What Does 2:17 Mean In 'Weapons'? (The Popular Theories Are Wrong)

If you've seen Zach Cregger's Weapons, you probably walked out of the theater with more than a few questions.

(Spoilers for the film below!)

One for me was about the significance of 2:17 in the movie. The timestamp haunts the entire film.

On the surface, 2:17 a.m. is the moment when this community suffered its greatest loss. It is the exact time when 17 children from Justine's (Julie Garner) third-grade class simultaneously left their homes under a hypnotic spell, leaving only Alex (Cary Christopher) behind.

It also appears on a floating gun in Archer’s (Josh Brolin) fever dream, which looks like an alien craft above his own house.

I know that I kept thinking about room 237 from The Shining as I was watching, so I felt like there must be some level of awareness on Cregger’s part that horror fans especially care about these things.

And the number does mean something, according to Cregger, although he won't always say exactly what.

Slashfilm asked about the number directly, but the director was evasive.

“There's something there,” he said.

When pressed, he said, “It can't be that hard to figure that one out.”

The interviewer deferred, so Cregger added, “I'm not going to give you a hint, but it's not nothing. I've said in other interviews, ‘It's nothing,’ but there's something there.”

This Popular Theory About 2:17 in Weapons is Wrong

A quick Google search will show that a lot of people are drawing connections between gun violence and the film. I saw a lot of TikTokers discussing the idea during the opening weekend. So, some believe that “217” refers to the 217 winning votes in the House of Representatives' ban of assault rifles in 2022, which quickly died in the Senate.

But it turns out this is a bit of a reach, although it does seem tidy.

Others have pointed out that there are two characters remaining in the doomed class, while 17 kids disappear into the night (giving us the ratio 2:17). That's also a tidy read.

What 2:17 Actually Means

It turns out my own first instincts on opening night were right, which has been confirmed by Cregger himself in an interview with Far Out Magazine.

The time of 2:17 is a direct reference to The Shining. It’s the room number in the novel where Danny sees a terrifying ghost, and it’s the real-life room where Stephen King stayed at the Stanley Hotel and got the idea for the whole thing. (Stanley Kubrick changed the number to 237 for the movie adaptation.)

“2:17 has to have come from that,” Cregger told Far Out. “It has to. And look: I’m a Kubrick guy when it comes to The Shining; I definitely worship that movie, and I thought of changing it to 2:37. But then I was like, ‘You know what? My first impulse has got to be the one I stick with.' So I kept 2:17.”

So that’s that. It’s a simple nod to one of the best horror stories ever.

But what about that floating gun? Cregger doesn’t even exactly know what it means.

He told Variety, “It’s a very important moment for me in this movie, and to be frank with you, I think what I love about it 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, whether they don’t give a shit about it and it’s boring, or whether they think it’s some sort of political statement, or whether they think it’s just cool. I don’t really care. It’s not up to me. I just like that it’s there.”

Do you have any other theories about Weapons? Let us know in the comments.