Prisoners Ending Explained- The Symbolism, Mazes, Who Took The Girls, And Does Loki Rescue Keller?

The most impactful scary movies aren’t usually the goriest ones or with the highest body count. The films that are the scariest are the ones that force us to face hard truths about ourselves and humanity. Terrible things can make horrible people. Violence begets more violence. Hate always leads to more hatred, and anger can eat you up inside until there is nothing but rage and regret left. The sneaky thing about captivity is we can be our own jailers. We don’t have to be held prisoner by someone else to be stuck in place. Prisoners by Dune director Denis Villeneuve is about being mired in place by cycles and our pain.

Prisoners opens on Hugh Jackman’s Keller reciting the lord’s prayer while his son sets his sights on a deer. Deliver us from evil and temptation ominously lay the groundwork for what is to come right before the harsh retort of gunfire and the deer drops to the forest floor. Keller later counsels his son on being prepared for the end of times, prepper-style. He seems like a fanatic until, seconds later, we see him and his wife Grace(Maria Bello) at Thanksgiving dinner with neighbors Franklin and Nancy Birch, the incomparable Terrance Howard, and Viola Davis. It’s hard to reconcile the upper-middle-class man who doesn’t have a care in the world with the same man who scares his son with entirely too intense conversations. I’m reminded of Fragile, another movie about a broken family and fathers ruled by emotion.

When both couples’ young daughters go missing after dinner, the police are called in to investigate a decrepit RV seen on their block shortly before the girls’ disappearance. Detective Loki(Jake Gyllenhaal) finds the RV and a squirrelly man who tries to run when he is found. Loki has problems of his own. We first meet him eating Thanksgiving dinner by himself in an Asian restaurant. Unfortunately, the man they found, Alex(Paul Dano of Pantheon and The Batman), has the mind of a child and doesn’t seem capable of taking the girls despite his odd behavior. When the police release him, Keller takes matters into his own hands and kidnaps Alex to try to force a confession out of him.

Simultaneously, Loki continues to investigate and finds a decades-old set of crimes and pain that led to the tragedy that plays out in Prisoners. As people become desperate, they morph into versions of themselves they never thought possible. We are all capable of horrific things under certain circumstances. Prisoners highlights that unfortunate truth. The longer the girls are missing, the more extreme lengths their parents go to find their kids. It all culminates in a shocking ending that will leave you shaking. Here is everything you need to know about the ending of Prisoners: what happened to the girls, who took them, and whether Keller was rescued.

The ending of Prisoners explained

While Keller and Franklin keep Alex hostage, Loki continues to search for the girls. He finds all sorts of clues and meets even more damaged people. A priest has the dead body of Holly Jones’ husband in his basement because he was horrified by the man’s confession. Five years before the movie’s events, Holly’s husband confessed to the priest, who promptly shoved him in the cellar and left him to die. This is why there was a gap in the kidnappings in the last five years. Holly couldn’t do it by herself. The Joneses had been kidnapping kids for years before guilt caused her husband to confess to the priest.

Another poor soul, Bob Taylor, is a very disturbed young man who shoots himself in the head at the police station when Loki questions him. At the time, we didn’t understand exactly why he did it. It is only later that we understand Holly and her husband had been kidnapping and killing children since the 80s. They also took Alex, whose real name is Barry, as a child and drugged him repeatedly, leading to his mental disability. Through drugs and coercion, they convinced Alex/Barry that he was their nephew and that his parents had died in a car crash. Bob drew mazes constantly and kept snakes because Mr. Jones tortured and abused him, and he always wore a necklace with a maze carved into it. The Joneses also forced their victims to do mazes constantly.

Soon after Bob’s suicide, the Birch’s daughter is found, and the pieces begin falling into place. Unfortunately, Keller’s insistence on handling things himself leads him to Holly’s door and, ultimately, his capture. She forces him to drink a sedative and shoots him before pushing him to climb into a hole in the ground in her yard. Meanwhile, Loki returns to the Jones’ house and finds Holly injecting something into Anna. Loki gets shot but is able to kill Holly. He grabs Anna and races to the hospital where she is treated. As the film closes, Loki returns to the Jones’ house to search for Keller and the other victims’ bodies. The ground is frozen, however, and the CSIs tell him it will take weeks to search the entire property. It looks bleak for Keller, but as Loki looks into the forest behind Holly’s house, he hears a whistle. He dismisses it initially, but just as Prisoners fades to black, he turns around. The implication is Loki will hone in on the whistle as long as Keller is able to continue to make the sound.

Who took the girls?

Bob Taylor only acted odd because of his past trauma. He was a deeply troubled man triggered by the girl’s kidnapping and lashed out. He was not involved in any way. Alex, on the other hand, was. He drove his RV to the Birch’s and Dover’s streets because this was the street his real parents lived on before the Joneses took him. He encouraged the girls to get into his RV when he saw them playing on it but claimed he had no intention of hurting them. His treatment of his dog, however, makes that questionable.

When the girls tried to leave, Alex says Holly stepped in and took the girls. In a panic, Alex quickly drove away, wrecked his van, and was arrested by Loki. After his release, Franklin and Keller held him hostage in the apartment. He had been repeatedly abused and drugged as a child and now hurt others. He claimed he wasn’t involved and didn’t hurt the girls, but he hurt his dog. He maybe hadn’t hurt the girls yet, but he may have wanted to over time. He probably kept Holly’s secret because he was scared of her after all these years and had a misguided sense of loyalty.

He pointed Keller to mazes because he was eventually exhausted by his ordeal. Although he claims Holly took the girls by herself, that is unlikely considering there were two of them, and Holly had already admitted that she couldn’t take kids without help. Most likely, his traumatic experience and near-constant drugging effectively brainwashed him into a killer, just like the Joneses.

Ironically Alex’s disappearance is what kept the girls alive. Instead of burying them in the same hole that Keller finds himself in later, she keeps them in the house with her. When Keller goes to the house, Joy and Anna see or hear him talking to Holly and attempt to escape. Only Joy gets away, which is when Keller realizes Holly has his daughter. Joy tells him he was at the house where they were, and he confronts Holly.

Did Loki find Keller in time?

We don’t get a definitive answer. Loki has proven himself a dedicated police officer who does not stop until he solves the case. His entire life is devoted to his work, so he eats alone on Thanksgiving. His work has become his prison, but luckily, his obsession saves lives. He found the dead body in the priest’s house because of his perseverance. An instinct told him to move the fridge, and he did. That led to the discovery of the hidden cellar and the dead body. Loki will probably move the car and find Keller in the hole before it is too late. Loki’s earlier discovery foreshadows what will happen after the movie ends.

All the symbolism in Prisoners

Villeneuve’s movie is littered with symbolism. Everything from Maria Bello’s character named Grace, Frankin and Nancy’s last name Birch, their daughter Joy, and the focus on mazes and forests provide a complex picture. However, no one in this film can see the forest for the trees. Even the detective who ultimately solves the crime is named after a Norse trickster God. He is the ultimate misdirect. Although Keller is devoutly religious, he acts contrary to his faith when he kidnaps and tortures Alex. In symmetry to this are Holly and her husband, who were also very religious before their son’s death. His death made them turn against their faith and actively seek to destroy others’ faith by kidnapping their children.

The most thematically important symbol is the maze. The Joneses made their victims complete countless mazes and puzzles. Now, it is a physical representation of the prison they are all in. Most of the characters in Prisoners are trapped. Keller is lost in his alpha male, act first, think later mentality and his worry for his daughter. Alex and Bob are lost in their memories of their time with the Joneses. Bob no longer physically lives there, but he obviously thinks about nothing but them. Everything he does and is incapable of conveying to Loki is because of the abuse he endured. Holly is lost in her pain and so intent on bringing others into her nightmare that she has taken children for decades. Loki is lost in the isolation and horror of his work.

Although Prisoners begins with the kidnapping of two girls, it is really about the prisons we all find ourselves in. We are trapped by experience, regret, emotion, and fear. It is hard to find your way out when you are lost in the labyrinth of your beliefs and pain. Some use it to be heroes, while others never escape the pain and seek to drag others down with them. Although Prisoners shows the girls’ return, Keller’s rescue is in question, and the girls are affected by their kidnapping. Will they be locked in their nightmare just as Alex and Bob were?

Prisoners is streaming on Netflix now.