Prisoners Ending Explained: The Symbolism, Mazes, Who Took the Girls and Saves Loki Keller?

The most impressive scary movies aren’t usually the goriest or the most deadly. The movies that are the scariest are the ones that force us to face hard truths about ourselves and humanity. Terrible things can make terrible people. Violence begets more violence. Hate always leads to more hate, and anger can eat you up inside until there’s nothing left but anger and regret. The sneaky thing about captivity is that we can be our own jailers. We don’t need to be held captive by someone else to stay in place. Dune director Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners is about staying put through cycles and our pain.

Prisoners opens with Hugh Jackman’s Keller reciting the Lord’s prayer as his son sets his sights on a deer. Deliver us from evil and temptation, ominously lay the groundwork for what is to come just before the harsh echo of gunfire and the deer fall to the forest floor. Keller later advises his son to be prepared for the end of times, prepper-style. He seems like a fanatic until we see him and his wife Grace (Maria Bello) seconds later 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 give a damn with the same man who scares the hell out of his son with overly heated conversations. I am reminded of Fragile, another film about a broken home and fathers ruled by emotion.

When the young daughters of both couples go missing after dinner, the police are called in to investigate a run-down RV seen in their neighborhood shortly before the girls’ disappearance. Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) finds the RV and a squirrel man who tries to run when he is found. Loki has his own problems. We first meet him eating Thanksgiving dinner at an Asian restaurant by himself. Unfortunately, the man they found, Alex (Paul Dano of Pantheon and The Batman), has the ghost of a child and seems unable to take the girls despite his strange behavior. When the police release him, Keller takes matters into his own hands and kidnaps Alex to try and force a confession from him.

At the same time, Loki continues to investigate and finds a decades-old string of crimes and pain that led to the tragedy unfolding in Prisoners. When people get desperate, they turn into versions of themselves they never thought possible. Under certain circumstances, we are all capable of horrific things. As time passes, the girls’ parents do everything they can to find their children. It all culminates in a shocking ending that will leave you shivering. Here’s everything you need to know about the end of Prisoners, what happened to the girls, who took them and how Keller was rescued.

The ending of Prisoners explained

While Keller and Franklin hold Alex hostage, Loki continues to search for the girls. He finds all kinds of clues and meets even more damaged people. A priest has Holly’s husband’s corpse in his basement because he was so shocked by the man’s confession. Five years before the events of the film, Holly’s husband confessed to the priest, who promptly shoved him into the cellar and left him to die. That’s why there’s been a gap in kidnappings over the past five years. Holly couldn’t do it alone.

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 quite understand why he did it. Only later do we understand that Holly and her husband had been kidnapping and killing children since the 1980s. They also took Alex, whose real name was Barry as a child, and drugged him repeatedly, which led to his mental disability. Through drugs and coercion, they convinced the boy that he was their cousin and that his parents had died in a car accident. Bob was constantly drawing mazes and holding 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.

Shortly after Bob’s suicide, the Birch’s daughter is found and the pieces begin to fall into place. Unfortunately, Keller’s attempt to handle things himself leads him to Holly’s doorstep and ultimately his arrest. She forces him to drink a sedative and shoots him before forcing him to climb into a hole in the ground in her yard. Meanwhile, Loki returns to the Jones’ house and sees Holly injecting something into Anna. Loki is shot, but is able to kill Holly. He grabs Anna and runs to the hospital where she is being treated. At the end of the film, Loki returns to the Jones’ house to search for the bodies of Keller and the other victims. However, the ground is frozen and the CSIs tell him it will take weeks to search the entire property. Things look bleak for Keller, but as Loki looks into the woods behind Holly’s house, he hears a whistle. He initially turns it down, but just as Prisoners fades to black, he turns.

Who took the girls?

Bob Taylor was just acting strange because of his kidnapping. He was a very troubled man who was triggered by the kidnapping of the girl and lashed out. He was not involved in any way. Alex, on the other hand, does. He drove his RV to the streets of Birch and Dover because this was where his real parents lived 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. However, his treatment of his dog makes that questionable.

When the girls tried to leave, Alex said Holly stepped in and took the girls away. Panicking, Alex quickly drove off, 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 has now hurt others. He claimed he wasn’t involved and didn’t hurt the girls, but he hurt his dog. Maybe he hadn’t hurt the girls yet, but maybe he wanted to in time. He probably kept Holly’s secret because after all these years he was afraid of her and had a misplaced sense of loyalty. He pointed Keller to mazes because he was eventually exhausted from his ordeal. While he claims that Holly took the girls alone, that’s unlikely as there were two of them and Holly had already admitted she couldn’t have children without help.

Ironically, Alex’s disappearance kept the girls alive. Instead of burying them in the same hole that Keller ends up in later, she keeps them in her house. When Keller goes to the house, Joy and Anna see or hear him talking to Holly and try to escape. Only Joy escapes, and then Keller realizes that Holly has his daughter. Joy tells him he was in the house they were at, and he confronts Holly.

Did Loki find Keller in time?

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

All the symbolism in Prisoners

Villeneuve’s film is riddled with symbolism. Everything from Maria Bello’s character Grace, Frankin and Nancy’s last name, Birch, their daughter Joy, and the focus on mazes and forests make for a complex picture. However, no one in this film sees the wood for the trees. Even the detective who finally solves the crime is named after a Norse trickster god. He is the ultimate deceiver. Though devoutly religious, Keller acts against his faith when he kidnaps and tortures Alex. In symmetry with this are Holly and her husband, who were also very religious before their son’s death. His death caused them to turn against their faith and actively try to destroy the faith of others by kidnapping their children.

The most thematically important symbol is the maze. The Joneses had their victims complete numerous mazes and puzzles. Now it’s a physical representation of the prison they’re all in. Most of the characters in Prisoners are trapped. Keller is absorbed in his alpha male, acting first, thinking later, and his concern for his daughter. Alex and Bob are lost in their memories of their time with the Joneses. Bob doesn’t physically live there anymore, but he clearly thinks of nothing but them. Everything he does and cannot convey to Loki is because of the abuse he endured. Lost in her pain, Holly is so determined to involve others in her nightmare that she has had children for decades. Loki is lost in the isolation and horror of his work.

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

Prisoners is now streaming on Netflix.