Army Of The Dead: Why Cruz Has A Key On Her Necklace

In Army of the Dead, a key worn around the neck of Ana de la Reguera’s Maria Cruz gets prominently featured during Vanderohe’s monologue about the time loop, but what does it actually unlock? On the surface, Armie of the Dead seems to be a simple zombie and heist movie mashup, but with teases of aliens and robot zombies and theories developing about time loops, there’s clearly more going on than meets the eye, leading viewers to pick apart every little detail in search of further time travel hints or evidence of aliens (or both).

Maria Cruz as a character doesn’t have much else going on to make her a key figure in any theories. She’s a mechanic and key member of the Las Vengeance team from the zombie war and has a history with Scott Ward (Dave Bautista), but the only real relevance given to the key around her neck is it’s one of the personal items shown while Vanderohe waxes philosophical about how their team is caught in a repeating loop of fighting and dying. Interestingly, the key worn around Cruz’s neck has four holes in the head, whereas the one on the dead body only has three. So, naturally, the question is if the key has any greater significance than facilitating this tease. What does it unlock?

Thanks to a quote by Reguera in the book Army of the Dead: A Film by Zack Snyder: The Making of the Film by Peter Aperlo we know a little more about the key and what it means to Cruz. “Attentive viewers will also note that Cruz wears a key on a necklace. “That key opens a locker in my body shop,” she explains, “and in my mind, that key opens all my memories of when I fought in the war with Scott. It’s very sentimental.”

Depending on how metaphorical you want to get, this could have a number of different implications for the movie. Obviously it’s a fairly straightforward answer and not something that seems quite as exciting as aliens or time loops. It certainly shows how Maria has held on to her feelings of Scott for years as she professes in the film, so it fits well into her character arc; however, if we look at the time loop concept as it’s described by Vanderohe as a metaphor served by the endless cycle of “fighting and dying” in the zombie wars (and presumably wars throughout human history) and the very concept of zombies bringing people back from the dead so they can fight and die again, the key then also fits into a larger thematic trend about a loop each of the characters is caught in, with Maria’s key representing her last emotional loop with Scott.

Ultimately, the key doesn’t need to be anything greater than it appears. Snyder has said he designed the film to work primarily as the basic sort of zombie shoot-em-up audiences would expect, only including some of the crazier teases for viewers who desire to take a deeper dive. While anyone hoping for a greater cosmic significance may be let down (especially after Snyder’s “Lois is the key” tease in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, a tease that may never be paid off if Warner Bros. has their way), the fact that there is still more to be gleaned from a simple prop, whether it be simply how it informs the character or how it ties into a theme of metaphorical time loops.

Cruz won’t be back for a (yet unannounced) Army of the Dead 2, since she didn’t survive Army of the Dead, but she will be a major player in Army of the Dead: Lost Vegas, the animated prequel series coming to Netflix, which is sure to explore more of her history with Scott and give us an idea about the sentimental items that may be locked away her body shop.

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Stephen M. Colbert
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Stephen has been writing for the site since 2016 and enjoys all manner of movies and TV, especially when it gives reason to obsess over minor irrelevant continuity minutiae.

Stephen has been infatuated with movie magic on screen and off since wearing out his VHS copy of The Making of Star Wars when he was 7. This passion continues in his work as a film journalist, whether it’s hunting down breadcrumbs about the Snyder Cut, breaking down box office trends, or obsessing over Rotten Tomatoes data, Stephen lives in the minutiae, as listeners of his podcast, Batman v Superman: By the Minute (with fellow-Screen Rant editor Andrew Dyce) know all too well.

When he’s not writing on the site, Stephen can be found obsessing over vintage camera lenses, chasing his tiny children around, or getting himself into trouble on Twitter @smcolbert.

Yes, that’s his real name.

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