So, what happened to the Canker Monster's victims?

It's not a happy ending. Cankerman represents Cancer and how emotionless cancer is. Nobody is coming back. They are gone forever, just like when someone is taken by cancer. The end is more or less about learning acceptance of losing a loved one to a disease that is unstoppable.

This video sums it up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsjslxnmmKU

Okay, you misunderstood.


She told him to let them go, about the people in the foster care, the ones who were in the cocoons. They were placed there, as she said, to keep them safe - i.e keep the canker man away from them.


Once she says that, they go free. This was not about the victims.
They died. The part in the ending where she tells him about how they are all together and whatever it's just her way of accepting and moving on.


He even asks if it is real, she says yes, but clearly she hesitates cause she's lying.




The whole point was that she was having troubles overcoming her biological son's death. The movie will end with acceptance of death. If the husband and the others would come back, that would ruin the whole point.

I thought she just was giving him a happy ending to appease his guilt and sadness.

Its up to you what conclusion you draw but they made it pretty clear that the people who got eaten by his canker monster will be back if he so wishes. At the end he consciously while awake materializes a friggin butterfly... Soon he'll bend worlds... someone stop that kid! Hopefully they make a sequel about how an army finds about this and tries to make a weapon out of it. DAT BE SO KEWL. Sarcasm.