Black Phone 2 Sneaks in a Clever Nod to Scott Derrickson’s Scrapped Doctor Strange Villain Through The Grabber

So, The Black Phone 2 is finally in theaters, and yes, The Grabber is back. Only now he is not just the creeper in the mask - he is a ghost that stalks people in their dreams. Cue the Freddy Krueger comparisons. But the more interesting wrinkle here is where that dream-stalking idea probably came from: a Marvel villain Scott Derrickson could not use in Doctor Strange and appears to have repurposed here.

The Marvel idea Derrickson did not get to make - until now

Back when Derrickson made 2016's Doctor Strange, he and co-writer C. Robert Cargill wanted the villain Nightmare front and center. Marvel liked it, but decided that was too intense for a first outing. The studio pushed Strange toward Dormammu and Kaecilius instead, and Nightmare was tabled.

They tried again for the sequel, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, planning a surreal, dream-world gauntlet where Strange would be trapped in realities controlled by Nightmare. Then Derrickson exited in early 2020 over creative differences, Cargill had not even joined the sequel yet, and Sam Raimi took over. The movie shifted to Wanda and the multiverse. Nightmare never showed.

Which brings us to The Black Phone 2. Derrickson finally gets to play with a dream-hunting boogeyman - not a Marvel character, obviously, but the DNA is all over it. If you felt a familiar chill, that is why.

The basics

• Movie: The Black Phone 2
• Director: Scott Derrickson
• Cast: Ethan Hawke, Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, Demián Bichir, Miguel Mora, Jeremy Davies, Arianna Rivas
• Runtime: 1h 54m
• Rotten Tomatoes score (so far): 74%
• US release date: 17 October 2025

OK, so how does The Grabber work now? Mild spoilers ahead

The sequel jumps four years past the first movie. Finney and Gwen are still doing the hard work of surviving what happened. Gwen's second sight kicks back in, only this time her dreams are colder, sharper, and full of the kids The Grabber murdered - plus The Grabber himself, now on the other side and very much not done.

Those visions pull the siblings to a snowed-in camp called Alpine Lake. There, Gwen pieces together what really happened to three victims who were never properly laid to rest. With help from the camp's leaders, they search for the bodies to give those kids some peace. That is when The Grabber's ghost comes roaring back, nastier and stronger, because unfinished business is his whole thing now. The final stretch turns into a brutal showdown on the ice, with Finney and Gwen trapping him beneath the frozen lake and cutting off the haunting for good.

Why this ending feels different - and what Derrickson says he was doing

Derrickson has said he wanted a straight-up ghost story this time, one with a little old-school folklore to it rather than a tidy diagnosis of evil. He is not interested in demystifying The Grabber or giving him a sob-story origin. Some monsters are scarier when you refuse to rationalize them.

"I went that direction specifically because it was a way to bring some more mythology into the storytelling. But it is not an explanation for The Grabber's evil... to try to reduce that to psychological backstory is to discredit the nature of evil itself."

That tracks with how he talks about real cases: some killers had terrible childhoods, others had decent ones and still became monsters. The point here is not decoding evil - it is confronting it, and showing how trauma hangs around like a specter until you face it.

About those Freddy vibes

Yeah, the comparison is unavoidable when your villain shows up in dreams. But what Derrickson is doing feels more like him finally making his dream-devil movie after Marvel told him to wait. The neat part is watching that shelved idea filter through a gritty, personal horror sequel instead of a superhero sandbox.

The Black Phone 2 is now playing in US theaters. If you saw it, tell me what you thought about that icy finale and the dream logic twist.