. He has been a Senior Writer with Screen Rant since 2023. You can usually find him at a late-night double feature including the newest horror movie and latest Oscar bait.
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Zach Cregger's smash hit Weapons intrigued audiences with a narrative that was equal parts mystery and horror. The disappearance of an entire classroom full of children strangled a town with fear and paranoia, and while its citizens pointed fingers at each other, an unseen evil worked its dark magic.
The mysterious evil was eventually revealed to be a woman known only as "Aunt Gladys", who introduced herself as the great aunt of Alex Lilly, the only boy in his class who didn't get out of his bed and disappear into the night. Played by Amy Madigan, Aunt Gladys' startling, clownish appearance was enough to unsettle even the hardiest horror fans, but the bloodshed she wrought was no laughing matter.
Part of what makes Aunt Gladys an outstanding horror villain is that there is so little information given about her. Context clues provide some semblance of explanation for how and why she manipulates the people of Maybrook, but by and large we're left in the dark about her origins. Fortunately, we may receive more information about her in the near future, if Cregger has his way.
What Weapons Reveals About Aunt Gladys' Origin
Aunt Gladys laughing in Weapons
Aunt Gladys introduced herself as the aunt of Alex Lilly's mom, and based on the conversation that his parents had when she first arrived, it does appear that his mother is at least familiar with her as a family member. Beyond that, we have almost no way of knowing if she is in fact related to Alex, and she seems to have no issues harming his parents (or him).
We can be fairly certain that Aunt Gladys is in fact a witch, specifically one of Celtic origin based on her powers. She uses what appears to be a blackthorn bush to enact her blood magic, which is traditionally associated with witchcraft in Irish and Western European folklore. Her appearance in dreams and visions of different people in town also reinforces the notion that she's a witch plaguing the entire town.
While the mechanism is never revealed, we know that she is in Maybrook to feed off its citizens and restore her own vitality (another common witch tactic). That's the core reason why she pulls Alex's classmates out of their beds and hides them in Alex's basement: to feed off their life force.
Thanks to that ability, she also appears to be far older than the average human lifespan. A big giveaway is that she uses the term "consumption", which is a 19th-century way of referring to tuberculosis. That would make her centuries old at least, and there's no telling how much farther back her origin goes.
What Weapons Director Zach Cregger Has Said About Aunt Gladys' Origin
Zach Creggar directing Julia Garner in Weapons
Director Zach Cregger has largely left Aunt Gladys' narrative origin up to interpretation, and that's even true for Amy Madigan herself. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Cregger noted that he gave Madigan two choices for Gladys' origin as she formed her interpretation of the character, never requiring her to even tell him which she chose.
“I presented Amy with two options of her origin story. I was like, ‘You can pick one of these two,’” Cregger says. “They’re very different options. And was like, ‘You don’t have to tell me, but it is either this or that.’ I don’t know which one she picked.”
Madigan's options were that Gladys is either a regular human who's turned to and been consumed by dark magic as a last-ditch effort to save herself as her life slips away with a fatal illness, or she's an actual creature who is trying to approximate the appearance of a human (hence the horrible makeup work).
For Cregger, Aunt Gladys helped provide him with some self-therapy, as he claimed her involvement was metaphorically autobiographical for him. As a child who grew up in a house with addicts, he likened Gladys' influence to addiction itself, with Alex standing in for Cregger as the child afraid to go home and live with parents who were effectively zombies.
A Weapons Prequel Movie About Aunt Gladys Is In Development
Gladys' bell in the horror film Weapons
Following the runaway success of Weapons, Zach Cregger revealed that he is in fact working on a prequel movie that specifically deals with who Aunt Gladys is and how she came to Maybrook. After Weapons grossed a whopping $268.3 million on a budget of just $38 million, there was a natural appetite for Cregger to revisit that world again, and Aunt Gladys is the natural point of entry for further exploration.
As it stands, Warner Bros. has not officially announced the prequel movie yet, so there are no guarantees that it will actually come to fruition. If it does, it won't be for at least a couple of years, as Cregger is just finishing up work on the Resident Evil reboot and has a couple other projects in the tumbler.
However, he has made it clear that he intends to revisit the world of Weapons, noting that he had the Aunt Gladys prequel story in mind before Weapons even hit theaters. Assuming it does eventually get made, it seems likely we'll get many of the answers about the peculiar woman that we were denied in Weapons.
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7/10
Weapons
10 stars 9 stars 8 stars 7 stars 6 stars 5 stars 4 stars 3 stars 2 stars 1 star Like Follow Followed R Horror Mystery Release Date August 8, 2025 Runtime 128 minutes Director Zach Cregger Writers Zach Cregger Producers Roy Lee, Miri Yoon, J.D. Lifshitz
9 Images
Children running away in Weapons
Julia Garner walking outside the school in Weapons
Julia Garner with tears in her eyes in Weapons
Alex's mom cutting Justine's hair in the car in Weapons
Alex's mom in Weapons
Children running across the front yard of a house in Weapons
Alex sitting at his desk alone in the classroom in Weapons
Josh Brolin as Archer Graff looking angry at a community meeting in Weapons
Julia Garner as Justine Gandy standing in a dark school hallway in WeaponsClose
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