Warning: Major spoilers ahead for The Monkey

Osgood Perkins’ gory horror comedy The Monkey focuses on twin boys, Hal and Bill, who are abandoned by their father at a young age, inadvertently leaving behind the eponymous evil toy monkey for them to discover. Theo James plays the adult version of both Hal and Bill, who wind up on very different paths as a result of the trauma they suffered together at the paws of the drum-playing embodiment of death itself. The Monkey claimed the life of their mother Lois (Tatiana Maslany), but their father supposedly left one day and never came back, leaving his fate a mystery.

Based on a 1980 short story by horror icon Stephen King, The Monkey has a few significant departures from the source material. Splitting the character of Hal Shelburne into a set of twins is one of the biggest changes to King’s original story, along with the depth into which the movie goes about Hal and Bill’s childhood. Another change involves Hal and Bill’s father, who is given far more importance in the movie than in the original short story.

Hal & Bill’s Dad Left When They Were Kids

He Appeared Briefly In The Movie’s Opening Scene

In what was a bit of a surprise given how little his connection to the movie was publicized, Adam Scott (Severance) gets an entire scene as Hal and Bill’s father, Petey Shelburne. The opening scene of The Monkey depicts how Petey attempted to get rid of The Monkey once he was well and truly aware of how evil it was, and what it was capable of. Covered in blood and still in his pilot’s uniform, Petey brings The Monkey to a pawn shop, where it promptly kills the shopkeeper in a fantastically gruesome manner.

Petey is then shown trying to melt The Monkey with a flamethrower, yelling maniacally as he does. From there his fate is undetermined, as the movie never reveals what happened to him next, except that The Monkey survived and returned to Petey’s closet for his boys to find. Hal recalls being told that his father had gone out for cigarettes one day and never came back, and as a result Lois speaks about him in anger. However, it’s ᴀssumed that he had a good relationship with at least Hal, given that he named his son (Colin O’Brien) after his father.

Did The Monkey Secretly Kill Hal & Bill’s Dad?

The Movie Never Provides A Clear Answer

It’s implied that Petey left his family behind in an effort to escape the evil of The Monkey, or in an effort to protect his family from it. That seems counterintuitive given the fact that he left The Monkey in his closet for the boys to find, but there may be more to the story than Petey running away from the toy and leaving it for his sons to find. The adult Bill points out that The Monkey can teleport, and it certainly demonstrates that and plenty of other supernatural powers.

That makes it believable that Petey took The Monkey away, only to have it teleport back to his closet once he was ᴅᴇᴀᴅ. The real question is whether The Monkey secretly killed Petey, which would then be the real reason why he never returned to his family. In theory, Petey could have died once a new person turned the key, many miles from his family. It seems reasonable to think The Monkey killed him so that it could return to the twins, particularly Bill, who it knew would continue to turn its key.

Could Hal & Bill’s Dad Return In A Sequel To The Monkey?

It’s Theoretically Possible But Feels Unlikely

With Petey Shelburne’s ultimate fate still a complete mystery by the end of The Monkey, it’s possible that he could return in a sequel to The Monkey. It would even set up an interesting story, with three generations of Shelburnes (including Hal’s son Petey) working to stop The Monkey once and for all. However, that seems like an extremely unlikely scenario given the audience’s working knowledge of The Monkey itself.

The Monkey is an agent of chaos and death, able to influence the surrounding reality to cater to its grisly whims. Bill’s breathtakingly ghastly death proves that The Monkey has no allegiance, mercy or loyalty; it immediately kills the person who had been feeding it victims for decades. It seems all but certain that during his effort to get The Monkey away from his family and himself once and for all, Petey met his own doom at the hands of the evil toy. The opening scene of The Monkey is likely all the audience will ever see of Hal and Bill’s father.