How Ethan Hawke’s The Grabber Came Back & What His Powers Are

Warning: Spoilers for Black Phone 2 below!Black Phone 2 has brought the world of Scott Derrickson’s 2021 The Black Phone back to theaters, and with it, the horror movie’s signature villain. Set in 1982, four years after Finney escaped from the clutches of the Grabber with help from the ghosts of his other victims and his psychic sister Gwen, the child-targeting serial killer played by Ethan Hawke is terrorizing them once again.

This despite The Black Phone ending with Finney subduing his captor and snapping his neck – as for the boys who called through the titular, disconnected rotary phone, death wasn’t really the end for the Grabber. But, unlike his victims, he can do more than just talk to those with the gift to listen.

So, how does Black Phone 2 explain the Grabber’s return? And what, exactly, can this killer ghost do?

The Grabber Has Been To Hell & Back (Sort Of)

Finney on the phone as the Grabber's spectral presence observes him in Black Phone 2 — Finney on the phone as the Grabber’s spectral presence observes him in Black Phone 2

The first hint of the Grabber’s reappearance (you know, outside of the marketing) comes where you’d expect it to be. Gwen, who has taken up sleepwalking, is led by the sound of a ringing phone to the basement where her brother was held captive. The killer is ominously thudding his way down the stairs when Finney arrives and wakes her up, staving off the threat.

But, eventually, his reach is dramatically expanded. While it initially seems like Gwen’s dream contact with her teenage mother has led her, Finney, and Ernesto to pursue a totally new case of unsolved murders at the Alpine Lake kids camp, everything traces back to the Grabber. He has lured the two Blake children out into the wintery wilderness to punish Finney by killing his sister in her already-supernatural dreams.

Over time, the film reveals more of how this came to be. The Grabber is, indeed, dead, and was unsurprisngly sent to hell for being an evil child murderer. But according to him, hell isn’t exactly how it’s been portrayed. In addition to being ice rather than flame, it’s not a place one is necessarily trapped in forever. His afterlife instead stripped him of whatever humanity was left, leaving only his sins behind.

This explains some crucial changes in characterization from The Black Phone to Black Phone 2. In the original, Hawke is playing a warped psychological profile that we never truly learn the origin of, but is most certainly human. He has flaws, weaknesses, and an unsettling emotionality.

The Grabber’s specter, meanwhile, is much more like a force of pure malevolence. He seems capable of only cruelty and rage, and he’s motivated primarily by vengeance against Finney personally, rather than merely using him as a vehicle for a kind of abstracted role play. He’s become a different sort of horror movie villain than the one we first met.

His ability to manifest to Gwen can likely be traced back to two things. Firstly, in The Black Phone, one of the ghost boys confirms that the Grabber can hear the phone ring, just as Finney can. If he had some latent supernatural ability in life, it’s reasonable that he may be able to wield more power than the average spirit.

Secondly, it’s revealed during Black Phone 2 that he worked at Alpine Lake, and the three dead boys Gwen’s been dreaming about are his first three victims. The film explains that he’s able to draw power from his victims as long as they remain undiscovered, and since The Black Phone ended with Gwen dreaming where he buried the bodies of his victims in Denver, these three are his only unresolved murders – that we know of.

The Grabber’s power seems to grow once the Blakes arrive at Alpine Lake, suggesting being near the boys’ bodies is a factor. This would explain why he appears so limited in Gwen’s Denver dreams, and why it took four years for his plan to gain traction.

The Grabber’s Supernatural Powers, Explained

Ernesto and Mustand hold back Gwen's suspended body from the oven in Black Phone 2 — Ernesto and Mustand hold back Gwen’s suspended body from the oven in Black Phone 2

In The Black Phone, the Grabber was but a man, if a darkly twisted one. In Black Phone 2, as an entity of pure sin, he’s gotten a pretty significant upgrade. Like other ghosts in these films, he can appear in Gwen’s dreams and communicate with certain members of the living through disconnected telephones. But he stretches well beyond those limitations.

Outside of Gwen’s special dream-space, he cannot manifest physically, but he can sometimes interact with the material world. He’s able to temporarily trap Finney in the phone booth, cut power to Armando’s office, and throw demonic-looking snowballs at his window. In the film’s finale, when he’s closest to the hidden bodies, he does anything from breaking ice to causing actual bodily harm to people. But, still, he remains invisible.

In dreams, much like Freddy Krueger, he appears as himself and can physically attack Gwen in a way that impacts her in the physical world. If he picks her up and throws her, her real body flies across the room as if by an invisible force. If he cuts her, a gushing wound appears from nowhere.

And he does more than just appear in these dreams. Rather than functioning like a door he can walk through, the Grabber is able to send and control Gwen’s dreaming, at least for a time. It’s unclear just how much influence he’s wielding when, say, Gwen speaks to her mother – but it’s undeniable that he is the one returning her to the night her mother died.

His control over the ghosts of his victims in Gwen’s dreams seems variable. On the one hand, they not only surround and terrify her in her first dream at Alpine Lake, but they lead her directly to the Grabber in the kitchen before she’s first attacked. On the other, one of the ghosts rescues her from the dream set back in the Denver basement. Perhaps there’s a distinction between a projection of the ghost generated by him and the real boy’s spirit, only distinguishable by how they behave.

Gwen holding the Grabber by the collar as his frowning mask looks up at her in Black Phone 2

Ultimately, despite his power, the Grabber proves vulnerable. Gwen discovers she can rival him in the dream space with power of her own, and though she likely would’ve perished had she tried to defeat him alone, the recovery of the bodies gradually weakened him until he couldn’t stand against her. By the film’s end, he’s physically damaged and condemned to a barrel at the bottom of the lake, just as he left his first victims.

The feeling at the end of Black Phone 2 is certainly that the threat is expunged, and the Blakes head off into safety with a loving call from their mother. But it doesn’t seem like ghosts can die, so who’s to say there aren’t a few more hidden bodies the Grabber can exploit in a future Black Phone 3?